Shell-shock; burial-work: Amnesia. Shell whistling conditions idea of something nasty.
A private, 19, in the R. A. M. C., was sent in with a field ambulance note as follows:
“Private —— was close to a shell which burst among a company standing in the road, killing 20 and wounding 20 others. He worked well in assisting the wounded, and then proceeded to clear up the fragments of the killed. Whilst doing this, he suddenly lost his mental balance and has been in his present state nearly 24 hours. He has been given bromides.”
An M. O. attached to the same ambulance wrote: “This man is suffering from mental shock caused by having to clear away the remains of a number of men killed by a shell. He does not recognize his friends, and at frequent intervals has periods of terror, exclaiming, ‘Cover it up.’ He is sleepless (without drugs); he takes food badly. He is possibly suicidal or may become so.”
According to the patient himself, he had been quite well for four months at the front. He was on the La Bassée Road with the troops after a day or two of heavy work under shell fire. “And I remember the flash of some shot and a shell burst I think, and I can’t remember anything more. I awoke in the morning, in the train” (48 hours later). “I can only remember men calling out.” He complained of a feeling in the head, as if expecting something. “Something seems to be coming,—as if something was going to happen,—something nasty, whenever I hear anything like the whistling of a shell coming towards me.” This patient was without tremor and was physically normal. So far as the patient’s own story went, the case might well be regarded as one due to physical concussion, but the notes of the medical officers give evidence of a psychic element.