Anatomy of a WW I Arty Barrage

[decaro]

from Angry Staff Officer:

"A lot has been said about the role of artillery in World War I, in both its intensity and ferocity. On the opening day of the Somme on July 1, 1918, British guns hurled 250,000 high explosive and shrapnel shells towards German positions...."

https://angrystaffofficer.com/2016/07/0 ... y-barrage/

[wings7]

Excellent! Thank you! [:)]

[Jagdtiger14]

Compare that to the biggest barrage of the entire war. Operation Michael the Germans fired off 1,100,000 rounds in 5 hours covering a 150 square mile area.

[Zap]

What I don't read about is soldiers returning with PTSD from battle. Were men stronger in WWI WWII?

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Zap

What I don't read about is soldiers returning with PTSD from battle. Were men stronger in WWI WWII?

They called it shell shock back then, google shell shock WWI, you'll find lots of reference to it. You have to remember it is only in modern times that this kind of mental trauma has lost the stigma it held for centuries. Men tried to hide their issues back then due to the stigma attached, but even so there were hundreds of thousands of cases reported, some very extreme ones indeed.

Jim

[wodin]

No just back then men just got on with it..

However WWI in particular working class men had been used to death at an early age..death of siblings, death from accidents at work plus for many life in the Army even at war was better than their real life situation.

WWII the depression probably hardened that generation up

ORIGINAL: Zap

What I don't read about is soldiers returning with PTSD from battle. Were men stronger in WWI WWII?

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: wodin

No just back then men just got on with it..

ORIGINAL: Zap

What I don't read about is soldiers returning with PTSD from battle. Were men stronger in WWI WWII?

warspite1

Clearly there was PTSD or shell shock. IMO what was different is the way society has evolved. For one thing it was a seen as a weakness to display or admit to such feelings. No, it wasn't alright to do so and there was not some counsellor or support group to tell you it was.

But just as, if not more important, men came back from the war, damaged in mind if not physically, to what? There was no nanny state, no safety net. If those men did not get on with it and work, they - and their families - starved.

[Zap]

After reading the article the first thing that came to mind was how WWI combatants did experience constant and terrible explosions around them. It seemed more intense then what some of the modern combatants ever experienced. Not writing about it in the press was the thinking process in those days. I understand why it was not the focus back then. Society just was not ready for it.

[wodin]

Yeah the risk averse society we live in now also has an effect from birth onwards..not laying any foundations for the future soldier.to "toughen up".

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: wodin

...

However WWI in particular working class men had been used to death at an early age..death of siblings, death from accidents at work plus for many life in the Army even at war was better than their real life situation.

...

this is, I think, a key point. Sort of related. My grandfather was part of the inter-war generation of Scottish working class mountaineering. They pioneered serious dangerous ice-climbing (some routes I'd think twice about doing with modern gear) with hob-nailed boots, ropes tied around their bodies to belay and home made equipment (often stuff they knocked up at work from stolen items).

Remember talking to him about this and he said their logic was they were likely to die in a mine or shipyard accident etc so why not take risks and die on a mountain instead. It was, for both good and ill, a very different world.

If anyone is interested, the classic book of that generation is WH Murray Mountaineering in Scotland - the careful reader will be able to spot my ancestor.

I don't though think it was about being 'tough' as if that is somehow a better state of mind. More fatalistic.

The other sides to my grandfather would disabuse anyone who wants to romanticise his generation ... and those aspects came from the same underlying mindset - his good and bad qualities all stemmed from his background.

[wodin]

My Granddad used to say "Good old days"? "What good old days, nothing good about them"...

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: wodin

My Granddad used to say "Good old days"? "What good old days, nothing good about them"...

warspite1

....quite.

[Zap]

Then my perception is right. They were better equipped to handle the stress. And they channeled their fears in a way(not necessarily better) but more effectively so they functioned in life.
I'm speaking in general. I'm sure some WWI and WWII vets came back broken. But in general they coped better then todays soldier.

[wings7]

ORIGINAL: wodin

My Granddad used to say "Good old days"? "What good old days, nothing good about them"...

The friendships that came out of the war made it "Good old days"...

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Zap

Then my perception is right. They were better equipped to handle the stress. And they channeled their fears in a way(not necessarily better) but more effectively so they functioned in life.
I'm speaking in general. I'm sure some WWI and WWII vets came back broken. But in general they coped better then todays soldier.

I don't think you are to be honest.

I'll try to explain why and apols if this gets a bit into psychological theory. For a start its worth noting that the concept of PTSD has become some sort of short hand for any sort of trauma - its not, it is a very precise description of a particular form.

All the research into untreated psychological trauma indicates three things:

a) first not everyone involved in what we would call - using non technical language - a traumatic/shocking incident subsequently suffers mental ill-health as a result;

More importantly, those who do react in one of two ways (sometimes both):

b) what we now call self-medication such as self-harming, drugs, alchohol abuse etc. Linked to this a withdrawal from social relationships
c) turning against other people, in effect as opposed to self-harm, being prepared to harm others

People in both categories can appear to function and to an extent do so. But (b) indicates a degree of personal distress and (c) is downright worrying for everyone (even if the idea of someone else suffering personal pain doesn't worry you).

Reason for this is the % of the human race who under conventional conditions are prepared to hurt others without provocation is very small, well under <1%. And many with this gap in their personal control don't act on it due social constraints, lack of opportunity etc. In other words, psychopaths are rare and of those, under most circumstances, very few will act on it.

But if you have a significant proportion returning from a brutal conflict with untreated trauma you add those from (c) above to the pool of existing psychopaths. Ever wondered why Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany (and there various mini-me states and movements) found so many people who were quite willing to engage in mass murder? It is actually pretty unique and I'd strongly suggest that one reason was they could access a far higher proportion of people who had turned against other human beings.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Zap
Then my perception is right. They were better equipped to handle the stress. And they channeled their fears in a way(not necessarily better) but more effectively so they functioned in life.

I wouldn't say they were better equipped, just that life was so much harder back then that they were exposed to harsh hardship and struggle. Thus when faced with challenges they had grown accustomed to dealing with any difficulties that may come down the pike and got over things quicker. Today's generation doesn't try and deal with anything for very long it seems, that can-do independent attitude of old seems to be getting lost in the culture for some reason.

A good example to what I mean is the very mild PTS I experienced when I first joined the police force. The first 5 or so dead bodies I was exposed to in the field were something of a shock and they haunted me a bit. I would see their faces when closing my eyes in the shower to wash my hair or I would have a vivid memory pop into my head for no apparent reason at random times of the day.

But after a while something clicked and it all became a normal part of the job and I was never bothered by stuff like that ever again. But that's because I stuck with it and powered through the difficult process of learning to deal with violent death so up close and personal.

I didn't think about it this way at the time, it was simply how I was raised and how I lived my life. I faced my problems head on and dealt with whatever came my way and it worked out for me and has allowed me to live a very successful and productive life.

Unlike another guy from my academy class who had a small panic attack and broke out in extreme flop sweats just looking at crime scene photos in one of the advanced courses late in the academy. Up to that point he had been an exceptional student, but he resigned the next day due to the reaction he went through. Had he powered through he too may have grown accustomed to it, but he left instead and never gave himself the chance to succeed.

Jim

[Capt. Harlock]

I'm speaking in general. I'm sure some WWI and WWII vets came back broken. But in general they coped better then todays soldier.

Not clear to me. It was something people didn't talk about as much, so we'll never know exactly how many of the survivors were struggling with mental issues after the war. What we do know is that the phrase "lost generation" primarily applies to those survivors, rather than to the fatalities. Many of them seemed to have "lost their way", and no longer had aims in life.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

But just as, if not more important, men came back from the war, damaged in mind if not physically, to what? There was no nanny state, no safety net. If those men did not get on with it and work, they - and their families - starved.

In novel All quiet on the western front is written something like (from memory and translated from finnish):

...destroyed a generation even if one got spared from a bullet

[Zap]

Here's an exert from a USNEWS article form May of 2013


Stress is all about coping skills. World War II was just as difficult as war today. But think about what the World War II (soldiers) had just come through: The Depression. What creates our coping skills? Trauma, difficulty, adversity,” Hull said. “I’m not stereotyping individuals. I’m stereotyping populations. I’m not saying youngsters today are any less – don’t misunderstand me. But our lives tend to be a little bit less adverse. We typically do not develop the coping skills that some of the older generations did.

“So you take a young, patriotic guy. He goes over (to Afghanistan or Iraq) and sees things he can’t even comprehend. And so what does it do? He tends to feel the effects of that stress more fully because he has not developed the coping skills that the older generation has developed,” Hull added.

One Iraq veteran who can speak intimately on the suicide epidemic is Andrew O’Brien, who was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and who knew a 19-year-old soldier — with a wife and child back home — who died in an explosion. That 2009 family tragedy left O’Brien asking: “Why couldn’t it have been me?” In 2010, after returning to his Army base in Hawaii, O’Brien tried to kill himself by swallowing several bottles of pills, including sleep medication and anti-depressants. He awoke in a hospital the next day.

“That older generation, they went through harder times, the Depression, and they had so many worse things going for them. I feel like it made them more prepared,” said O’Brien, who has written an anti-suicide guide and who is scheduled to speak this weekend in New Orleans about his experiences.

But among older and younger veterans, there is one common thread that perhaps leaves both groups vulnerable to post-war struggles, O’Brien said. It is a basic tenet of Army teaching and military character.

“We are trained to be selfless. Being selfless is good when you’re deployed. You’re constantly making sure you’ve got your buddy’s back," O’Brien said. "But when you come back, it’s not good. And you have to live for the rest of your life with survivor guilt, with the fact that we lost that person.”

[operating]

Having been a patient in VA hospitals since Jan. 72 I have seen where many definitely have PTSD, but also seen those who are faking it. My take on this is: Post WW I society was not susceptible to those who prickked their finger or got a headache while in service to their country. Spend time in a VA hospital and you will know what I mean...