I’ve often heard of victims of shellshock from the Great War and of those suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the Viet Nam War but I’ve never heard mention of a similar effect in veterans of World War Two. Is this just because it is not as publicised or was there a difference in combat situations in World War Two that made it less likely that veterans would suffer from PTSD/shell shock?
Thanks,
An Gadaí
IIRC, the term in use at the time was “battle fatigue.” Certainly from accounts I’ve heard of WWII vets they suffered from PTSD, even if it wasn’t talked about much.
I imagined they would have, it just hasn’t really entered the collective memory the way PTSD and shell shock have I suppose. I was also thinking of Gulf War Syndrome, is this another form of PTSD or has it been shown to be something else?
GWS appears to be an “umbrella” diagnosis covering a broad spectrum of physical and mental ailments.
Both the causes and the symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome are very much debated. But it’s generally considered to be a condition with a physical cause and physical as well as psychological symptoms. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has a psychological cause and psychological symptoms.
Spike Milligan recounts PTSD (and its suspected status as trigger for his subsequent bipolar disorder) following being blown up in Italy, in his War Diaries.
George Carlin agrees with you, and mentions the evolution of relevant terminology in one of his classic language-related rants.
Sure, there was PTSD in World War II. The most famous example was when Gen. George S Patton was reprimanded for slapping soldiers who were hospitalized with battle fatigue.
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I read somewhere that Patton felt motivated to slap the soldiers because one of his buddies in WWI committed suicide or died in combat because of PTSD. It has also been suggested that Patton himself was suffering from PTSD when he slapped the soldiers. This seems plausible to me, especially given the loss of a friend to shell shock.
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I’ve read different accounts of WWII vet who suffered from these symptoms. One was mentioned in an account of a ship torpedoed by a Japanese sub and the survivors floated for a day or so before they were found. The sharks came and ate some of them, and others suffered from what we would now call PTSD.
Another was from an invasion on one of the islands, and part of the line was unable to get up high enough on the island so people were lost to the high tide at night. One guy survived by being on a mound of death soldiers, but “went mad,” as it was described.
I’m sure that there were plenty of cases.
I’ve heard the soldiers in WWI were a lot more likely than soldiers in WWII to suffer from PTSD or “shell shock”.
Funny, I always recall it being called “combat fatigue.” In any case, it always interested me that many guys went over and were on the line for months (with occasional breaks) all the way through Africa, Italy and then Normandy invasion and into Germany. Many were in continual combat for as much as 3 years or more, and as I recall, a relatively low rate of combat fatigue.
Then can’t help but wonder that troops in the first Gulf War spent 90 days or less in combat and seemed to have a much highter percentage of PTSD.
And while I like George, I have to disagree with him slightly on this one, as the psychological problems associated with “battle fatigue” can be caused by things other than warfare. I will say that I miss the days when a disease had a name and not an acronym.
Actually, the amount of real combat the forces in WWII saw was pretty low. IIRC, (and my source for this is Mail Call on the [del]Hitler[/del] History Channel) soldiers in WWII, at the end of their tour saw less than 90 days of combat. Most of their time was spent going from one engagement to another, etc., rather than actually shooting at someone. With the advent of the helicopter as a deployment method, the number of days soldiers spent in combat increased dramatically.
This is not to lessen the level of service that folks went through in WWII, as certainly they experienced some of the fiercest combat the world has ever seen (their opponents were equals in terms of professionalism, skill, and equipment), while many of our forces since Vietnam have been engaged with an enemy who is far below them in terms of technology, training, etc.
If you want a small sample look at the incidence of PTSD in combat vets from WWII, take a look at the soldiers who were photographed in that famous pic of raising the flag on Iwo Jima.
IIRC a number of the soldiers so photographed ended up dead from alcoholism, or suicide, at relatively young ages. With all the associated social costs along the way. Wikipedia begins to cover some of the issues here.
Now, it’s not quite kosher to diagnose PTSD based on life experiences after the fact - so all we can really say is that so-and-so exhibited symptoms that would be consistent with PTSD. It’s not conclusive for any individual vet - but looking at the general case of veteran’s experiences, it’s pretty obvious to me that it happened.
(And that doesn’t even begin to mention the mess that surviving the retreat from Inchon did to soldier during the Korean War.)
In general, the impression I’ve had talking to VA health care providers is that for the most part veterans of WWII, and Korea, were both general left on their own to deal with the psychological costs of being in heavy combat. With WWII, it was such a victory that the vets with problems were told to shut up and stop malingering. Nothing would be allowed to tarnish the Victory Over Evil. (Yeah, IMNSHO, Patton was simply honest and open about his views, not unusual for his day and age.) Where Korean vets were generally treated similar to returning Vietnam vets - as failures for not having won a clear victory.
I believe that the ship mentioned above by Tokyo Player was the USS Indianapolis CA-35. Though the ‘victim’ of PTSD most people mention was Captain McVay, who was figuratively strung up by a kangaroo court-martial for the loss. Again, IMNSHO his suicide was at least as much because of that, as the horrors experienced after the ship sank.
Audie Murphy was another WWII combat vet who had a very difficult time re-adjusting to civilian life.
It’s interesting. I’ve recently been listening to a lot of old Gunsmoke radio drama episodes in the car to make my commute more bearable. These aired in the 1950s and early 1960s, but took place in 1870s Kansas, of course.
Lots of storylines concern Civil War vets who got screwed up in the head from combat and never got over it.
Now, keep in mind Gunsmoke was explicitly aimed for an adult audience - these would include a lot of recent combat veterans. If they noticed anything untoward about these storylines, they didn’t make much of a fuss at the time, and Gunsmoke was the most successful radio drama of the fifties.
I would imagine that the writers of the drama, like those of the comic books of the era, were WWII vets and wanted “grittier” stories than had been written prior to the war. No doubt they would have based much of the stories on their own experiences, which would have included references to people being screwed up by combat.
The Indianapolis was mentioned in Jaws–“Anyway, we delivered the bomb.” (Youtube, fictionalized account.)
Also, remember that Tom Lea painted The Two Thousand Yard Stare in 1944.
One problem, which has been documented, is that the Army (at least) thought it could “weed” out all of the guys who would be prone to crumbling in combat via various tests and protocols, and thus anybody who actually made it into the service would automatically be considered immune. As mentioned upthread it may have taken the Patton incident to get the brass to get out of their state of denial.
My take on that difference, assuming there is any in this area, is that WWI and Vietnam were both seen as fairly futile wars - both while being fought and immediately afterwards. So the veterans may well have had the additional psychic burden of suspecting it was all for nothing.
WWII on the other hand had a plain and laudable goal, to defeat the evils of Nazism and Japanese militarism, and veterans could take some satisfaction that they were part of it, that the horrors they experienced were a necessary evil.
Combat fatigue had a fairly high profile in post WW2 consciousness. It was a key plot element, for example, in the films Twelve O’Clock High and Captain Newman, M.D., and also in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.