Sunday 2 March 2008

Shell Shock

I was going to wait until I came to the end of my great-grandfather's story to write about this, but after talking to my Aunt I decided to do it now. To understand why I am doing this blog I have to talk about the unpleasant subject of shell shock or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (as we call it today.)

When I had started researching Jack, I asked my father what he could tell me about him. He couldn't tell me anything, but a few anecdotes. So, I asked my Aunt, who was twenty when he died if she could tell me anything. According to her, the Jack she knew was morose, withdrawn, unapproachable and prone to bouts of sudden rage. No one had dared ask him about the First World War and he did not give any details. My great-grandmother, who lived until 1990, told my Aunt that he had been more outgoing and happier when they first married. Jack had come back from the war a changed man.

Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, Jack was there. In the next coming weeks I'll be talking about Passchendaele, but I can tell you now that Jack was a stretch bearer during that battle. I guess it came down to unless you were there and experienced all the horrors of war, then you could never understand. How could have Jack talked about the war?


Stretcher Bearers

In 1914, doctors began to see the first cases of shell shock. Early symptoms included tiredness, irritability, giddiness, lack of concentration and headaches. Eventually the men suffered mental breakdowns making it impossible for them to remain in the front-line. Originally doctors thought shell bursts "shook up" soldiers brains, causing the above mentioned symptoms. As the war went on doctors began to see it as more of a psychiatric illness, that resulted in nerve damage during combat. If a soldier was an officer (like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen) they were most likely to be sent away to a hospital to recuperate. Many enlisted men did not get the same treatment.

Philip Gibbs, writing about the war for The Daily Chronicle, mentions his experiences with shell shock in his autobiography, Adventures in Journalism.

I saw a sergeant-major convulsed like someone suffering from epilepsy. He was moaning horribly with blind terror in his eyes. He had to be strapped to a stretcher before he could be carried away. Soon afterwards I saw another soldier shaking in every limb, his mouth slobbered, and two comrades could not hold him still. These badly shell-shocked boys clawed their mouths ceaselessly. Others sat in the field hospitals in a state of coma, dazed, as though deaf and dumb.


1 comment:

Gray Moon Gallery said...

Here a poem and a painting about Shell Shock by contemporary Belgian artist Jan Theuninck :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26915283@N07/5093136610/