Now that I'm tracing my family tree I do so wish that back in 1950 I had asked my father a few questions when he told me as a consequence of WWI he had 3 shell shocked uncles in the asylum. From my research I believe these could only have been his Leith, Edinburgh, maternal line who were a naval family. Earlier that day our ex naval teacher had graphically told us of three experiences in WWII of encountering the enemy, of every man whether on watch or sleeping, rushing to their allotted alarm stations. The ship had to change course to take evading action, the stokers had to make sure the boilers were stoked enough but had to make sure they didn't explode under too much pressurised heat. The ships were usually old and protested, so it was calling on everyone's skill to stay afloat & alive and a harrowing time especially with the boom, boom, boom and whistles of bombs & tornado near misses. Maybe like our teacher your ancestor had to abandon ship. One time he and the crew were able to climb back onto the ship, one time a ship from the convoy picked up the sailors, but on one occasion our teacher had to stay alive for 5 days swimming in the ocean.
After WWI the Americans made a study of the type of people who would suffer PTSD and didn't call them up for WWII, eventually with the shortage of manpower they had to call up the men they had initially rejected. A survey after WWII was a surprise because those most likely to suffer PTSD had the same percentages of sufferers in the battle theatre as those who had been classed as 'normal'.
Yes, Ursula it is still happening today. Eight years after my friend's son came out of the army with an exemplary record with service in Bosnia, etc. his mother was at her wits end. Even though his marriage had broken up, he couldn't hold down a civvy job, plus he had mood swings, the lad wouldn't accept there was something not right with him. He reached rock bottom when a judge sectioned him under the Mental Health Act for being a 'nuisance' and was put in prison until a place became vacant in a psychiactric hospital. In prison he would often find himself in solitary confinement for being 'naughty' when he complained he shouldn't be in there. My friend doesn't have access to ex service personnel or the internet so I did the research and was shocked at how little the UK has been doing by way of provision of aftercare facilities & explicit warnings of what symptoms can arise in later years. Her son was eventually admitted to the secure hospital and assessed. She'd been protesting to these people that her son was ill for years without encouraging results, so I had to make sure she wrote down a coherent list of reasons why he was ill. It hadn't dawned on her that he was suffering more and more from shell shock. One month later his mother was allowed to speak to the phsychologist treating him. After she listed 6 points, including how her son had spent a couple of years in a war zone 'Snipers Alley' and had witnessed his best friend's beheading by the gun mounted on his tank, the specialist apologised and said he'd been giving her son the wrong treatment as he hadn't known he'd been in the army. Ursula, I didn't know her son was in trouble, every year I received a cheerful note from my old school pal inside an Xmas card but one year she mentioned her other 2 sons but not this son and I knew there was something wrong. Subconsciously she must have been worried about a stigma for her hero boy.
I've come to look on shell shock/PTSD of the brain rather like a light bulb when there's a power surge, the safety element inside the bulb breaks and waves about, Our brain has lots of connectors which can wither and die and re-grow incorrectly. Some people suffer amnesia, the unlucky ones will relive their experiences, and over the years this gets worse; the anxieties & horror, the flashbacks to burned bodies, the smells, the sight of their pals slipping under the ocean waves, etc. for the rest of their lives. Such is the depression, some will take the 'easy' way out - they'll drown themselves, or even jump from a 'plane without opening their parachute, anything to stop the voices in the head, the flashbacks and they fear the nightmares when they're re-living fighting off the enemy - would they awake in the morning and find they've killed the person they love.
Rena
