FabSwingers.com forum: Can you imagine…

By *ent in Black OP Man
over a year ago

Silsden

"it must have been horrendous"

I think it’s unimaginable what it would have been like, on both sides.

By *inky_couple2020Couple
over a year ago

North West

"1916, day 2 of the battle of the Somme… it must have been horrific."

I watched a programme yesterday, interviews with WW1 veterans from all sides, filmed in the 1960s. They WERE all traumatised. Anyone who thinks that earlier generations avoided what we now call PTSD, then they're wrong. It just wasn't given a name then. The woman interviewed who lost her husband, while she was pregnant, described having no memory of the traumatic birth. This kind of disassociative episode is also indicative of a serious condition relating to trauma. But of course, she would have just been left to get on with it.

A man who served on the front line described trying to deliberately get himself wounded so he'd be invalided out and sent to work away from the front. The language he used to describe himself and his feelings was evidently that of a traumatised man.

A German veteran who described stabbing a French soldier to death with a bayonet - heavily traumatised.

The woman and all the men interviewed were traumatised to varying degrees.