Download Breakdown: Shell Shock on the Somme AudioBook Free
Paralysis. Stuttering. The 'shakes'. Incapability to stand or walk. Temporary blindness or deafness. When bizarre symptoms like these began showing up in men at Casualty Clearing Channels in 1915, a debate began in army and medical circles in regards to what it was, what got induced it and what could be done to get rid of it. But the statistics were never large. Then, in July 1916, with the start of the Somme battle, the occurrence of shell shock rocketed. The high command of the British isles army began to panic. An extremely large number of men appeared to have simply lost the will to deal with. As whole battalions had to be withdrawn from the front, commanders and armed service doctors desperately tried to come up with explanations in regards to what was going incorrect. 'Shell shock' - what we would now refer to as battle stress - was sweeping the Traditional western Front. By the start of August 1916, practically 200,000 British isles soldiers have been killed or wounded through the first month of preventing across the Somme. Another 300,000 would be lost prior to the battle was over. But the army always said it could not calculate the exact number of those experiencing shell shock. Reassessing the official casualty numbers, Taylor Downing for the first time arises with a precise estimate of the full total numbers who were removed from action by emotional wounds. It really is a shocking shape. Taylor Downing's revelatory new book follows units and people from registering to the Pals Battalions of 1914, through to the horrors with their activities on the Somme which led to the shell shock that, unrelated to weakness or cowardice, left the men struggling to continue preventing. He shines a light on the official - and brutal - respond to the epidemic, even against those officers and doctors who appeared onto it sympathetically. It was, they believed, a kind of hysteria. It was contagious. And it had to be stopped.