What does being shell-shocked really mean?
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its a form of PTSD. the 1st world war saw troops being left in trenches under fire for extended periods, sometimes literally days, just waiting, waiting for that one in a million shell that was going to land in thier trench and kill them……. for days on end. they saw sights of great horror and terror, half rotted corpses unearthed by the shelling, wounded freinds sliding into deep mud and drowning, or killed by posion gas. they were faced with the threat of death and dismemberment and were helpless to protect themselves agianst it.
It broke people, mentally. they became nervous wrecks, scared of loud bangs that reminded them of gunfire, unable to function properly, unfit for further service but physically unharmed. It had been seen before, in limited numbers (looking back on history with hindsight, we can see records of people acting in manner similar to PTSD sufferers that weren’t recognised as such at the time), but the scale, intensity and especially the duration of the fighting in WW1 caused cases to soar to levels never seen before and the issue gained recognition from the general public for the first time.
thier was a lot of debate around it at the time, mostly related to a belief in many circles it was a personal failure, as either weakness of character, or being faked by cowards to avoid thier duty. This was still the early days of psychology as a serious, scientific field, and a lot we take for granted now was just not know or purely folk remedies. WW1 was the time that these psychological effects of war were really treated as being actual conditions which could be treated as oppose to just being “how that person is” form now on.
Some officials were also hesitant to call it a real thing, because they were concerned about issues with discipline and legal liability if it was real. If a shell shocked man was a medical casualty and could not fight on, what was to stop any shirker from claiming it to get out of combat? Would shell shock victims be eligible for war wound pensions, thus exposing the government to a massive potential ongoing cost and room for more fraud?
i must point out Im not saying these people were *right* in thier beliefs, but just they held them, and it was part of the debate at the time.
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