Talk:Shell shock

Just a request
Anyone know anything about how the Germans dealt with "shell shock"? all sources I can find are anglocentric. That's not very helpful.

Dosboy12 (talk) 03:02, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

This article has virtually nothing on the French military's history with shellshock. It reads as if it should be categorized as "British Reaction to Shell Shock" rather than just "Shell Shock." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laboutier (talk • contribs) 00:01, 17 April 2016 (UTC) <!--Autosigned by SineBot-

WW2-

What about concussion in WW2 in the Red Army? Concussion was the term for shell shock for the Soviets. See "Paul Wanke : Russian /Soviet military psychiatry 1904-1945" and "The value of human life in Soviet warfare" by Amnon Sellam.

No mention of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. How weird. As if nobody got PTSD in WW1. Or as if PTSD was only invented for the Vietnam war. As if nobody got nightmares and flashbacks until 1967. Just imagine: my grandfather had to wait for 1967 for his condition to be diagnosed (he died in 1930).

The term PTSD was not actually formed until the Vietnam War. The term shell shock came prior to this and was first coined in 1915, essentially they are similar but present themselves differently in patients. Additionally, PTSD is something that affects many types of people who experience traumatic events while shell shock is something that is only experienced by veterans of war. For further reading https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-doesnt-kill-us/201111/is-shell-shock-the-same-ptsd.

George Carlin's rant about the euphemism treadmill from “shellshock” to “PTSD”
To add to the above (unsigned & undated) comment, there is currently no mention of George Carlin's famous rant about the euphemism treadmill which changed the name of that condition from “shellshock” to “post-traumatic stress disorder” (more often than not acronymised as just PTSD nowadays which makes it even more lifeless and unrelatable) over the course of the 20th century. It's definitely relevant and should be added.--Abolibibelot (talk) 05:04, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

More thoughts
Another useful article about the development of the psychiatric views of shell shock: http://simonwessely.com/Downloads/Publications/History/16.pdf

Need international comparisons. Apparently the Germans also had a significant problem with shell shock, but the French and Russians far less so (perhaps because they had better ways of treating incipient symptoms). The US experience was a bit more similar to the British. ... more work to do on this! The Land (talk) 16:34, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Also:
 * more about the experience of the men who suffered from shell-shock, and their treatment
 * more statistics on its overall impact
 * more about how the term entered common usage
 * The Land (talk) 19:07, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

ECT
The Germans had superior techniques. They used Electro-Convulsive Therapy (i.e. torturing with electric shocks). Works a treat. Restores these shell-shocked brain cells. Everybody said "I'm cured, thank you" and went back to the front line. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.207.170.238 (talk) 20:12, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I concur. This article is so anglocentric I actually think the suggestion of retitling is a reasonable approach. Fritz1776 (talk) 14:48, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Admissible in Defence
On the "British Army during World War I" discussion (written by me) it says that shell shock was admissible in defence. Here it says that it wasn't. I may have read too much into the source books when regurgitating their contents to write that phrase - it happens.

Did an M.O.'s opinion that a man was shell-shocked mean that he was sent for treatment rather than put on trial? If he was put on trial would it have been mentioned in any recommendation for mercy as the death sentence was passed up the chain of command (90% of sentences were commuted, as we know - only a handful of the executed men seem to have been shell-shocked). A bit of both? Any ideas?Paulturtle (talk) 12:25, 18 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the coverage in British Army during World War I is better, on the whole, and please feel free to edit this article! I was mainly going from the account of Harry Farr in the paper by Wessely (available online, see the ref). Farr had previously been "sent down the line" to recuperate from shell shock on several occasions, but it didn't do him much good in his trial. I wonder how that account squares with Corrigan? The Land (talk) 19:59, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

The answers to the questions are that it does not specifically contradict Corrigan's point that very few men who were executed claimed shell shock and were ignored - they were the handful of "grey cases" flagged up by the 1998 inquiry (the vast majority were "black cases" - correctly convicted according to the law at the time - and there were no "white cases" - clear miscarriages of justice). Corrigan also mentions shell shock being admissible in defence, although he doesn't specifically say that it was a complete defence, so both articles may be right. Reading the Wesselly account carefully a) "shell shock" was seen as a temporary condition at the time from which a man of sound character would recover with treatment and solid leadership, so Farr's previous bouts of it didn't help him b) there doesn't seem to have been any evidence that he was suffering from shell shock at the time he was arrested (I accept they may not have looked very hard) and c) he was made an example of for "cowardice" in a key attack, a track record of apparently losing his head under fire and possibly for being a regular soldier (very few conscripts were shot).

It has also been suggested that Farr suffered from inner ear damage which made the sound of shelling unbearably painful, but Wesselly doesn't mention this. I always think in considering these things that one has to avoid the layman's fallacy of thinking our ancestors were stupider or more callous than us, even if their ideas were different ("the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there"), and it may well be that if he had fought bravely on previous occasions, or had had something visibly wrong with him - which may well have included being clearly shell-shocked - his officers and NCOs might have been more inclined to appeal for mercy on his behalf, but that's just my guess.Paulturtle (talk) 10:53, 19 June 2012 (UTC)


 * It would be great if you could put some of the material from Corrigan into this article, if you have a minute! The Land (talk) 19:32, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Have just got hold of a copy of "Blindfold and Alone", a very balanced and thorough 450-page book containing stuff on shellshock - may well post some more stuff once I've read it.Paulturtle (talk) 00:12, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * That book has an agenda and can't be called either balanced or thorough. To achieve such a result I suggest you read not just Hughes-Wilson, but also Babington, Oram, Putkowski, Moore, Seller and Walker. Then you ought to have the background to make an informed judgement or at least write an informed paragraph. It's interesting reading as well. Additionally it sure as anything can't be said that Great Britain didn't shoot many at dawn. Other participant nations (e.g. the USA, Germany or Australia) didn't shoot soldiers for military offences at all and the contingent of German soldiers certainly was far superior to the British where it comes to sheer numbers. To deny that both French and British troops had to suffer from a distinct class bias, especially where it came to verdicts, is a particularly devious attempt at revisionism. To further refrain from mentioning that both armies actively engaged in decimation as a means to frighten their own men into submission, something which is by now ascertained to not work with any lasting effect and may have the opposite result, is just as much trying to re-write history. France did it openly almost as a lottery, Great Britain did it covertly, but 3000:346 still is a decimation, want it or not. It happened, so acknowledge it instead of glossing over it in an attempt at hiding such inhumanities. Beniceer (talk) 08:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Many World War I related topics are controversial, and this isn't an exception. Is there any chance you could give full references to the sources you mention so we can follow them up? Of course, feel free to edit the article if you can see any errors in it. Many thanks, The Land (talk) 19:40, 18 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Your average library ought to have them or be able to provide them. They all are also available in bookshops.
 * For the Sake of Example by Anthony Babington
 * Shot at Dawn by Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes
 * Military Executions during World War I by Dr Gerard Oram
 * Death Sentences Passed by Military Courts of the British Army 1914-1924 by Dr Gerard Oram
 * The Thin Yellow Line by William Moore
 * Forgotten Soldiers: The Irishmen Shot at Dawn by Stephen Walker
 * For God's Sake Shoot Straight by Leonard Sellers
 * At the very least these books ought to give a less jaundiced view than that of a British colonel with an obvious agenda. Beniceer (talk) 12:29, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

No. Babington is a work of honest scholarship but several of the others are notorious for their inaccuracies,and it ought to be obvious to anyone coming relatively new to the subject which ones are peddling an “agenda” (class in Putkowski’s case) and which ones are trying to set the record straight. If you are going to read one relatively up-to-date book "Blindfold and Alone" should probably be it. There are also plenty of brief and dispassionate summaries in other books by proper historians, e.g. "Tommy" by the late Richard Holmes - most of them pointing out what every inquiry into this matter pointed out, namely that, contrary to the claims sometimes put about by campaigners, very few of those executed were under-age, hardly any appear to have been shell-shocked as it was recognised at the time (a lot of them might nowadays have been classified as traumatised, but that is a different matter altogether) and that the vast majority of them were correctly convicted according to the law as it was at the time. Many of them in fact would have been found guilty today, although they would not of course have been executed.

The Germans certainly did shoot men for military offences, although less so than Britain on official figures (although they did so in massive numbers in WW2, about 15,000 I believe, which is one reason why the Nazi regime held out to the bitter end - obviously one does not condone such action but at the same time it does rather mean that disciplining men by killing lots of them cannot be asserted to have been "ascertained to not work with any lasting effect"). The Americans, didn't actually shoot anybody for desertion in WW1, it is true, although they retained the right to do so and used it in WW2. The Italians and Russians shot rather more than the British did.

Moaning about "class bias" is misplaced, although sadly not uncommon in a certain kind of writing about WW1. Plenty of senior leaders - politicians like Asquith and Bonar Law, generals like Allenby - lost sons in the war, and most front line soldiers would have found it hard not to notice that their infantry officers a) took disproportionate casualties and b) were increasingly promoted from the ranks as the war went on, something which rarely happened in the German Army. Convictions at court martial were usually after extensive testimony from other soldiers and NCOs, not on the say-so of officers alone.

"Decimation" means the Roman practice of executing 10% of an unsatisfactory unit, selected at random. In a World War One context "decimation" would mean executing 80 men at random from a battalion, or over 1,000 men from a division, which had failed in an attack. This never happened in the British Army. It's unclear that it ever actually did in the French Army either, other than in folklore or films like "Paths of Glory", but it does appear to have happened in the Italian Army after Caporetto. About 6 million men passed through the British Army in WW1 - the execution of less than 350 men (much the same, incidentally, as the number of British generals killed in the war) may have been regrettable but to call it "decimation" is an exaggeration. Lots of things motivate soldiers to fight, and terror of being executed was only a very small part of it.Paulturtle (talk) 02:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Translation problem
If I try to access the German version of this article (languages --> Deutsch) it brings me to some stuff about playing chess. Is that intended? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.35.83.234 (talk) 03:31, 23 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I changed it from de:Kriegspiel to de:Kriegszitterer. Now both Combat stress reaction and Shell shock link to de:Kriegszitterer but it's not really wrong and certainly better than a link to the German version of Kriegspiel_(chess). 78.53.89.242 (talk) 17:49, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Evidence of Controversy
"Controversially, on 7 November 2006 the government of the United Kingdom gave them all a posthumous conditional pardon."

The stated resource for this line does not mention any controversy and in fact actually states that even the opposition in parliament supported it. I did a quick bit of google research and even then I did not find any sources against it. Should the controversy mention be removed or can others find evidence of it being controversial? Mishka Shaw (talk) 23:03, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Well of course the "Shot at Dawn" Campaign Website is not going to admit that it was controversial - they were the people who had been running a highly emotive campaign, based on a very small number of hard luck cases (I could point you to books claiming that their campaign was "an insult" to the many equally terrified lads who did their duty, but let's not go there). To repeat what I posted above, most of the inquiries into this matter, the most recent being in 1998, pointed out that, contrary to the claims sometimes put about by campaigners, very few of those executed were under-age, hardly any appear to have been shell-shocked as it was recognised at the time (a lot of them might nowadays have been classified as traumatised, but that is a different matter altogether) and that the vast majority of them were correctly convicted according to the law as it was at the time. Many of them in fact would have been found guilty today, although they would not of course have been executed. You can read more about it, cited to proper historians, in the "British Army in WW1" article. From memory, the actual 2006 pardon was a piece of Parliamentary horsetrading - the Labour government of the day doing a favour for some backbencher(s) and the Tories had better things to do than kick up a fuss about it.Paulturtle (talk) 23:25, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

World War 1 only?
first line says "soldiers in world war 1" what the hell? what about other wars where identical symptoms and causes were documented? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.115.146.67 (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, the same illness happens in all wars, it's just that they keep changing the name. If you look in the article you already see that we say that shell shock was renamed to "postconcussional syndrome" and "combat stress" after WW1.  --sciencewatcher (talk) 05:16, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * George Carlin explained it very well in his rant about euphemisms and “soft language”, how the very same condition was progressively renamed from “shell shock” to “battle fatigue” to “operational exhaustion” to “post-traumatic stress disorder”, making it more and more dehumanized and less and less relatable.--Abolibibelot (talk) 05:07, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

American English
Someone needs to translate this document from old English to American english. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.218.131.102 (talk) 00:31, 1 May 2014 (UTC)


 * No thank you - we don't want any Molesworth spelling here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.31.130.20 (talk) 11:14, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Adrenaline-induced Exhaustion
Why is "shell shock" not recognized for what it is; adrenaline-induced mental and physical exhaustion? And it's modern-day corollary, "amphetamine psychosis"? Thoughts, anyone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.182.133.42 (talk) 01:20, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Army Horses and Shell Shock
From The Times (London) 28th December 1917: reprinted on 28th December 2017

An officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps in a letter home writes: I am sure you would like the army horses in Flanders. They are the most beautiful things in the country, especially the draught horses, for they do a job of work. Saddle horses are lovely to look at but they, like the cavalry, are simply not in it in this war, and this robs them of their charm just now, when everyone and everything is judged by his job of work. Unspoilt by blinkers, their winter coats - innocent often of clippers - add to their looks. That they keep so fit and in such condition is due to the excellence of their forage and the care of their drivers. And the devotion of the men is wonderful: for they will not leave their charges, and often are transferred with them when they are sent to other units.

There is a great difference in the horses as they go in and come out of the line. Full of fire and beans, conscious of the excellent grooming and clean wagons and polished harness, they seem impatient to drag their guns from the comforts of French billets to the unknown discomfort of the line. But when they come out they are plastered with mud and very tired, and show no interest in the teams that pass them on their way up. A gunner told me an interesting story of shell shock in his team - how they were sheltering under a wall when a shell exploded among them, but miraculously escaped unharmed. Never again would this gun team approach that wall without quivering and falling down, or hear an approaching shell without showing the same symptoms as a soldier might.

Never will a horse forget any place where he has been wounded. When he is taking ammunition up to a battery he will shiver and tremble and hurry past any spot where, perhaps months before, he stopped a bit of shrapnel. Very quick are they to spot a near approaching shell: and on an exposed road on their way up they duck their heads and drop on their knees, and even lie down, when they see their drivers taking cover to avoid a dangerously close one.

A good horse is a treasure and a bad one only fit to lose - as many horses are "lost" by their drivers so that fresh ones may be drawn from "remounts." But still, the revolver is the most commonly used veterinary medicine, as it is the most effective.

I presume that this is out of copyright by now. NRPanikker (talk) 15:51, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

How was it treated?
Any sources that discuss how it was treated?  Dig deeper talk 01:55, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Shell shock - concussion
What about concussion in WW2 in the Red Army? Concussion was the term for shell shock for the Soviets. See "Paul Wanke : Russian /Soviet military psychiatry 1904-1945" and "The value of human life in Soviet warfare" by Amnon Sellam. Maja33 NL (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:14, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Possible Edits to Lead Section
I believe that the second line of the lead section could benefit from some changes to the grammar and vocabulary used in it. Also, no mention is made of how to manage the condition within the lead section despite management being the focus of a major section in the main body of the article, so I was thinking about incorporating a line about it in order to tie it all together a little more. Does anyone have any objections to this? JThomasAnthropologist (talk) 02:49, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The lines display differently for everyone depending on how wide your browser is - are you referring to the second sentence? Happy for you to put in some draft lines either on the talk page first or just go for it on the article page. Bellowhead678 (talk) 08:29, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Contradictions with other pages on origin of term
The intro to this page states that Charles Samuel Myers coined the term "shell shock" and has a reference, but the intro to the page specifically about him explicitly states that he did not. Should probably be reconciled, but I'm not sure how. TotesNeato (talk) 01:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Shell Shock Origin, Richard Gallagher and "Wildoc Syndrome"
In Timetables of American History, it says that Richard Gallagher described something called "Wildoc Syndrome", which later evolved into what we now know as "shell shock" and "battle fatigue". This would obviously affect the origin part of the article, so I am curious of the claims legitimacy. I have not been able to find any other sources or references mentioning a 19th century scientist named Richard Gallagher, a "Wildoc Syndrome" or any earlier origin other than the one referenced in the article. Does anyone know what the book is talking about? Is it simply a typo, misinformation or just obscure information? Jovlian (talk) 02:33, 7 October 2023 (UTC)