April 23, 2006
Shot For Having PTSD
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) was recognized even by the Greeks, who called it "war exhaustion". Yet hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers serving under British command were shot for 'cowardice' in WWI, even though those ordering men - often only teenagers - before the firing squads knew about what was then called 'shell-shock'. They shot them anyway.
I find this indescribably sad.
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wwi was so fucked up in so many many terrible ways.
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What war wasn't?
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Eddie Slovik, the only American to be formally executed for desertion since the Civil War. Though he had deserted before, this sentence was carried out on the threat of a desertion during WWII. Eisenhower refused clemency.
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sorry, folks, if i can take it from the top now, true, but there's an unfortunate coincidence between wwi and killling technology/methodology that makes it stand out. all of a sudden there's a draft in europe (where for generations armies have been professional) with a big upsurge in ways to kill people quickly. then you've got the complete insanity of the trenches, which looked quite clever for a few weeks but ultimately are a guaranteed way to propagate your virus de jour or your most popular infection. militarily, trenches are like the back story to a trusted friend - we're somewhat interested in the background but we don't want the details to change our opinions of the subject.
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What we're now calling " PTDS " was thought to be contagious so you had to shoot them. Not all that dissimilar was people thinking homosexuality was contagious too. Have we really come that far ?
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My great grandfather, who was in his early twenties, was forced to shoot some "deserters" during the Boer War. They were, in reality, most likely too shell shocked to fight. The experience haunted my GG and he never spoke of the war after he was discharged- we only know this happened from the story told by my great grandmother after his death. I grew up believing in the "glory" of the British Empire but every year since getting out of British school has beem a continuing education in the folly, lunacy and grevious atrocities committed in the name of the British Empire. Pride has given way to revulsion- Ralph the Dog had it right- what war, or what Empire doesn't fuck everything up? And George Bush and his neocon Imperialists are at it again. As someone said, the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
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So people in the past did horrible things? Wow, news to me.
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Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it
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Note; don't post about horrible things from the past. They aren't Chyren-worthy. Perhaps Chyren will be so kind as to provide an alphabetized list of those things that are of interest to his elevated self? We'd be ever so grateful.
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Ach, now, I like it, and I liked your closing comment even better, moneyjane -- and indeed, to us of a later century, it all seems indescribably sad, but what did folk back then make of war? Their thoughts on war and glory and soldiering seem alien to ours, in large part because the full understanding of how many died for a few inches or feet of ultimately worthless trenches still lay in their future. World War I's aftermath put the quietus on the insane notion, which the Victorians for most part held, that war could be glorious. And the senior officers of those boys were products of Victorian-era thinking. To me, one of the sadder realizations was the way Rudyard Kipling's whole attitude toward glory and war altered during this period. Nor was Kipling's the only mind to undergo such transformation -- Sassoon's and Wilfred Owen's descriptions, amounting to scathing denunciation of "dulce et decorum" thinking, brought the horrors home to many people for the first time, as did the huge cenotaphs and war memorials that pepper much of England and Europe. The 25th of this month is Anzac Day -- many in North America are scarcely aware of the losses the Downunder folk incurred -- but it seems every country has its sorrows.
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Yeah, ok, point taken. /leaves, tail between legs
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Which reminds me (thanks, bees) that I haven't bought my Anzac Day poppy yet.
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Oh come back Chy...although your tail is kinda hawt...I'm grumpy today.
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Shot at Dawn "Justice demands millennium pardons for those 306 innocent soldiers who were executed by the British Military Authorities for alleged cowardice and desertion during the First World War."
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They should all receive pardons, and desertion shouldn't be a crime. I know it's stupidly idealistic, but maybe if everyone ran away there wouldn't be a war to fight. I'm afraid that Abiezer_Coppe' link crashes my browser - Firefox, in Linux. I tried googling for it, and it still crashed. It's so strange.
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Thanks for another interesting link, Abiezer! As if the execution of Irish nationals serving in the British military weren't appalling enough, it is very difficult -- and in my case, impossible -- to read of the execution of Irish political prisoners by the British without feeling contempt equal to that provoked by the US treatment of those who are incarcerated at Guantanamo.
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Hey look on the bright side ~ no WW I, no LOTR.
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odd jb - I am also using Firefox on Linux, but just got a message about a missing plug-in. Pretty ropey site design it must be said
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Yeah, ok, point taken. /leaves, tail between legs I mean, it's not like I go around telling people to fuck off or anything...no siree.
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Few soldiers wanted to be in a firing squad. Many were soldiers at a base camp recovering from wounds that still stopped them from fighting at the front but did not preclude them from firing a Lee Enfield rifle. Some of those in firing squads were under the age of sixteen... Great...just in case being wounded and watching your friends blown to pieces wasn't enough to fuck you up, how about shooting a guy just like you for losing it, knowing you'll be on the verge of doing exactly the same when sent back out to the front.
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I think I got this from here, but worth seeing agian.
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They were usually hot by their mates too - men from their regiment / squad etc. Just to fuck up all involved.
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shot, not hot, obv. Arse.
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Yeah, ok, point taken. Wow. I have never seen words like these posted on the internet before. Chy, you are my hero.
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You have to remember that British soldiers in the first World War were motivated by loyalty to their comrades. That was what made people like Wilfred Owen, not at all enthusiastic about the war in itself, return unhesitatingly to the fighting when he could have been respectably invalided out. In that context, a deserter wasn't a mate, he was ratting on his mates. He wasn't saying "I have a principled objection to warfare" - he was saying "I'm not dying - you lot die instead." I'm not saying that justifies the death penalty, but it may help explain the unsympathetic attitude taken by many at the time. You also have to remember that shell-shock was, in fact, recognised as a real medical condition, and distinguished from cowardice. Not often enough or clearly enough, no doubt, but as someone in the FPP'd article says, many of those who were executed showed no symptoms of shell-shock - they really were just deserting. If giving a pardon would please the surviving relatives, I suppose it's a good thing: but logically and legally a pardon confirms your guilt - you can't pardon someone for something they didn't do. As a trivial quibble, I think it's implausible to suggest that the ancient Greeks were tolerant of desertion - what, those same Greeks some of whose mothers used to say "Come back carrying your shield or on it" - ie, victorious or dead?
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How amusing it is to watch the old films of the stout and stalwart warriors of WWI start up over the top of their trenches, only to be mowed down in their thousands minutes later. And ANZAC day? A celebration of an idiotic charge leading to an unbelievable massacre. Too funny. HA HA HA HA. I saw the BBC series "The Great War" recently. Millions died trading the same few hundred yards for four years. My sides ached with laughter.
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Someone needs seeing to.
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And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.
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Blackadder: Baldrick, what are you doing out there?
Baldrick: I'm carving something on this bullet sir.
Blackadder: What are you carving?
Baldrick: I'm carving "Baldrick", sir.
Blackadder: Why?
Baldrick: It's a cunning plan actually.
Blackadder: Of course it is.
Baldrick: You see, you know they say that somewhere there's a bullet with your name on it?
Blackadder: Yes?
Baldrick: Well, I thought if I owned the bullet with my name on it, I'd never get hit by it, 'cos I won't ever shoot myself.
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Logic is logic, that's all I say ... -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
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MonkeyFilter: I mean, it's not like I go around telling people to fuck off or anything...no siree. Bows in the general direction of MoneyJane For all our "advancements" in civilization, we are no more moral or kind than any past generation. We just kill mo'betta.
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Hitler went blind during the war, not the one he started the other one.. you know.. with that duke and all. He recovered his sight, but thru it all he wanted to go and fight. It was recognized as hysterical blindness at the time, of course we only have his book.. shame he didn't just keep writing really then my grandparents would still be alive.
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*savors GramMa using ebonics*
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I just wanted to say that Paths of Glory is still the most psychologically devastating war movie I've ever seen. Fiction, that is. Obviously Night and Fog has one up on it with all that horrible truth stuff, and that.
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Here are more links about World War I.
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Is that quite right, randomaction? It says here that Hitler did indeed go and fight, painting occasional watercolours, and was only temporarily blinded, by gas, in October 1918, when the war was nearly over.
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The Ministry of Defence is to seek pardons for more than 300 soldiers who were shot for military offences during World War I.
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A dark chapter in the history of combat trauma
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Did Craiglockhart hospital revolutionise mental healthcare?