Combat Stress

[Wander00]

Apparently new series starts on TV tonight addressing how combat strass and PTSD are dealt with (or not). Might be enlightening

[Blacksheep]

For my Dad's generation it was "Pull yourself together man, and get on with it".

There were a lot of badly damaged Great War veterans about when I was a boy. I still think of the poor fellow who sold matches at the corner of Stockton High Street and Dovecote Street selling matches. Left legless by the Somme battle, he sat upon a little wooden platform with wheels and propelled hiself about with his hands.

More recently, we had our house painted by an ex-Para who was blown up by a terrorist bomb in Inniskilling. He was demobbed as medically unfit because of his waking up screaming in the middle of the night and his bed-wetting and has never recovered from his mental injuries. Not all modern soldiers are being treated in the proper compassionate way they deserve, but things are definitely improving.

[langleybaston]

I recommend "Morale - a study of men and courage" by Lt-Col John Baynes.

It is an in-depth of the Cameronians [2nd Scottish Rifles] regarding the battle of Neuve Chapelle in the Great War.

[Rossian]

.....and add to the reading list "Trauma" by Prof. Gordon Turnbull. He was a psychiatrist at Wroughton and debriefed Peters and Nichol after Terry Waite and John MacCarthy.

The Ancient Mariner