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Shellshock live tunnel madness7/6/2023 While the term shell shock is no longer used in either medical or military discourse, it has entered into popular imagination and memory and is often identified as the signature injury of the war. “Simply put, after even the most obedient soldier had enough shells rain down on him, without any means of fighting back, he often lost all self-control”. It was often diagnosed when a soldier was unable to function and no obvious cause could be identified. Symptoms included fatigue, tremor, confusion, nightmares and impaired sight and hearing, an inability to reason, hysterical paralysis, a dazed thousand-yard stare is also typical. The term “shell shock” was coined by the soldiers themselves. They faced weapons that denied any chance for heroism or courage or even military skill because the artillery weapons that caused 60 percent of all casualties were miles away from the battlefield. The circumstances of the First World War pushed hundreds of thousands of men beyond the limits of human endurance. Even more haunting when you think that people didn’t smile for the pictures back then. The soldier looks like he has gone insane from what he has seen.Īt that moment in time everything he’s been raised to work within, the social constructs which make up every part of his life just exploded and shattered to nothing, and he’s lying there, slumped in a trench, afraid for his life, hearing and seeing death around him, his entire psyche broken. ![]() A shell shocked soldier in a trench during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette during the Somme Offensive in September 1916.
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