First Prize: Help or Harm: Battle Exhaustion and the RCAMC During the Second World War

Abstract

“Stark naked, he was striding through the cordite stench with his head held high and his arms swinging. His body shone white in the brilliant light of the flare… He was singing ‘Home on the Range’ at the top of his lungs. The Worm That Never Dies had taken him.” (Farley Mowat, And No Birds Sang (Toronto: Mclelland and Stewart Ltd., 1979), 229.) As it was known at the time, “battle exhaustion” was an inseparable part of warfare on all fronts. As such, the Canadian army didn’t find itself immune to the effects of psychiatric losses, suffering casualties even before active campaigning had commenced. During the Italian campaign alone 5020 “Neuropsychiatric casualties” were reported, 16.9 percent of total battle casualties. (Terry Copp and Bill McAndrew, Battle Exhaustion, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 187.) What exactly is battle exhaustion, and how does it affect the body and the mind? How did the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps (RCAMC) understand battle exhaustion, when judged against our current perceptions of it? Were the measures that they took sufficient, or did they do more harm then good? Battle exhaustion is an easy condition to be sympathetic to but a much more difficult one to understand. New research has revolutionized the way that the medical community looks at battle exhaustion and combat stress (or immediate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). (Franklin Jones, Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” in The Textbooks of Military Medicine, (Washington: The Office of the Surgeon General of the United States, 1995), available at (http://www.bordeninstitute.army.mil/WarPsych/default_index.htm,416. Keeping the current model in mind, the RCAMC’s record in dealing with battle exhaustion is mixed at best. Doctrinal and administrative problems plagued psychiatric patient care from the moment the RCAMC arrived in England. Moreover, debates about the proper psychiatric constitution of a soldier hampered legitimate attempts at proper diagnoses and treatment. Despite this however, Army psychiatrists were unrelenting in their attempts to care for battle exhausted patients. When encountering those who required care, they would do their utmost to safeguard the mental well being of all psychiatric casualties, including those who had succumbed to battle exhaustion. When dealing with such a complex issue, so deeply embedded in the human psyche, no cursory examination is sufficient. However, given what we know of battle exhaustion today, the RCAMC can accurately be judged both by its theoretical foundations, and the physical care given to those in need.