The Soldier at the Western Front – Military Psychiatry
Source 2: Eyewitness Report of the British Corporal Henry Gregory

CSR patients occurred not only in Germany but in the other fighting nations as well. The British Corporal Henry Gregory reported as eyewitness the symptoms of his comrade in army hospital:

β€œIt was while I was in the Field Hospital that I saw the first case of shell-shock. The enemy opened fire about dinner time, as usual, with his big guns. As soon as the first shell came over, the shell-shock case nearly went mad. He screamed and raved, and it took eight men to hold him down on the stretcher. With every shell he would go into a fit of screaming and fight to get away. It is heartbreaking to watch a shell-shock case. The terror is indiscredible. The flesh on their faces shakes in fear, and their tooth continually chatter. Shell-shock was brought about in many ways; loss of sleep, continually being under heavy shell fire, the torment of the lice, irregular meals, nerves always on end, and the thought always in the man's mind that the next minute was going to be his last.β€œ

Henry Gregory, cited according to: Wolfgang U. Eckert: Medizin und Krieg. Deutschland 1914-1924, Paderborn 2014, p. 146.


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