Two soldiers embrace on the battlefield
The wounds sustained by soldiers on the battlefield go far beyond the physical damage that was done to their bodies. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, was a frightfully common and poorly treated affliction during WWII. Although it is hard to come up with an exact number of American Soldiers who suffered from psychiatric problems gained during the war, some estimates put it close to a million. The biggest tragedy concerning these veterans however was the fact that the U.S. army, and in even larger part the entire public, had a frightfully low understanding of psychological health and how to treat it.
During World War II, the military commonly thought of people who were suffering from PTSD as cowardly. The overall consensus was that these soldiers lacked the moral fiber necessary to complete the job that their country had for them. This story of General Patton’s treatment of soldiers during the war, that Christina Jarvis includes in her work, If He Comes Home Nervous, does a good job of conveying the overall misunderstanding in the military about PTSD patients and their needs. “As Patton’s July and August 1943 slappings of two psychiatric patients in Sicilian military hospitals reveal, many top military officers and indeed the military’s culture itself did not readily recognize psychiatric cases as “real” casualties of war.” Treatment of patients such as these came from the pervasive belief that soldiers should fit into the traditional view of manhood. This viewpoint that was being applied to soldiers, was one that saw psychiatric health problems as sissy and weak. The soldiers were seen as not living up to their gender’s lofty standards.
Medicine and science has progressed greatly since WWII. PTSD is still a danger to soldiers everywhere, but the understanding and treatment of it has improved. While some may say that it isn’t right to pass judgement on past peoples through my 21st century framework, I still find it painfully hard to accept the lack of compassion that soldiers received as they came home from a war of immense pain and violence. I believe that if we don’t look back on our history and truthfully assess the shortcomings of those who came before us, we will not be equipped to create a better future going forward. In the picture above, two soldiers embrace each other on the battlefield. What I find so striking about this image is that the one soldier who seems to be comforting the other, does so simply by holding him and providing him with a sense of security. Instead of trying to inspire him back into a fighting position, and instead of shaming him by denying his masculinity, the comforting soldier enters into his friend’s grief. I hope that in the future, as we continue to make strides in our understanding of mental health issues sustained during wartime, we as a people will show veterans the love and understanding that they need and deserve.
I agree that the WWII method of approaching mental anguish on the battlefield was handled very poorly. Your picture and description of it are very good, it shows that a lot of soldiers just needed someone to comfort them instead of being ordered to go back to the front lines. I know that soldiers today are still suffering from PTSD, but our understanding of mental health has also come along way. We may even find a way to relieve veterans 100% of their PTSD one day.
I think that the ignorance of showing emotional or mental pain as un-masculine resulted in many soldiers being unable to deal with their psychological issues after the war. I think your image is very good, I looked at it as well, and I think it highlights the fact that these soldiers were just people who had their own emotions and struggles.
When I read the article, “If He Comes Home Nervous” I remember thinking to myself, “there is no way veterans with psychological trauma were actually treated that way”. It goes to show the alarming miss understanding of mental health in the 1940s and 1950s. It is also goes to show the vast improvements we have made in understanding mental generally and PTSD specifically since WW2. Compared to Ben’s comment above. I do not think we will every be able to fully relieve veterans of PTSD. I think we can be more compassionate and understanding as a society and I think we can better help them readjust. However, I do not think it is practical to expect PTSD to go away entirely. And to a point, maybe it should not go away entirely. It is impossible to project how an individual will handle a stressful situation. Therefore, hoping to eliminate PTSD is like asking many veterans to ignore their physiological awareness of self.
The comment on General Patton was used really well. I always knew about Patton’s famous slaps, which mainly cost him the job of planning all of the European tactics from D-Day and on. But it is hard to imagine how people thought like that based on what we know now. That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned while studying history. Perspective is very key to understanding history.
I like that you added the General Patton comment to your post. This famous event pretty much sums up how people felt about people with PTSD at the time. That is, if you had this condition, you were not given the treatment that you needed in most cases and were seen as someone who was “less of a man.” It is interesting to see the social dynamic at the time and how it played into the treatment of soldiers that returned from war with PTSD.
I really liked how you brought up the concept of masculinity and how it was perceived through the eyes of the military and the general public during the war and post-war years. I too felt that their lack of understanding and general compassion for what psychological wounds may have been inflicted on the countless soldiers from the Second World War showed that they also did not truly understand what it meant to fight in a war and see all of its horrors. Thought I think we can all appreciate that by the Second World War, people were beginning to accept that not all wounds were inflicted on the body, and they began to be taken more seriously by the military, the medical community, and the by the people on the home-front.