Psychological Problems
Trench warfare had a great impact on the soldiers during WWI.
Many psychological problems developed because of the harsh conditions in the tranches. The soldiers of World War 1 were the first to develop "shell shock". Shell shock is defined as "mentally confused, upset, or exhausted as a result of excessive stress or battle fatigue". The first known use of the word was in 1916. By the end of WWI, 80,000 cases of shell shock had been reported. At the beginning of the war, shell shock was thought to be because of physical injury to the nerves. It was later discovered that many soldiers with the symptoms of shell shock received no major injuries, so shell shock was psychological. It was very difficult for soldiers to return to normal civilian life after having been in the trenches, and experiencing the atrocities of war.
Harsh Conditions of Trenches:
The trenches themselves were a terrible place for the soldiers. The trenches would often become flooded, creating impassable mud. In extreme cases soldiers would become trapped in the thick mud, resulting in death.The walls of the trenches themselves would often collapse very quickly as well. Recently, the bodies of 21 German soldiers have been found after being covered in a mountain of mud, after an Allied Shell exploded. (Click here for more information and images)
Death was a common sight in the trenches. Many of the corpses were left in the trenches to rot, and be fed on by rats. The stench of decaying bodies, as well as human waste, made for extremely unsanitary and unhealthy conditions.
Primary Accounts:
On July 7th, 1916 a soldier suffering from shell shock, Arthur Hubbard, wrote to his mother explaining his experience in WWI.
"We had strict orders not to take prisoners, no matter if wounded my first job was when I had finished cutting some of their wire away, to empty my magazine on 3 Germans that came out of one of their deep dugouts. bleeding badly, and put them out of misery. They cried for mercy, but I had my orders, they had no feeling whatever for us poor chaps... it makes my head jump to think about it.' [Punctuation and syntax as originally written]
Ernest Jones, a British neurologist and psychologist, wrote about the reasons for the development of psychological problems post-war:
'...to indulge in behaviour of a kind that is throughout abhorrent to the civilised mind.... All sorts of previously forbidden and hidden impulses, cruel, sadistic, murderous and so on, are stirred to greater activity, and the old intrapsychical conflicts which, according to Freud, are the essential cause of all neurotic disorders, and which had been dealt with before by means of 'repression' of one side of the conflict are now reinforced, and the person is compelled to deal with them afresh under totally different circumstances.'
On October 1917, Siegfried Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital after reading his Declarations Against the War. While he was a patient at the hospital he wrote a poem entitled "Survivors":
"No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain / Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. / Of course they're 'longing to go out again', - / These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. / They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed / Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, - / Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud / Of glorious war that shatter'd their pride... / Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; / Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad."
Many psychological problems developed because of the harsh conditions in the tranches. The soldiers of World War 1 were the first to develop "shell shock". Shell shock is defined as "mentally confused, upset, or exhausted as a result of excessive stress or battle fatigue". The first known use of the word was in 1916. By the end of WWI, 80,000 cases of shell shock had been reported. At the beginning of the war, shell shock was thought to be because of physical injury to the nerves. It was later discovered that many soldiers with the symptoms of shell shock received no major injuries, so shell shock was psychological. It was very difficult for soldiers to return to normal civilian life after having been in the trenches, and experiencing the atrocities of war.
Harsh Conditions of Trenches:
The trenches themselves were a terrible place for the soldiers. The trenches would often become flooded, creating impassable mud. In extreme cases soldiers would become trapped in the thick mud, resulting in death.The walls of the trenches themselves would often collapse very quickly as well. Recently, the bodies of 21 German soldiers have been found after being covered in a mountain of mud, after an Allied Shell exploded. (Click here for more information and images)
Death was a common sight in the trenches. Many of the corpses were left in the trenches to rot, and be fed on by rats. The stench of decaying bodies, as well as human waste, made for extremely unsanitary and unhealthy conditions.
Primary Accounts:
On July 7th, 1916 a soldier suffering from shell shock, Arthur Hubbard, wrote to his mother explaining his experience in WWI.
"We had strict orders not to take prisoners, no matter if wounded my first job was when I had finished cutting some of their wire away, to empty my magazine on 3 Germans that came out of one of their deep dugouts. bleeding badly, and put them out of misery. They cried for mercy, but I had my orders, they had no feeling whatever for us poor chaps... it makes my head jump to think about it.' [Punctuation and syntax as originally written]
Ernest Jones, a British neurologist and psychologist, wrote about the reasons for the development of psychological problems post-war:
'...to indulge in behaviour of a kind that is throughout abhorrent to the civilised mind.... All sorts of previously forbidden and hidden impulses, cruel, sadistic, murderous and so on, are stirred to greater activity, and the old intrapsychical conflicts which, according to Freud, are the essential cause of all neurotic disorders, and which had been dealt with before by means of 'repression' of one side of the conflict are now reinforced, and the person is compelled to deal with them afresh under totally different circumstances.'
On October 1917, Siegfried Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital after reading his Declarations Against the War. While he was a patient at the hospital he wrote a poem entitled "Survivors":
"No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain / Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. / Of course they're 'longing to go out again', - / These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. / They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed / Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, - / Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud / Of glorious war that shatter'd their pride... / Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; / Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad."
