Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems : $b Presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the war literature, 1914-1918Southard, Elmer Ernest
History
Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems : $b Presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the war literature, 1914-1918
Southard, Elmer Ernest
War neuroses; World War, 1914-1918 -- Medical care; World War, 1914-1918 -- Psychological aspects
September 15, 1914, a German soldier was missed. He had said that
he wanted to get to the enemy quickly, and that he was going to
march alone against the Russians. A shot was fired that night by
this soldier, on the ground that he had been insulted by a civilian,
although no civilian was present.
September 21, a farmer in a wagon reached a farm, where he found the
soldier aiming at a woman. He fired, wounded the woman severely, and
jumped on the farmer’s wagon and rode off with him. It seems that
the soldier had come to the farm at noontime and accused the woman
of treachery, ordering her to come with her husband to a certain
farmhouse, where she should be placed against the wall and be shot. The
soldier had shot her and wounded her husband also. According to the
woman, the idea was to take revenge because she had denounced certain
persons as spies.
He was arrested during the night, and told how he had left his troop
because he could not get at the enemy. He had been informed that there
were spies who ought to be shot; there had been talk in a certain inn
about it. He did not know he had wounded the husband, and he only
wanted to give that dangerous woman a piece of his mind.
After wounding the woman, he had given himself no further thought about
her, but had gone to partake of the holy sacrament at the pastor’s. He
then had drunk another glass of beer and gone to bed. He was, in fact,
still drunk at the time of arrest. He had not been aware that he would
be punished for the crime of going alone against the Russians.
Some days later, he wrote that he did not intend to kill the woman,
that he had been drunk at the time and was always a bad man when drunk;
that he had other times when he absented himself from home for days
when drunk. He had had, he said, a number of attacks of delirium, in
which he had seen animals. At one time, he had fallen on his head.
On the day in question, he had drunk 1½ litres of liquor. He was
remorseful for his deed.
A disciplinary case: Alcoholism; amnesia.
=Case 96.= (KASTAN, January, 1916.)
A German soldier, New Year’s Eve, 1915, got away from his company,
drank whiskey, and came back drunk. He bothered his comrades so that
the non-commissioned officer had to call for help; whereupon the
soldier said, “A man who comes on late and hasn’t been in much, hasn’t
much to say. If it is a non-commissioned officer, I shall hit him
in the snout.” The officer kept talking to him kindly but he cried
“_Halt’s Maul_, you crooked …!” He staggered up to the lieutenant
without saluting, but at a slight push fell prone into the straw.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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