I’m only familiar with the movie Twelve O’Clock High, and the book Catch-22, but aren’t those specifically combat scenarios? Or at least still in theatre, with the potential for combat to happen at short notice?
If that’s the case, while the characters may be exhibiting traumatic stress, and may well have developed PTSD in the future, you can’t say that they’re suffering that at the time of those works. PTSD isn’t the reaction one has at the time something ‘too big’ to understand happens, one of the defining characteristics of it is an inability for the sufferer to put the memories of those events into the past.
Granted, it’s common today to equate PTSD with traumatic stress, but they are two different conditions. (I’ll grant, my understanding is that the biggest difference is the duration betwee the two conditions - if the sufferer can deal with the anxiety within a reasonably period of time, usually on his or her own, it was just traumatic stress. No matter how many anxiety attacks they had during the period they were suffereing from it.)
Gunsmoke may have been written for adults, but it couldn’t have been broadcast if it had been too explicit. I don’t understand what would have been traumatizing to a combat veteran.
Battle (or Combat - poss. a transatlantic variation?) Fatigue was well recognised and accepted in WW2. Most senior officers had been junior officers in the Great War and reacted strongly against the perceived indifference of the WW1 authorities. There were many cases on all fronts amongst British combatants during the war and they were generally treated sympathetically.
Many WW2 veterens went on suffering from PTSD after the war but they had the advantage that people around them recognised their problem and many had seen and shared the same experiences - something recent casualties do not have. They also came from a generation that was taught not to make a fuss, just get on with … According to the main charity that supports ex-members of the British forces suffering from mental problems (Combat Stress) there are still WW2 veterens coming forward today.
My understanding of the effects of battle fatigue/shell shock/what have you is that it’s simply not a relevant issue. Research done during WWII demonstrated that the likelihood of a soldier suffering from it was directly proportional to the amount of time spent in battle, in a state of physical risk, and that after a given amount of time any human being would essentially be incapacitated. Rest periods would extend the usefulness of a combat soldier but only to a point. Gwynne Dyer notes in his seminal work “War,”
There is some value in using the term “shell shock” or “Battle fatigue” in part because I think folks here are conflating two psychological phenomena; PTSD as caused by a single, or a limited number of, traumatic events, is a real phenomenon but it NOT the new phenomenon that generals started seeing in their soldiers in the late 19th century, and really started seeing in World War I. The phenomenon, shell shock, is a new one, and is as Dyer describes; after a certain amount of combat a human being simply isn’t physically capable of continuing as an effective soldier. There is no such thing as getting used to combat; once you’ve seen a certain amount, you can’t fight effectively any more.
The reason this sort of thing is new is simple; it’s only recently that soldiers have seen enough combat for it to happen. A soldier in the army of Henry V would have seen combat - if he lived long enough - maybe four or five days of his entire life. A soldier in Vietnam, conveyed about by helicopter or truck, could have seen five days of combat in, well, five days, if he had an unlucky week.
It was fairly explicit - the storylines I heard dealt with things like rape without using overly graphic language. Sailed right past the censors, and every member of the listening audience knew what was being discussed.
The writing quality of that program was tremendous.
My point was that characters in the show had “shell shock” from the Civil War. Some became criminals - even psychopaths, and some became reclusive lawmen like Matt Dillon. But the war came up in the storylines constantly, and if veterans and veterans groups had felt that the portrayal of the psychological effects of war was unfair, they probably would have said something.
Like I said, they didn’t seem to, and the show was a ratings success and critical favorite.
I wonder if another factor is that troops used to take a long time to get home again, minimizing the “decompression” of returning to civilian life. I’ve heard that during the Vietnam war a soldier might literally go from a firefight in the jungle to being back in the US discharged in 72 hours.
In an effort to reduce the numbers of soldiers who developed Shellshock/PTSD the US Army devoted considerable effort to psychological evaluation of draftees in WW2 and screened out from combat duty (or service altogether) a great many who were thought to be at risk. The end result was a breakdown rate not greatly different from WW1
My uncle, who served in Italy, was supposedly hypersensitive to loud noises for many years afterward. (Which I understand to be one symptom of battle-related PTSD.)
My parents told me that once, during a 4th of July celebration, a kid set off a firecracker a little too close to where my uncle was sitting. My uncle jumped for cover, and then, embarrassed, angrily chased the terrified kid down.
So yeah, he was still feeling the after-effects years later.
spoke-, actually, that simply sounds like learned response to stimuli, and bad memories to me.
Similarly my father had a co-worker who’d been in the Kriegsmarine, as a U-boat sailor. And when electronic naval games started coming out, his kids got one. The “Pi-iiiinnng” rang once in the house, then it was out the door, in the trash.
But, both your anecdote and mine are simply extreme, but essentially reasonable, reactions to stimuli. A firecracker can be frightening to someone who isn’t sensitized to the idea of gunfire, after all, and I’ve seen just that reaction from people who’ve never been near a battlefield when some smartassed kid set off a firecracker too close, and by surprise.
If that’s the weirdest thing that your uncle ever did, it sounds to me like he dealt with his experiences in a very healthy manner.
With PTSD, I’ve heard that things like a soda can being opened cause that reaction, or doors shutting - not slamming - shutting. Sounds that have only the vaguest similarity to gunfire. It’s often tempting to assign odd behavior to a psychological condition, but be careful about doing it. For one thing, it trivializes the real conditions and sufferers; but also it’s a disservice, I think, to the people who simply are other than normal.
Here’s a question: While today we recognize “shell shock” as PTSD by a different name, is there an actual “shell shock” that is not the same—that is, a physiological condition caused by nearby explosions (i.e., very possibly concussion-related). In other words, not just the psychological stress of being in a life-or-death situation, but a physical condition.
Finally, a subject I know something about. Forgive me for not posting cites, but I am away from home and don’t have my reference CD with me. FTR, the reaction to the stresses of combat was noted in the American Civil War (or War Between the States if you prefer). At that time it was referred to as “nostalgia.” We now call it a “Combat Stress Reaction.” It was my job to deal with combat stress reactions on my deployment. Everyone exposed to combat has one. Some are mild, some are extreme. The reactions that get the attention of the media are those where the person relives the trauma, develops physical symptoms, becomes incapable of doing his job anymore or commits atrocities, such as killing civilians, destroying property without cause, or defacing corpses. There are other positive stress reactions such as courage, a sense of loyalty, or the feeling that the Soldier is fulfilling a higher purpose than himself.
To respond to the earlier issue regarding Patton, at least in the movie, he did have a combat stress reaction. The scene we show to troops is the one in the hospital where Patton is talking to the young Soldier who states he can’t go back. Words are voiced by the General and he ends up threatening to shoot the young man if he doesn’t get back to the front. (Incidentally, that is not the best way to deal with a combat stress reaction and we in the combat stress control teams do not do this.) This was the best IMO demonstration of Patton’s reaction to the stresses of combat.
So, to get to the point of the OP. There was “combat fatigue” noted during WWII, but the doctors did not record it as often as during WWI mostly for the reasons already cited. There was a belief that those that would have a negative to reaction to combat had been screened out. I wish I had my cites to note the number of battle wounds vs disease non-battle injury (DNBI) vs the number of Psychiatric medical cases. There was an increase in DNBI in WWII and Psychiatric cases.
The belief now is that we must provide aid to those having a negative combat stress reaction as close to the Soldier’s area as soon as possible. We “normalize” the experience and give the Soldier an expectation of recovery. There is no proof that what we do does any good, nor is there any that it does any harm.
Also, there is nothing unusual about jumping a bit when a firecracker goes off. We were conditioned to run for the bunkers when we heard a mortar strike, and the reaction goes kind of deep. I recently went to a NCO Academy graduation and there was pyrotechnics being set off as the Soldiers marched onto the parade field. I was watching the reactions in the bleachers and could pretty much tell who had been in a combat zone from who jumped when the booms went off. No major reactions, we just jumped a little.
I wonder if this played a role in helping them cope. I’ve heard many stories of returning Vietnam and later Iraq vets who come home to a regular civilian town and feel completely isolated, because no one understands*. Whereas my grandfather returned from WWII to the company of his brothers, cousins, and friends, who had all fought. I also sometimes wonder if certain facets of '50’s culture evolved as a societal-level coping mechanism for undiagnosed and unmentioned PTSD among a significant swath of the young male population (I’m thinking specifically of “tips” for wives to be ever smiling and calm and gentle, soothing their husband with a drink and a home free of troubles when he walks in the door. As if he were too fragile to handle screaming children or a stained apron. Bad enough case of PTSD and maybe he was.)
*My Grandpa’s gotten to be friends with the 20-something Iraq vet who lives next door. He goes over and they have coffee. My aunt asked him once, “What on earth do you two have in common?” Grandpa said, “Combat. You wouldn’t understand.”
Agreed, and with time it will die away. PTSD is different - time does not necessarily cure.
As a teenager in the early '70s I went to school in Belfast . Bombs weren’t a daily occurrence but they were pretty common in the city centre where my school was and I was close enough to several to feel the shock wave. We moved away in the mid '70s but for several years I would duck behind cover if a car backfired or there was some other sudden loud noise. Gradually this reaction died away and now I flinch no more than anyone else at bangs.