Now it can be Told by Philip Gibbs — Read

Shell-shock was the worst thing to see. There were generals who said: "There is no such thing as shell-shock. It is cowardice. I would court-martial in every case. " Doctors said: "It is difficult to draw the line between shell-shock and blue funk. Both are physical as well as mental. Often it is the destruction of the nerve tissues by concussion, or actual physical damage to the brain; sometimes it is a shock of horror unbalancing the mind, but that is more rare. It is not generally the slight, nervous men who suffer worst from shell-shock. It is often the stolid fellow, one of those we describe as being utterly without nerves, who goes down badly. Something snaps in him. He has no resilience in his nervous system. He has never trained himself in nerve-control, being so stolid and self-reliant. Now, the nervous man, the cockney, for example, is always training himself in the control of his nerves, on buses which lurch round corners, in the traffic that bears down on him, in a thousand and one situations which demand self-control in a ‘nervy' man. That helps him in war; whereas the yokel, or the sergeant-major type, is splendid until the shock comes. Then he may crack. But there is no law. Imagination -- apprehension -- are the devil, too, and they go with ‘nerves."

It was a sergeant-major whom I saw stricken badly with shell-shock in Aveluy Wood near Thièpval. He was convulsed with a dreadful rigor like a man in epilepsy, and clawed at his mouth, moaning horribly, with livid terror in his eyes. He had to be strapped to a stretcher before he could be carried away. He had been a tall and splendid man, this poor, terror-stricken lunatic.