I've been shelled with 155mm shells. There is (or used to be) a bunker on Salisbury Plain where trainee artillery officers could experience it for themselves. It has very thick concrete, four foot thick windows and so on.
Even with all the protection it's terrifying. They drop the rounds a few yards in front of you. The noise is unbelievable, the shockwaves actually bend the concrete inward a little and the dummy target vehicles you can see get instantly shredded with shrapnel. Delay the fuse a little and the shell penetrates a few yards before exploding, leading to a strange effect where all the dust and stones jump off the ground as the shockwave traverses it. Make the fuse go early and you get an airburst that sprays red hot metal down in a 100 yard radius and rattles those windows with waves of shrapnel.
We were all jumpy for days. It just does that to you.
I was an artilleryman is the U.S. Army. We get the machine gun fired over us in a trench during basic training (like everyone else), but that sounds like so much more profound of an experience. I kind of wish we did that here.
That said, I was enlisted (NCO), not a commissioned officer. For all I know, they may do something like that for (to?) the officers at Fort Sill.
I was in an infantry exercise at JBLM where they were firing artillery from right next to our position, and I remember every tenth round or so would have a defect that made it go zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzoooooommmm when it came out of the barrel.
It does feel like an earthquake. The most powerful subwoofer I've ever heard doesn't come close to the teeth-scraping body-slamming whump of a near miss from large ordinance.
I remember hand grenade day in Army basic training, and at the time what struck me was that the grenades going off looked and sounded like what artillery does in the movies. Spine-jarring explosions, 25-foot-tall clouds of dirt and smoke, etc. Later on (at air defense school, for some reason) we did a claymore mine at one of our live fire events, and it was far, far louder and vicious than the POP and shower of sparks that Hollywood would have given us. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be near a real artillery round landing.
It is really a very big blast, like an artillery blast like you say. I was given three opportunities to throw hand grenades during my conscription training.
First one was in a purpose-built field, where we were hunkered down in a concrete hole and threw the frag-grenade onto gravel.
The second was when were having an exercise of storming a machinegun-nest on top of a small ridge in the forest. So first we move by leapfrog (a combat pair) firing, then climbed a small ridge and threw over a live frag-grenade on to the "machinegun-nest".
Third time was when we were doing a urban combat exercise. In the middle of the forest they had a roofless building with several rooms, again purpose-built for training with live grenades, with dust floors. We were given two grenades each, one which was a chock grenade ( not flash , again doing the exercise as a combat pair. Really big blasts.
I don't think I can even remotely understand what this feels like. Worst thing I've done in my time over here was handling hand grenades (just as 13of40) and throwing/detonating a live one was the closest I got to 'hide behind shelter and feel a big boom' - and already far too scary on my personal scale of things Not To Do Again™.
I suspect quite a few more people in the Western militaries today have seen 155mm go off as IEDs, now. I assume it's roughly comparable to a ground detonation (usually they were buried slightly, either in a culvert or below grade, but only a few feet).
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling. out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
One of the few poems that stuck with me from English in high school, the Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori translates as "it is sweet and honourable to die for ones country".
There is no more eerie account of what it was like to be a foot soldier caught up in trench warfare than Arthur Guy Empey's book "Over the Top" (1917).
Empey was an American who managed to get in the mix with the British soldiers before America entered the war. His account is based entirely on his own first-hand experiences. His last patrol depicts an utterly futile foray at night in which dozens of his comrades lost their lives and he (and I believe one another) survived. I am going from memory here on something I read quite a while back and so my summary may be imprecise. But anyone wanting to get a sense of the horrors of what it meant to fight in such battles will most certainly get it through this account.
The strange thing is that this became a runaway bestseller in America in 1917 and 1918. Far from recoiling at the horrors, the public chose to celebrate the heroism of the soldiers who put themselves in such incredible danger.
It is in any case a bone-chilling account to read this and all the more so because its style is almost detached and matter-of-fact, even clinical in describing one horror after another.
The posted article lacks substance, but I read "Over the Top" because of your comment. It is excellent. Thank you. I found my copy on archive.org[0].
I read it alongside "The Arms of Krupp"[1], and found the combination highly synergistic. The sensation of perspective is multiplied further if read with "All Quiet on the Western Front".
"All Quiet on the Western Front" - the only book from cca 40 we were forced to read during high school classes that really consumed me - the horrors described, the progressive apathy to death all around and almost total randomness of survival... far from usual poetry. Still cannot comprehend such madness that was happening 100 years ago
I'd also recommend The Face of Battle by John Keegan. It covers Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme:
"The Face of Battle is military history from the battlefield: a look at the direct experience of individuals at 'the point of maximum danger'. It examines the physical conditions of fighting, the particular emotions and behaviour generated by battle, as well as the motives that impel soldiers to stand and fight rather than run away."
If this piques your interest at all I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History where he did 6 parts and about 18 hours on WWI from a mostly military history perspective. He also did a shorter one on the eastern front in WWII.
Came here to say this. I learned so much that I didn't previously know about WWI from HH. Not only the military history aspect, but the political and cultural context for a lot of it.
The Great War youtube channel is also great. They do at least one video a week, on what was happening 100 years ago, plus extras on notable people, questions from viewers, and other things.
I suppose a better synopsis would have been that there may be a set of injuries that result from physical trauma to the brain, that can be conflated with war-induced PTSD. But as people that suffer trauma without serious head injuries exhibit some of the same traits as those that are associated with PTSD, it's not really about PTSD in general being physical (as in result of external physical trauma, as opposed to physical changes in the brain, which can often result from eg: depression "alone").
But it is certainly interesting that "just" being subject to such physical abuse could lead to conditions similar to that of PTSD.
I meant trauma in the sense of head injury/head trauma -- a concussion is usually first diagnosed by secondary effects, not by "looking at the brain" as far I am aware.
Perhaps I should've said "head trauma without visible/apparent injuries to the head". Sorry for the confusion. I only meant to contrast the micro-injuries that these new studies reference with the also real physical changes that often accompany "purely" psychological conditions.
> I meant trauma in the sense of head injury/head trauma
Yes? I linked an article with a specific subject and contents. I would expect replies to somehow relate to that (article).
I don't think it needs to be said that "PTSD" is not a specific condition but a word that collects a large variety of them. The article is quite clear in describing what it is about.
I just want to throw this in here for some more context:
"During The Somme, the British bombardment consisted of 1,537 guns firing over 1,500,000 shells over a period of 168 hours averaging 8,929 shells fired per minute."
That is just... staggering. I can't find a source for it, but I remember some factoid stating that on average it took several hundred shells to kill one soldier. That's not to say they had to take several hundred hits, but that on average that's how many shells it took to rack up one kill.
Five of them weren't detonated. One of those exploded in 1955 after a lightning strike. Most likely, four others are still lying below ground. It's anybody's guess whether they still are dangerous and might detonate one day.
There's a good BBC article on it here, with a lot of detail about the people behind the tunnelling schemes, and the horror of digging in complete silence, listening out for enemy miners who might be just inches away:
It seems like the purpose of a bombardment like that isn't to kill the soldiers outright, but to crush their advance and keep them out of your territory.
It is also due to the creeping barrage, where you would inch your artillery fire forward with your troops behind its shield as the enemy took cover during a barrage and therefore it stopped them from being able to gun down your troops.
"In late 1915 / early 1916, Commonwealth forces began developing a new form of barrage. Beginning close to their own lines, the 'creeping' barrage moved slowly forward, throwing up dirt clouds to obscure the infantry who advanced close behind. The barrage would reach the enemy lines and suppress as normal (by driving men into bunkers or more distant areas) but the attacking infantry would be close enough to storm these lines (once the barrage had crept further forward) before the enemy reacted. That was, at least, the theory."
What could possibly go wrong? I know it's Wikepedia, but the concept that 10% casualties on your own side could be expected when done correctly should be a clue that this is another crap WW1 technique.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_(artillery)
The purpose of a military bombardment is to kill people and destroy infrastructure, thus neutralizing the ability and will of your enemy to continue fighting.
Does anyone know offhand how airburst shells were fused in those days? The only way that I can think that it could have been done, would be to have a very accurate timer detonate the shell. But then you have to know the flight time, and that would have changed whenever the gun was aimed at a different spot. Was the gun capable of setting the shell's timer automatically, based on it's firing angle? Did someone compensate for elevation difference? Or, was there a guy with a slide rule tweaking a knob on each shell just before firing?
In WWI the British used burning timers, which are quite inaccurate due to variable burn rates vs pressure and chemical composition. The Germans had mechanical timers. The battery command post would do the calculations from gun tables, tell the battery the fuse setting (twisting something in the fuse (nose) of the round), then observers would report back and it would be adjusted.
In late WWII the UK invented RF proximity fuses, first for AA then for surface.
Nowadays the guns talk to the shells, the shells run self tests, etc. They will be self aware before too long, a la Darkstar: https://youtu.be/qjGRySVyTDk
One of the first large-scale uses of POZIT proximity fuses by US forces in WW-II was at Elsenborn Ridge[1] in late 1944. Prior to this, the commanders restricted their use for the fear that the Germans would find a dud and reverse-engineer it.
This[1] explains the various fuzing types pretty well. Generally, some sort of intertial or centrifugal striker lights a fuse-train of constant-speed burning powder, which subsequently ignits the main charge. Timed fuzes could be set by either punching a hole through the delay spiral into the trigger charge at a specific point, or rotating a metal collar on the shell which had the same effect.
I think they would have all been set manually, although probably with reference to markings on the fuzes themselves for either time or distance. Experience and/or feedback from the artillery spotters would indicate if they were bursting too early or late (and many would have backup impact fuzes in case they were too late).
Basically three mechanisms have been used:
a. Powder burning, these were the norm with shrapnel shells in WW1, and continued with smoke shells until at most a few decades ago.
b. Mechanical time, appeared in WW1 and still used for shells that need a high burst such as smoke and illuminating. Were also used for HE, but round to round variation meant they were sell that perfect.
c. Proximity (AKA Variable Time (VT)), this uses a radio transmitter and relies on reflected radio waves, first used in WW2 for anti-aircraft. Based on UK development that was transferred to the US in 1942. Used in the ground role to get a burst about 10 metres above ground late in WW2. Now a function in Multi-role fuzes that provide airburst, ground burst or delayed burst (ie penetrate the ground for about a metre before bursting) as selected.
As a kid I played in these areas while my dad was cutting wood. It was rather exciting to find a shell as these were rare compared to other pieces of metal. We were just told not to play with them.
I remember that one day we found a shell buried not that far from a fire that my dad had lit.
I was young so I can't certify that we were in a "red zone" but it was in the woods around Verdun so there's a high chance.
Clarifying: there are large regions of France which are forbidden to entry due to the UXB, mine, and other hazards present in them. That's the Red Zone map mentioned by another commenter here.
The article treats conditions along WWI front lines as static. They were not. The conditions in the trenches changed from one part of the war to another. Gas was not a thing during the entire war. And the germans and allied trenches were different from each other, with allied trenches being much more haphazard due to the insistence that they not be permanent. Artillery too underwent change over the years, with new and technologically interesting shell designs changing the experience on the ground.
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(Something is blocking me from replying more than twice an hour. I'm trying to reverse-engineer this system to see exactly what limits are being enforced, but for now I'll edit-in this comment that I had wanted to add to ternaryoperator's link/pic.)
A million, ten million, a hundred million ... there is a point at which you are just moving the same dirt back and forth without any difference. I'm more interested in the smaller stuff. You can push dirt around for months, but is the barbed wire actually cut? Destroying the little things is very much harder than leveling roads.
Soldiers were redeployed around the front as conditions demanded. You might be in a quiet sector fighting misery, boredom and trench foot and subsequently dispatched into the horror.
The western front was a sort of scientific experiment in organized slaughter. The cavalry charges evolved into trench systems. Set piece rolling barrages coordinated with gas were perfected, shock tactics pioneered. It was an evil thing.
"The article treats conditions along WWI front lines as static"
I don't read that:
"On the opening day of the Somme on July 1, 1916, British guns hurled 250,000 high explosive and shrapnel shells towards German positions"
That's phase one: throw lots of stuff in the hope to destroy their capability to fight. When you think that succeeded, have your infantry walk over and conquer their positions.
"During the beginning of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, over 3,000 British guns and howitzers fired a “creeping barrage” on German positions"
Throw lots of stuff to prevent their soldiers from killing your soldiers with their guns while your soldiers advance on their position.
"The Germans developed and perfected the “box barrage"
Throw lots of stuff to prevent your enemy from being reinforced.
"The American St. Mihiel Offensive on September 12, 1918 was preceded in some areas by a seven-hour preparatory bombardment"
Throw lots of stuff for ages to soften their defenses. Stop bombarding when your troops attack. Problem: they dig down deep, wait for the bombardment to end, and then get up and shoot your infantry while it still is exposed between trench lines.
"By the end of the war, most attacks by French, American, and British forces began with a swift but short artillery bombardment that massed thousands of guns on one small area, followed up almost immediately by a ground attack"
Throw lots of stuff to force them to keep their heads down, then immediately have your infantry get up to them (= use artillery bombardments as covering fire)
That's a lot of evolution, partly driven by technological advances. For example, a creeping barrage requires the capability to drop stuff close to your own troops, while not hitting them. That requires good maps and explosives with reliable explosive force (so that one can be confident that shells will carry the desired distance). As another example, concentrated fire requires precision, too.
Static technology, which is something different than tactics or positions. The article does not do the subject of technological progression necessary justice. Many of the effects described as if true throughout the war, specifically the blast effects, changed radically with technology (think fragmentation rounds).
"The article does not do the subject of technological progression necessary justice."
If you had said that in the comment I responded to, I likely would not have reacted, but I think that's quite a different claim from "The article treats conditions along WWI front lines as static"
When you write a one-page article on a four year war involving millions of people, you can't do all its aspects justice, but not discussing something doesn't mean denying its existence.
So many shells were fired that farmers are still digging up unexploded ones today. I saw a bunch of them at a corner of a farm field in Belgium pending pickup and it spooked me.
Yup, right there in the article vermontdevil linked to:
In the small farming towns of France and Belgium, undetonated World War I explosives that turn up during each year’s spring planting and autumn plowing are known as the “iron harvest."
Imagine being a member of an attack force following a creeping barrage, especially before it was perfected and short-falling shells were expected to kill a significant fraction of your comrades. Willfully walking into that kind of hell simply blows my mind.
>Willfully walking into that kind of hell simply blows my mind. //
Walk or get shot for desertion, not sure how wilful it was. Yes, you may have signed up willingly before knowing the horror that awaited you, but still ...
The amazing thing to me, aside from the inhumanity of the war and weirdly anachronistic things like the French cavalry uniforms and tactics at the beginning of the war, was that shell shock/PTSD/etc. wasn't recognized as a real thing, instead the armies would execute soldiers for cowardice. At least many of those have been posthumously (and far later) pardoned, not that it really makes much difference.
>instead the armies would execute soldiers for cowardice //
Was it not a necessity (on the basis of "winning" the trench warfare)?
If you can go home to a nice feather bed and being looked after in a care home without even the appearance of an injury by presenting as having PTSD/shell-shock then the effect on moral and ability to force men to go over-the-top with the threat of capital punishment for desertion is going to be detrimental to the offensive capabilities. Here's me 6-inches deep in mud sitting on a firing step, thirsty and flea-bitten, nursing my shrapnel wound; there's Joe going home without a scratch on him??
Cowardice and PTSD/shell-shock probably present in similar ways on a battlefield too - I'm a huge coward, I'm not trying to suggest anyone had less honour than they did, just that I'd expect to be a gibbering wreck without any shell-shock.
With the tactics employed it looks like it was a numbers game, to play that game they couldn't afford compassion for the fighting men of either side.
Strangely it had no impact on the outcome. Marching millions of men 'over the top' to be mowed down by machine guns was pointless. Even though the tactic failed utterly, they kept doing it. Out of desperation? They executed a generation.
They didn't really understand what was happening. Keep in mind that 1914 was a different war -- there was maneuver and grand strategy elements there.
What had happened is that you had officers and political leaders fed on a steady diet of studying Napoleonic warfare. They earnestly believed that elan and offense would bring them to a decisive victory on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the British experience in the Boer War and other conflicts distracted from the hard lessons learned by the Americans from 1861-1865... rifles and railroads meant that victory didn't matter in modern war, only breaking down the enemy's ability to maintain the army.
The other thing was that while WW1 armies had many of the trappings of the modern era (machine guns, explosives, some vehicles, limited aircraft, railroads), they lacked good communications infrastructure. The order of battle was driven by a pre-defined, precisely timed plan. The guns fired at target X at time Y, and division Z needed to move as planned. If circumstances changed, they could not react. With shock tactics and other advances, armies were able to "win" territory at a tactical level -- but they couldn't exploit the victories in a meaningful way.
It is a war that should always be studied and talked about, because it aptly demonstrates the horror and futility of modern warfare without the overarching "Good vs. Evil" narrative in WW2 or the weird political calculus of other conflicts. Millions of lives were sacrificed for nothing.
I'm not sure we can say it had no impact. Two cousins playing who can get the most soldiers to die for their side, sickening stuff.
Perhaps there was some Gambler's fallacy involved - like wow, stopping shelling and blowing whistles before we attack somehow isn't fooling them, lets keep shelling whilst we walk on over no-man's land, it's got to work this time for sure; can't change it now, we've nearly won!??
You started a flamewar and then fed it. Please don't do either of those things again.
Snarky provocations aren't welcome here, and have little to do with serious discussion (of PTSD or anything else), regardless of how correct your opinion is.
Soldiers don't generally start wars. They go where they're told and fight who they're told. The penalties for disobedience are severe. To force someone to fight and then laugh at them for the effects it has on them strikes me as psychopathic.
Many soldiers are volunteers. You're clearly trying to present one side of an arguement only.
Any while I dont believe soldiers suffering is funny, I do feel some nations hero worship soldiers ad nauseum. And further even with severe punishments for people refusing conscription cases, I admire a man like Ali who went to prison over his conviction not to go to war, over someone willing to support a killing machine that they dont believe in because of a few years in gaol. We almost always have a choice.
Also I appreciate someone in this (or any) discussion presenting an alternate view. And I like to think HN will remain a place where we can have open minded discussion without pushing clearly limited consideration retorts.
I wasn't referring to the draft. Everything I said applies to volunteers too. Soldiers don't get the right to disobey orders just because they volunteer.
There's a huge gulf between acknowledging the pain and suffering of the veteran, and glorifying soldiers. Totally different concepts.
I salute your trolling and utter ignorance. WWI history is replete with stories of how pointless it was, hence 'war to end all wars' etc. Overwhelmingly it was the generals and admirals who were happy to throw men into the meat grinder. Haig, Churchill, Ludendorff, they are the monsters.
During WWI, soldiers who developed PTSD were accused of being simply cowards, and by many not considered "real" invalids. Who were they to complain when other soldiers were losing limbs? And now here you are, saying people who have been bullied should suck it up, and not compare themselves to soldiers who have "real" PTSD. The irony.
Because they know it involves physical brain trauma and still say they have it?
Maybe we should be sympathetic to all suffering, rather than criticizing people for not being totally abreast of the latest developments in neuroscience. They're just saying "I hurt," not "I am just as damaged as a veteran at the receiving end of an artillery barrage."
Just to clarify, and god I hope this tedious subthread is detached and hurled with great force towards the bottom of the thread, but PTSD and sorrow are very different things. I have friendly and familial connections to PTSD and am familiar with what a PTSD episode can be. It is nothing at all like sadness or hurt feelings. It can be closer to seizure behavior than anything like that.
And, of course, nobody I've known with PTSD has been in combat.
Thanks for taking the time to slap back the toxic, ignorant comments that sparked this subthread. Would that for every one of you, we had ten people more willing to use the flag button on comments.
I don't mean to draw any comparison between PTSD and sorrow. It's merely an example of how the same word can be used to describe very different things without implying any sort of equivalence.
I myself find "sorrow" doesn't do the latter justice, but YMMV. In general I think specific meanings are better especially for complicated concepts like PTSD. I think separate terms would be better for the effects of long term psychological abuse experienced as a child, and the psycho/physical life-threatening experiences of combat soldiers. To use the same term for both just muddies the waters.
I think the trouble is that psychology has such a poor understanding of fundamental causes, and diseases tend to be classified by symptoms instead. PTSD is probably a collection of loosely related or maybe even unrelated problems, but they look similar from the outside. Imagine if we used "chest pain" for broken ribs, collapsed lungs, and heart attacks, having no understanding of the ribs, lungs, or heart. More specificity would make a lot of sense to me, but it seems like it's held back by this lack of fundamental understanding.
"PTSD" has a definition that includes other than physical trauma:
"PTSD is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event.
"It is natural to feel afraid during and after a traumatic situation. Fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to help defend against danger or to avoid it. This “fight-or-flight” response is a typical reaction meant to protect a person from harm. Nearly everyone will experience a range of reactions after trauma, yet most people recover from initial symptoms naturally. Those who continue to experience problems may be diagnosed with PTSD. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened even when they are not in danger."
Complex systems are characterised by having many, often subtle, and frequently profound, failure and damage pathways.
There is a substantial psychological literature of the long-lasting effects of purely psychological trauma, for example, strongly implicated in borderline personality disorder. Literally -- the behavior and treatment one experiences as a child can have profound life-long impacts.
We're also quite familiar with "diseases" in which a specific symptom or manifestation receives a unified term or description, despite profoundly varying etiologies. You may be familiar with the term "cancer". It spawns variously from viral, chemical, radiological, photosensitive, and physical trauma origins.
Your comment is anything but constructive, though I don't feel it justified flagging. It's exceedingly dismissive, and displays exceptionally limited insight.
A comment that is merely wrong might merit a downvote or an explanation. A comment that is simultaneously wrong, off-topic, and offensive merits a flag.
Best to think of the flag not as a judgement on the commenter, but on the impact of the comment itself. A wrong comment might actually be a net-positive if it sparks a series of great comments explaining the right answer. But here, the impact of the comment is obvious: it's a malignant jab, and everyone who took the time to flag it did HN a service.
I've expressed my judgement. Others can express theirs.
It's a possibly teachable moment. That requires the subject be capable of learning.
(A long-standing wish of mine is for some sort of long-term, portable, web-of-trust-like system for indicating, sharing (with select others), and tracking the reputation of various identities online. Whilst preserving the options for pseudonymity. A couple of decades in, and I'm still not fully settled on how to do this, though I've some thoughts....)
Even with all the protection it's terrifying. They drop the rounds a few yards in front of you. The noise is unbelievable, the shockwaves actually bend the concrete inward a little and the dummy target vehicles you can see get instantly shredded with shrapnel. Delay the fuse a little and the shell penetrates a few yards before exploding, leading to a strange effect where all the dust and stones jump off the ground as the shockwave traverses it. Make the fuse go early and you get an airburst that sprays red hot metal down in a 100 yard radius and rattles those windows with waves of shrapnel.
We were all jumpy for days. It just does that to you.