Sympathetic To Ordinary Soldiers With Shell Shock example essay topic

Desertion of the trenches was rampant during The Great War. Naive soldiers were subjected to horrific conditions. Not only were they faced with the constant bombardment of artillery fire, but they were subjected to the atrocious conditions in the trenches, large rats would roam around killing the wounded and feeding on the dead. The Hygiene in the trenches was extremely poor, the Soldiers had to release their faeces into an uncovered tunnel running right next to them and when they went to battle the whole trench would fill up with their faeces. The result of this poor hygiene was outbreaks of diseases typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and the most common was trench foot.

If soldiers deserted their trench and were even suspected to be deserting their trench they would be executed. Desertion, during the war was punished by death, many people died this way not because they were abandoning their trench but they had shell shock. By 1914 British doctors working in military hospitals noticed patients suffering from "shell shock". Early symptoms included tiredness, irritability, giddiness, lack of concentration and headaches. Eventually the men suffered mental breakdowns making it impossible for them to remain in the front-line. Some came to the conclusion that the soldiers condition was caused by the enemy's heavy artillery.

These doctors argued that a bursting shell creates a vacuum, and when the air rushes into this vacuum it disturbs the cerebro-spinal fluid and this can upset the working of the brain. Some doctors argued that the only cure for shell-shock was a complete rest away from the fighting. If you were an officer you were likely to be sent back home to recuperate. However, the army was less sympathetic to ordinary soldiers with shell-shock. Some senior officers took the view that these men were cowards who were trying to get out of fighting. The pretexts for execution for British soldiers had a common theme: many were suffering shell shock, and most were deliberately picked out and convicted "as a lesson to others".

Charges included desertion (walking around dazed and confused suffering from PTSD), cowardice, or insubordination (any minor action that could be pressed into service as an excuse for execution). Some were simply obeying orders to carry information from one trench to another. Most of those shot were young, defenceless and vulnerable teenagers who had volunteered for duty. Between 1914 and 1918 the British Army identified 80,000 men as suffering from shell-shock.

A much larger number of soldiers with these symptoms were classified as 'malingerers' and sent back to the front-line. In some cases men committed suicide. Others broke down under the pressure and refused to obey the orders of their officers. Some responded to the pressures of shell-shock by deserting.

Sometimes soldiers who disobeyed orders got shot on the spot. In some cases, soldiers were court-martial led. The Combat injuries were the main reason why people would desert the trenches. Enemy marksmen known as snipers would wait for the soldier who popped his head over the parapet. Many unsuspecting new arrivals were killed this way. Even a lighted match could be fatal and soldiers never lit more than two cigarettes from one match before quickly putting it out.

The reason was that on the first cigarette the sniper spotted the light of the match, on the second cigarette he took aim and on the third cigarette he fired. There was a territory between two enemy trenches known as No mans Land, if you were caught there you would be killed, men were repeatedly sent out there to try to reach enemy lines, and the soldiers were always praying that it was not one of them that was to be sent out in no mans land. Soldiers would fix bayonets and wait for the whistle from their officer, aware that minutes later they stood a good chance of being killed or maimed for life. At the whistle, they would climb over the trenches and advance into no-man's land facing a hail of machine gun fire and shells. Almost all such attacks were abject failures, with mass slaughter being the result.

Some were killed outright; others would take days to die from their horrific injuries, lying alone and helpless in the mud. Their pitiful cries were deeply distressing to their comrades back in the trenches who could do nothing to help. The conditions in the trenches was extremely pitiable, troops usually spent eight days in the front line, followed by four in reserve. This varied and there were instances where soldiers were forced to spend over sixty day in the line without a break. Boredom was the defining experience of trench life. During the day soldiers would sit around and doze.

At night they repaired trenches, lay wire and carry stores, or went on patrols in no-man's land. This was dangerous in the extreme - the slightest noise, or being revealed by a flare, would attract a hail of machine-gun fire. Lack of food was another key feature. Bully Beef and biscuits (so hard that they would have to be smashed with a stone) were the staple food, supplemented from packages sent from friends and relatives at home. Many of the men killed in the trenches were buried almost where they fell. If a trench subsided, or new trenches or dugouts were needed, large numbers of decomposing bodies would be found just below the surface.

These corpses, as well as the food scraps that littered the trenches, attracted rats. One pair of rats can produce eight-hundred and eighty offspring in a year and so the trenches were soon swarming with them. Some of these rats grew extremely large. One soldier wrote: "The rats were huge.

They were so big they would eat a wounded man if he couldn't defend himself". These rats became very bold and would attempt to take food from the pockets of sleeping men. Two or three rats would always be found on a dead body. They usually went for the eyes first and then they burrowed their way right into the corpse. One soldier described finding a group of dead bodies while on patrol: "I saw some rats running from under the dead men's greatcoats, enormous rats, fat with human flesh. My heart pounded as we edged towards one of the bodies.

His helmet had rolled off. The man displayed a grimacing face, stripped of flesh; the skull bare, the eyes devoured and from the yawning mouth leapt a rat". Almost all of the soldiers suffered from lice. They spread diseases like dysentery and typhoid. Many soldiers whiled away the hours burning the lice out of the seams of their clothes with a match, but they never left. Desertion during the Great War was never fully understood.

The military considered desertion as a cowardly act. Young, inexperienced soldiers were thrown into armed combat with no preparation of the conditions they faced with. The detrimental fact of facing death every day, when you went to sleep, you were confronted with the fact, were you going to wake? Desertion was not an act of cowardice but an act of Self Defense.