Wounds, gas, burial: Collapse on home leave.
Case 284. (E. Smith, June, 1916.)
A non-commissioned officer went through the first eleven months of the war in France and Flanders and was subjected to every kind of strain therein. He was wounded twice, gassed twice, and buried under a house, in each instance being treated in the field ambulance and returning to the trenches. Some time thereafter he was granted five days’ leave.
On reaching home, while waiting for a train, the officer suddenly collapsed and became unconscious. For months thereafter, he was the subject of a severe neurasthenia; “the whole of his trouble seemed to be due to the dread, lest on his return to the front, the added responsibilities which would fall upon his shoulders might be too much for him.” He thought his intelligence had been numbed by his experience. He thought his memory was unreliable, and that he could understand neither complex orders nor even the newspapers.
As to the reason for his maintenance of composure at the front, this may be laid to the excitement, the officer’s sense of responsibility, and the example he felt he should set his men. This kind of case “demands a great deal of patient and sympathetic attention before the real cause is elicited, and then months of daily reëducation to build up anew the man’s confidence in himself.”