What does being shell-shocked really mean?
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It’s a term for what we now call PTSD – Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was recognised during the first world war, where soldiers would have severe mental breakdowns after, or during, combat. The sheer industrial brutality of the war was unequalled in history to that point. Commanders discovered first-hand that you’d put a soldier on a mounted machine gun, he’d spend six or eight hours mowing down barely-adult men like a farmer harvests a field of wheat, and by the end of it he’d be so psychologically broken that he had to be discharged from the army and sent home, ready for the next gunner to take his place.
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