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Updated: May 26, 2025
"But I can tell you something of what Glenn Kilbourne means in that letter if you want to hear it." "I do indeed." "The war did something horrible to Glenn aside from wrecking his health. Shell-shock, they said! I don't understand that. Out of his mind, they said! But that never was true. Glenn was as sane as I am, and, my dear, that's pretty sane, I'll have you remember.
Once a man has had shell-shock he is never of any use under shell-fire again, although he might be quite brave under any other fire and suffer no ill effects in civil life. Where there is so much shell-fire the observation of the German sentries is very poor and surprise raids are easily carried out. Fritz is very reluctant to put his head up and periscopes are always being smashed.
And whenever I wait for the letters, I recall a little episode of the War told me by a wounded subaltern at an evacuated point. He had sustained a slight head wound, and I am certain he was not normal, but was suffering from shell-shock. Dark-eyed, swarthy, he was lying on a stretcher and wearing a white bandage.
Future generations will pay the price of war not only in poverty and by the loss of the unborn children of the boys who died, but by an enfeebled stock and the heritage of insanity. The Prime Minister said one day, "The world is suffering from shell-shock." That was true. But it suffered also from the symptoms of all that illness which comes from syphilis, whose breeding-ground is war.
He was convulsed with a dreadful rigor like a man in epilepsy, and clawed at his mouth, moaning horribly, with livid terror in his eyes. He had to be strapped to a stretcher before he could be carried away. He had been a tall and splendid man, this poor, terror-stricken lunatic. Nearer to Thiepval, during the fighting there, other men were brought down with shell-shock.
That helps him in war; whereas the yokel, or the sergeant major type, is splendid until the shock comes. Then he may crack. But there is no law. Imagination apprehension are the devil, too, and they go with 'nerves." It was a sergeant-major whom I saw stricken badly with shell-shock in Aveluy Wood near Thiepval.
The hammering of shell-fire, which takes its daily toll, spoiled their temper and shook their nerves, as far as a British soldier had any nerves, which I used to sometimes doubt, until I saw again the shell-shock cases. But again I heard their laughter and an old song whistled vilely out of tune, but cheerful to the tramp of their feet.
There were not many minutes more. The two guards shifted their feet. "Now," said the man, "we'll sing 'God Save the King." The two guards rose and stood at attention, and the chaplain sang the national anthem with the man who was to be shot for cowardice. Then the tramp of the firing-party came across the cobblestones in the courtyard. It was dawn. Shell-shock was the worst thing to see.
"Do you suggest that shell-shock leads to epilepsy?" "In general, no; in this particular case, possibly. A man may have shell-shock, and injury to the brain, which is not necessarily epileptic." "It is possible for shell-shock alone to lead to a subsequent attack of insanity?" asked the judge. "It is possible certainly." "How often do these attacks of petit mal occur?" asked Sir Herbert.
The kind of an army that, in spite of wounds and gas, "still has singing in its soul" will conquer all hell on earth before it gets through. Then there is the memory of the boys in the shell-shock ward at this same hospital. I had a long visit with them. They were not permitted to come to the vesper service for fear something would happen to upset their nerves.
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