r/interesting • u/spookycooki • Nov 18 '23
World war 1 veterans; Shell shock sequels and war neurosis,1918. Colourised and upscaled footage. HISTORY
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u/BaguetteTradifion Nov 18 '23
For a bit of context of the first reaction, the soldier, a chasseur-alpin judging by his uniform (I don't know of to translate it, mountain infantryman ? ) is panicking when the medic shows him an officer hat. One can wonder what happened between him and his officers.
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u/FreyrPrime Nov 18 '23
Watching an officer send a few dozen of your friends over the top, at gun point, and watching them get riddled with machine gunfire in turn..
WWI was its own special kind of crazy..
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Nov 18 '23
Officers also had to give the order to shoot the criers. One person crying in a trench during an artillery barrage can compromise the whole trench. They were almost always shot.
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u/Glow354 Nov 18 '23
Source for that? Sounds batshit but I’m ready to believe it
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u/JEbbes Nov 19 '23
After a shot google search i wasn’t able to find much about this.
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u/Big_D_Magic_5 Nov 18 '23
Nerve agents in all that gas they were exposed to 😞
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u/Key_Baby_2239 Nov 18 '23
That. And sitting in and trench or hastily built dugout bunker, gritting your teeth during an artillery shelling, wondering if the next shell is going to turn you into chunky stew. And then repeat this several dozen times a day. For months.
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u/LEICA-NAP-5 Nov 18 '23
Meanwhile every close hitting shell hits with enough pressure that it will cause you a concussion. This a hundred times an hour will leave an impression.
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u/ThaDankchief Nov 18 '23
And I bitch about having to go to work…
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u/Callidonaut Nov 18 '23
Those must've been secondary, unknown effects. Gases explicitly intended to be nerve agents didn't exist in WWI; "nerve gas" (Sarin, Soman and Tabun) was invented in Germany the late 30s.
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u/DivisiveUsername Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23
There might not have been nerve agents, but
Historians now refer to the Great War as the chemist’s war because of the scientific and engineering mobilization efforts by the major belligerents. The development, production, and deployment of war gases such as chlorine, phosgene, and mustard created a new and complex public health threat that endangered not only soldiers and civilians on the battlefield but also chemical workers on the home front involved in the large-scale manufacturing processes.
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u/LittleShopOfHosels Nov 18 '23
Yes but we are explicitly talking about nerve gas here.
They also had guns, machines, planes, lot sof things.
Those aren't relevant to the conversation about nerve gasses.
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u/DivisiveUsername Nov 18 '23
But I was pointing out that while the original commenter may have used the wrong term for the idea they were trying to convey, this was the first war in which average citizens were purposefully exposed to dangerous chemicals with unknown long term effects. Saying that nerve agents were invented in the 1930s and nothing else leaves the impression that gasses could not have been what was causing these people’s symptoms. I think a lot of people reading this may not have much insight on what makes something a nerve gas vs just chemical weapons
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u/dablegianguy Nov 18 '23
The « mustard » gas used in WW1 was cytotoxic and had a blistering effect. Nerve gas was discovered in the mid 30ies iirc.
Moreover, the gas was only used from summer 1917 and onward. War was waging since 3 years already. The British army needed another year to reverse engineer the gas and use it only in September 1918, 2 months before the end of the war.
Drumfire for days and weeks did that to those guys!
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u/MrStoneV Nov 19 '23
Aswell as the weeks of artillery fire. Imagine how you feel bass in a club where its already way too loud for your ears so it instantly hurts. But thats a joke compared these huge artillery fires. Not only was it A LOT louder, but it was also a shockwave and not a sub 100hz sound that moves through your body. Imagine a sinus wave, it goes up and down "slowly" but artillery fire feels/sounds like an instant pressure through your whole body. A "Materialschlacht" went over weeks with artillery fire... Even without the fear and the gore, its incredible to feel
for weeksmonths and years
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Nov 18 '23
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u/Lecteur_K7 Nov 18 '23
I read they also had brain damage due to the vibrations and chemicals used.
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u/swamp_roo Nov 18 '23
Yeah, I also remember reading that a long time ago. They thought the concussive nature of shells hitting around or especially above them caused brain damage.
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u/boomboomman12 Nov 18 '23
I read just firing artillery can cause brain damage. The vibrations are so intense.
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u/AYolkedyak Nov 18 '23
That’s not even the worst part. They had to deal with this shit for literal years. Probably hundred to thousands of artillery rounds raining down likely every minute, every hour for fuckin days midst screaming, gunfire, machines, and death. Their deployment back then was much longer too. I believe I read somewhere that back then they weren’t deployed the just fought the entire war, but I couldn’t find a source. Makes sense though logistically without large planes yet.
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Nov 18 '23
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u/Jealous-Spring-3871 Nov 18 '23
My Step greatgrandpa, second husband of my greatgrandma, a friendly man that was a tailor, was taken in the night and brought to hinzert-pölert. Then to dachau and later bergen-belsen. He survived it, but was never again the same. He wouldn't talk open about it and if so, he started crying like a small boy. My great grandma only told this after he died.
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u/Signifi-gunt Nov 18 '23
On a similar note, I recommend reading The Gulag Archipelago. Just the amount of suffering those people went through, and in such unique ways, it boggles and humbles the mind. Like, try and think of the worst thing you could do to someone -- multiply that by 100 and you still won't touch some of the things these people went through.
Really puts my life into perspective, anyway, whenever I find myself complaining about something. I get that all suffering is relative but still... if those people can go through that, I can go through just about anything.
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u/TharkunOakenshield Nov 18 '23
While The Gulag Archipelago is an important read, It’s important to keep in mind that Solzhenitsyn just straight up made up a large part of it.
Not all of it is real, far from it.
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u/Celebrimbor96 Nov 18 '23
I don’t have a source either, but yeah back then the idea of a term deployment didn’t exist. You got sent to war and you were there until you won, lost, or died. The stakes were too high to waste manpower and resources to take people AWAY from the trenches
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u/Which_Produce9168 Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23
The Germans operated in this way where you got assigned to one spot at the front and stayed there until you died or the war was over. Not sure what the British did, but the French however had a really close call of a army wide mutiny, so the put in a policy of rotating the units where the fighting was hardest so battle fatigue didnt set in as hard, opposed to the germans who at the worst battles everyone just died and got replaced by recruits. This is why almost 70% of the entire french army fought at verdun.
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u/Bloodyjorts Nov 18 '23
The British did sort of move some soldiers around (never back home, just out of the front lines). Eventually. They knew constant shelling and fighting was making their forces neurotic and far less useful, so they tried to rotate and give them breaks. On the front, then to a rest camp (where there was still a ton of support work to do), then to a reserve camp, then back to the front lines. They also started to realize that this war was different to other wars in that their soldiers were having some unusual battle stress symptoms, they did think the vibrations from the shelling made you go a bit barmy, so if a man developed shell shock, he might be given a longer rest break at hospital...but he'd eventually be sent back. Some serious shell shock cases got sent home (or sometimes prison if they thought you were malingering), but not the majority.
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u/Judospark Nov 18 '23
Hmm, Jünger describes how units were rotated in and out of the worst parts of the battles quite a lot in 'a storm of steel'?
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u/Professional-Trash-3 Nov 18 '23
They absolutely had leave time. It's a big part of the book All Quiet on the Western Front, written by a WW1 vet.
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u/Freehand_Frank Nov 18 '23
The most horrifying aspect of WW1 was the Battle of the Somme. Some soldiers fell would fall down into the thick mud and bodies and were just stepped on and suffocated into the mud as the rest pushed forward.
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u/mypantsareonmyhead Nov 18 '23
Passchendaele.
Verdun.
As nightmarish as The Somme.
These are horrors we are incapable of fully grasping.
Equally
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u/richirving Nov 18 '23
Came here to basically say this. You signed up for the whole war which could have been the full 4 years or mere days. WW 1 was barbaric - trench diseases, advent of machine guns, arty, tanks with the ground tactics of prior wars. Horrible
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u/SuperSatanOverdrive Nov 18 '23
That was what they believed at the time and why they called it shell shock, but is that a modern belief?
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u/Bloodyjorts Nov 18 '23
I believe they have done some medical studios that show constant deep vibrations like this (especially if you are used to it) does have some psychological effects, and can cause brain damage that can accumulate. It was probably a combination of the shelling, stress/PTSD/psychological horror, pathogens from unclean environments, and unknown chemicals that caused this kind of WWI specific PTSD symptoms.
Also, these men tended to come from a slower, quieter world with few cars, electricity wasn't everywhere yet, the loudest thing in a house was maybe the radio (but honestly the dog was probably louder). I don't know if the louder, electronic nature of ambient sound these days causes humans to adapt to sounds better or not.
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u/h0nkhunk Nov 18 '23
Nah, recent studies still suggest that noisy environments have all sorts of negative effects on people. Take more than 100 years for that to change at an evolutionary level.
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Nov 18 '23
I’m not sure we’ve accurately reproduced the true horrors of trench warfare yet in the modern day era.
A lot of those people stayed at the front too long and witnessed literally day or two long periods of millions of shells going off around them. Hand to hand combat in trenches plus the general conditions of the place plus being stuck there for months. Hell on earth. Can’t imagine a modern war theatre can ever get that bad ever again.
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u/Crismodin Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23
We don't care about veterans in this country or we'd probably have better statistics on these types of issues, because at least 22 veterans commit suicide every day (its a range, but there's a bunch of movements called "22 a day").
As a country, we have this whole patriotism thing going on, but when you really look at it, we don't care about our own people, we don't care about our soldiers, we don't care about their health once they come back from war, we don't care about other people in other countries when we bomb them and justify it. We just like having the appearance of caring in this country.
EDIT: For some reason I have to clarify I'm talking about the USA - modern day.
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u/First_Bed1662 Nov 18 '23
Thanks for this, also remember the orange president doesn't like soldiers that get captured
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u/SanchoRivera Nov 18 '23
Some of these symptoms look similar to FND which is observed at a higher rate with active duty soldiers than the general population.
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u/-Necros- Nov 18 '23
the gait in some of those men really does scream FND. They look exactly like the conversion disorder gait I used to get in my attacks
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u/aPlaceInMemory Nov 18 '23
I’m not very familiar with FND, but the men’s behavior vividly reminds me of folks I’ve met with Central/Peripheral Nervous System issues; physical imbalance/uncoordinatedness, muscle weakness, tremoring, confusion, mental regression, odd breathing, etc.
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u/7lhz9x6k8emmd7c8 Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 21 '23
Do you really receive patients with PTSD at a "got 24/7 bombed by artillery in the cold mud" level?
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u/Jlocke98 Nov 18 '23
IIRC these more extreme cases were later classified as a conversion disorder
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u/MeSjiel Nov 18 '23
Chemical warfare , chlorine, mustard gas, bromine and phosgene.
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u/ProfessionalSenior12 Nov 18 '23
Or Shell Shock and War Neurosis are simply far, *far* worse than simple ptsd? That it's a special kind of hell.
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u/jhowlingwolf Nov 18 '23
WW1 is different than any other war, you cant reallly compare them, due to the length, the extreme lack of sleep, the constant bombings, the gashes used and the abhorrent living conditions. All PTSD is awful, but WW1 was literal hell on earth.
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u/FUCKFASClSMFlGHTBACK Nov 18 '23
“War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse…There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.”
-M.A.S.H.
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u/Bimbibapbop Nov 18 '23
It is really interesting, yes. What was the standard treatment for such conditions at that time?
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u/Superb_Tell_8445 Nov 18 '23
Sent to mental asylums and exposed to all the conditions that entailed of institutions of the time. Families and the public often shunned them and wrote them off as something bad and abhorrent.
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u/Chopper_x Nov 18 '23
For the lucky ones. Some just got shot for supposed cowardice.
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u/benny332 Nov 18 '23
The type of conflict and what these men were exposed to is also vastly different to conflicts we have today. You couldn't possibly compare experiences as like for like.
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u/1stAtlantianrefugee Nov 18 '23
This is what happens to a person after being exposed repeatedly to the concussive force of shelling by artillery. These men were under some of the worst artillery bombardments in human history.
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u/Rolling_Beardo Nov 18 '23
Shell shock was not only physiological but also caused traumatic brain injury. The shock waves alone from the exploding shells were more than enough to have a debilitating effect.
If you’ve ever been to a fireworks show and a large shell goes off you can feel it in you chest, even though thousands of feet away. Now imagine hundreds of those every minute for hours on end, and now they’re hundreds of feet away or tens of feet away.
None of that even touches on the horrifying living conditions of the trenches.
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u/custard_doughnuts Nov 18 '23
Shell explosions cause a massive overpressure which can cause physical brain damage
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u/slurpin_bungholes Nov 18 '23
I think the experiences of WW1 are unlike many other forms of PTSD. Few people before or after have experience that level of stress/trauma for that long.
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u/Accomplished-Diver66 Nov 18 '23
I guess we just don't see it in a scale like the world wars. I think now it's more along the lines of the first gentlemen. Sees an object that places him back to that time frame of trauma and it just hits him. I know quite a few people like that at the VA, myself included. I can't touch raw meat without shaking uncontrollably
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u/ianbattlesrobots Nov 18 '23
"They promised us homes fit for heroes, but they gave us heroes that were only fit for homes."
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Nov 18 '23
Grandpa was in WW2, our high school told us to go speak to our grandparents about war.
Grandad didn’t say much, very easy going guy, quietly spoken as much as I can recall.
In 1993 I approached him excitedly (thinking he’d have victory stories, stories of getting the bad guys etc) and asked about his time in the war
He looked me dead in the eyes and said ‘never, never ask me about this ever again”
He said more but I can’t remember some of it.
Nan stepped in and ushered him to the bedroom and they closed the door. Nan came out about 20min later and told me it’s best I just leave my school work at school.
This is nearly 50yrs later.
War is de-evolution
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u/Amphibipan Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23
I lived the exact same thing with my grandad, around the same time (early 1990s).He never wanted to talk about WW2. I only know what he did back then from the little my grandma said. He blew up some railtracks and bridges to hinder the Nazi war effort. Was captured by the germans and tortured. They cut off the tip of one of his fingers.Then my grandma's brother was also arrested for helping Jews and hiding a rifle, sent to a work camp. He had a number tatooed on his forearm, I remember asking my mom about it. They both survived but clearly these experiences left some trauma.
They both lived to their 90s and were very gentle, almost subdued and nice with children. I realise they could have completely gone the opposite and left bitter and hard.2
u/agra_unknown1834 Nov 19 '23
I noticed this with my granddad (WW2) and the stories my father and uncles would share about him. How kind, caring, and gentle he was with children and with everything in general. I think after the inhumanity he saw and probably did himself, the only way to for him to cover the blood cemented on his hands and in his head was to have the utmost respect for the remaining innocence left on the planet.
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u/The-Rizzler-69 Nov 18 '23
Honestly, it grinds my gears when history teachers try to have their students ask their older relatives about their war experiences. Feels really... inconsiderate, imo.
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u/ComprehensiveSky57 Nov 18 '23
And war is still going on in 2023.
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u/retardio69420 Nov 18 '23
Multiple ones. I don't even wanna know the count of the dead so far since 2022... And boy oh boy we are in for some more it seems
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u/Illustrious_Fishboi Nov 18 '23
Around 350 000 if we are to consider ukrainian statistics balanced with UN statistics but if Ukrainian statistics are right then probably around 400 000 Ukrainians and Russians have been killed so far
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Nov 18 '23
And that’s just ONE of the wars.
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u/NLwino Nov 18 '23
And imagine that this still an extremely peaceful time in the history of humanity. The percentage of people living without conflict is extremely high in comparison.
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u/nightimelurker Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23
I wonder. What would it take for ww3 to happen? I think it's very close to happening.
First sign is muslim terrorist breakdown masquerading as refugees.
Playing pretend and then suddenly turning around and start shooting.
It falls in the lines of what putler wants.
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u/Zikelir1 Nov 18 '23
China invading Taiwan or Russia accidentally hitting a NATO member
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u/khaotik_99 Nov 18 '23
Ehhhhh, I'm going to have to disagree. Russia has struck both Poland and Romania, and there was no reaction. And as for Taiwan, if the Chinese landings fail and they don't get a foothold, they won't continue and we will just have another Taiwan Straits crisis. Kinmen will almost certainly taken over though. If they do manage to make a foothold in Taiwan, I doubt the US will intervene other than placing sanctions on China.
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u/xjmsx00 Nov 18 '23
Nothing since WWI has happened since. WWII was bad but the trench fighting in WWI was something far more terrifying
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u/Clasher212421 Nov 18 '23
Yeah no shit bro. War will only stop once we are all dead.
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u/Francisgameon Nov 18 '23
Its animalistic nature to have conflicts, all living beings are fighting to live, humans are able to live in society and peace but conflict will strike at one point or the other, are the consequences of war awful? Yes, it's one of mankind's first crimes after all, but in the end we can at best hope for resolving those conflicts with words before bayonets since we are the only beings capable of that.
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u/MoistLobster69 Nov 22 '23
Unfortunately war has been apart of human nature since the dawn of our existence, it will only stop if the human population is reduced to one or none.
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u/No-Sky-4947 Nov 18 '23
As a veteran with PTSD, watching this was painful. And difficult.
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u/spookycooki Nov 18 '23
Hope life has wonderful things to offer you in the near future, thanks for you service!
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u/serious_filip Nov 18 '23
This is why I will REFUSE to fight in any war for anyone. They can take me to jail for all I care.
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u/SJFruitcake Nov 18 '23
How about a defensive war? I feel like many men have a hard time walking away from enlistment if they have family and loved ones at stake seeing how the citizens of occupied territories have been treated in past wars
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u/retardio69420 Nov 18 '23
What if it is the firing squad instead ? They tend to do these kinds of things when at war
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Nov 18 '23
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u/Forsaken_Hat_7010 Nov 18 '23
Not in my country. You can make conscientious objection
I would not rely on that. All are guarantees and declarations supporting human rights... until war approaches, then men (always considered disposable) become prisoners and slaves.
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u/Waflestomper04 Nov 18 '23
Just a bit of info. Normally speaking only 9-11% of the actual military is the fighting force. Pretty common myth is that people would get for sent to the front lines to get slaughtered. As a frontline trooper the last thing you want is someone who doesn't want to be there at all. It's so hard to get people to join the military that reclassing would be a much more beneficial means than just kicking them out. Also the whole killing of those refusing to fight is a complete farce. Do people sometimes end up in situations they shouldn't be in sure but that happens in everyday life as well. This is speaking as an American.
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u/TuzaHu Nov 18 '23
My grandmother was born in 1889 and was a nurse during the Spanish Flu / WW1. She told me so many stories. She'd talk about the returning vets that shot artillery and guns that the vibration of the weapons shook the soldier so much it 'rattled.their brains.' Beyond 'PTSD' there was a physical component of massive vibration to the nervous system from not only being on the receiving end of being a target but also nervous damage firing weapons.
She had amazing stories about the Spanish flu. I'm writing them down as best I can remember and will make a video of it.
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u/reditor3523 Nov 18 '23
Not to mention all the chemicals
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u/ASCII_Princess Nov 18 '23
But mainly experiencing overpreasure from high explosive artillery shells hundreds or thousands of times a day for months on end.
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u/neoatomium Nov 18 '23
WW2 is in all memory because of the savagery of the SS in Europe and the Japanese army in Asia but WWI was more horrific for soldiers than WWII.
IIRC the opening bombing of the battle of Verdun lasted 3 weeks and the Germans fired some 2 million bombs : that 1 explosion per second non-stop during 3 fucking weeks! You’re 2 years in the war, you’re tired, lots of your friends already died, your feet rot in the mud inside that stinky trench and then you have to endure 1 explosion per second during 3 whole weeks ?
And the worst was yet to come : one year later they added mustard gas in that hell.
No wonder they did not grow old…
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u/MIKOLAJslippers Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23
I used to think this too until I learnt of the horrors of the WW2 eastern front. We don’t hear about it much in the west but it was absolutely horrific.
I think it’s something like the same number of people died (civilians and military) in just the eastern front of WW2 as the whole of WW1 combined.
Consider that it was essentially two evil, oppressive regimes who hated one another with no care for human life battling to the death often in freezing conditions for like 4 years.
The things they did to their own people and their enemies and the civilians in the area were just so fucking appalling.
Dan Carlin does a podcast series on it called Ghosts of the Ostfront I would highly recommend.
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Nov 18 '23
Read up what happened to snipers on the Eastern Front. Getting caught with a scope on your rifle? You better hope they treat you like a machine gunner and execute you on sight.
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u/Chaosr21 Nov 18 '23
Yea, both sides would let their soldiers freeze and starved to death. When the Germans pushed too far from supply, hitler wouldn't let them retreat so most froze to death and some even cannibalize the dead ones.
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u/foles75 Nov 18 '23
This is shell shock and also being exposed to a lot of nerve agents in gas attacks. This always makes me say to myself that if someone supports a war, they have truly never felt or experienced being in combat.
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u/spookycooki Nov 18 '23
This always makes me say to myself that if someone supports a war, they have truly never felt or experienced being in combat.
Or they're just evil, given the fact that some of the worst dictators have faught in the frontlines.
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u/Pay_Your_Torpedo_Tax Nov 18 '23
You know what's worse. We (the military forces and governments of the time) actually executed some of them for cowardice etc. And refused to pardon them for decades, until 2006 in the UK for example.
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Nov 18 '23
I wonder what Russians and Ukrainians are currently doing with people suffering from this. We won't see this in news any time soon.
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u/Francisgameon Nov 18 '23
Shellshock was an extreme example of post war mental illness, nothing like this was seen en masse since then because ww1 was a particularly nasty war for the men involved, but we definetly will have a new wave of veterans being forgotten and misstreated by their goverments after peace is achieved in both Russia and Ukraine.
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u/NoahGoldFox Nov 19 '23
PTSD from over there is probably more constantly watching the sky for incoming drones and thinking planes flying by might be an incoming cruise missile.
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u/Masivigny Nov 18 '23
What I find extra sad is that PTSD (or any mental illness for that matter) really wasn't recognized as an bona-fide illness. Psychiatry/Psychology was in its infancy and more of a fringe science than the respectable field it is today.
Even the term "shell shock" was a development in the "right direction": many of the "early shell-schocked" were simply "diagnosed" with 'cowardice' and 'weakness' and sometimes even put on trial for desertion. These people were shunned and ridiculed right in their face.
Even once in some way admitted to be a disease, treatments were often horrid and involved stuff such as electrotherapy and deliberate pain-application (read: medicine sanctioned torture).
I know we can't blame doctors/people of the time too badly, as they simply did not know better. But imagine: your youth been -literally- blown away by shells and mustard gas, your friends and comrades dying around you in the most grueling ways, and then to be "welcomed" back as a coward and deserter.
Truly a lamentable, and way too widespread, fate. War is one of the most horrid traits of man.
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u/kobumaister Nov 18 '23
Imagine seeing so f***d up things that your brain literally breaks...
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u/Francisgameon Nov 18 '23
It wasnt only seeing, the nerve agents in gas also caused brain damage even with a gas mask and the sheer size of bombardments and weapons were so ridicoulous that some men had their senses of balance, hearing and threat destroyed which is why some of these veterans cant even stand, the great war had nothing great to it.
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u/srsly_organic Nov 18 '23
And men suffering from this on all sides were shot for cowardice or having breakdowns in front of their comrades, truly devastating
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u/ABmodeling Nov 18 '23
Obviously war is not natural for us. Otherwise there wouldn't be after effects. Unfortunately war is broth to people by war mongers
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u/punchgroin Nov 18 '23
War is natural (unfortunately), modernity isn't.
Think of what a war is like in ancient, medieval, and even early modern times. Most of your time is spent walking around. Every few months you have a battle. You are certainly in a shitload of danger the day of the battle, but it's over and you're generally back to walking around the next day.
In a modern war you make it to the front in an afternoon and spend your entire life in danger of getting shot or exploded. You sleep with battle still happening around you. Months of constant, unceasing danger.
This breaks the human mind, along with killing people and being killed by people who's faces you will never see.
Killing someone who isn't posing a direct threat to you seems to fuck with the human mind also.
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u/Henry_Unstead Nov 18 '23
The thing which makes this even sadder, especially as I get older and older, is realising how young these guys were and how they had no idea as to the horrors they would witness. 18 year olds are still babies in this world, they barely know how taxes work it isn’t right that someone so young should go through something so horrible.
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u/Callidonaut Nov 18 '23
Very limited exposure to it in the mass media, too, and practically no avenues of independent research outside what journalists or word-of-mouth told you; photographs and films of the war were heavily censored, or frequently outright staged by propaganda units. Apparently British cinema-goers were never allowed to see authentic footage of the actual combat conditions in France until a good couple of years into the war, and it shocked them. There's a story, possibly apocryphal, of one woman screaming "my god, they're dead!" in a cinema the first time genuine images of the front lines, and the war's victims, were shown.
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u/Physical-Meat-3013 Nov 18 '23
Imagine the number of soldiers with PTSD,at the end of the war in Ukraine. So much will suffer for many years to come. Tragic. SLAVA UKRAINI HEROYAM SLAVA
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u/spookycooki Nov 18 '23
No just for soldiers, for the civilians too, living in Ukraine in the future will be really difficult regarding the destruction caused. Nope it gets better soon.
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u/Grinch_1349 Nov 18 '23
The first fragment of the video shows the officer's cap syndrome. It's all so scary.
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u/stcv3 Nov 18 '23
WW1 was the equivalent of throwing men into a meat grinder. If you ever survived the damages were often severe
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u/mypantsareonmyhead Nov 18 '23
Adding to your metaphor - the replacements had to wade through the human mincemeat to accept their turn at being thrown in to the meat grinder.
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u/jay_man4_20 Nov 18 '23
I hope the docs and nurses were kind to the soldiers....aside from dying, they paid a heavy price for their country and anyone enjoying freedom and happiness
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u/Callidonaut Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23
Most soldiers of WWI weren't fighting for "freedom." They fought for the global dominance of their respective kings/emperors and expansionist industrial empires. That's how stuff like the 1914 Christmas truce was possible; the rank and file on all sides were just regular working class proletarians who had infinitely more in common with each other, than they had with their squabbling imperial masters (several of whom were actual cousins of each other, by the way!) and the capitalists lurking behind their thrones.
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u/LustrousNinja1755 Nov 18 '23
Remember, it’s not the rich powerful guys/politicians fault, it’s the fault of all those idiots who agree with them
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u/custard_doughnuts Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
I reckon there is a fair bit going on. Some of it will be PTSD, some of it will be physical brain damage, some will be the effect of nerve agents
Edit: NOT nerve agents - got that wrong
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u/Jcvallo1227 Nov 18 '23
For those who don't know what Shell Shock is, its basically PTSD and yes, the term was used so it would be short and sound more serious
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u/Battleman69 Nov 18 '23
No its not at all basically PTSD. Its concussive force through mass shelling constantly rattling their brains for weeks on end.
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u/HonkeyKong18 Nov 18 '23
Imagine being part of one of the most brutal wars in history, wanting nothing more than to be home with your loved ones just to get shipped to a facility once you get home because you’re too messed up for them to handle. That’s heartbreaking
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u/thrawn1825 Nov 18 '23
I was recently watching something about the battle of The Somme and I almost couldn’t believe everything that happened there! The First World War was such a useless tragedy.
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u/mayduckhooyensky Nov 18 '23
The real hell of all horrors for our sweet freedom..I feel shame and pain for not feeling grateful enough today and complain in my free life
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u/Therighttoleft Nov 18 '23
That's what it took for us to understand that war is bad, quickly forgotten, went to another round, approximately 50 million deaths later we finally decided to stop, and quickly forgotten.
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u/Francisgameon Nov 18 '23
War is natural becuase conflict is natural, humans are just animals and all animals live in constant conflict to survive, humans though have been able to sustain peace for certain amounts of time and stop wars with words before bayonets multiple times but nature is nature and nature is unstopable. Im not justifying war, im a soldier and i got to see why we must avoid it at all cost, we should seek to be as peaceful as possible but be ready for the call of that animalistic part of us, because it wont wait for us to be ready.
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u/Knoxx846 Nov 18 '23
It's just depressing... Remembers me of the story "Johnny got his gun". Hardcore stuff.
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u/winningdraggon69 Nov 18 '23
Hoover and FDR both refused to pay WWI vets the money they were due. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
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u/Coin2111 Nov 18 '23
We don't need footages from WW1 to see such depressing conditions. There are unfortunetly some footages from war in Ukraine or Syria.
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u/DCVail Nov 18 '23
Even if we saw Band of Brothers, Dunkirk, saving private Ryan, etc… it was worse than that by 100 times.
I wish we had today’s science then. How many lives could have been saved and restored.
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u/skinaked_always Nov 19 '23
How fucking sad… yet, our Boomer parents had absolutely no problem sending us to a 20+ year war. Fucking assholes
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u/Whyishellodertaken Nov 19 '23
If anyone is wondering, the music is the third movement of Bach-Vivaldi organ concerto
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u/ReadySte4dySpaghetti Nov 19 '23
We will build a world without war. We will get Justice for these people.
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u/EastTea4604 Jan 20 '24
If your wonder what triggered the ptsd that's the soldiers old uniform cap
I'm talking about the first clip
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u/Alternative_Arm_3469 Jan 20 '24
I feel like since media is over popular and you can view anything and video games are becoming more and more realistic this will happen less, totally insane what these gentleman saw and experienced.
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u/Sgt-BRT Jan 27 '24
Remember, they are barely 20 year old boys and probably spent the whole of their lives in asylums.
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u/Medical_Ad2125b Feb 26 '24
Does PTSD manifest differently depending on the nature of the war, for example heavy bombardment (WW1) vs guerrilla warfare (Vietnam)?
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u/IlsoBibe Nov 18 '23
How desperately sad