During World War I, 306 British soldiers were executed by their own military, not for treason, but for offences like desertion, cowardice, and insubordination-crimes often rooted in what we now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At the time, mental health was poorly understood, and symptoms of psychological trauma-shaking, mutism, paralysis, or emotional collapse-were often misinterpreted as moral failure or weakness. These men, many of them very young, were branded as cowards and faced firing squads. In the decades since, public awareness and historical reassessment have led to posthumous pardons for many, acknowledging the tragic misjudgment of soldiers suffering from “shell shock” in a brutal and unrelenting war.
Not meaning to adulterate the tragedy of your thread.
Have you seen series 4 of Blackadder set in the trenches of WW1.
It certainly highlights the grim sad pointlessness of it all.
I thought they handled the last episode sensitively … I mean how do you deal with such a tragedy in a comedy. It was poignant and it was sad.
As to trench warfare itself … brutal and bloody and awful … I shudder to think how any chaps who did survive were expected to suddenly adapt back to civvy life.
I’m not sure I could adjust. So many terrified young men. Very sobering. Appalling really.
I actually thought it was more.
Times were different then and you can’t judge wrongs that happened then with today’s cosseted world. We are so soft now…
If you had patted deserters on the back and provided them with the Kings shilling and a nice cruise home how many soldiers do you think would have stayed to fight? Our government would have looked very different to the one we have at present.
On second thoughts, perhaps they should all have been conscientious objectors…
I had heard about this and always felt it was a tragedy that so many men were executed for what would now be recognised as PTSD. My own father had nightmares about his experiences in WW2 although he would never talk about it just like many of those who came back
I think the major difference is that today’s soldier, with the odd exception of some countries, actually chooses to become a soldier as a career choice.
In WW1 and WW2 compulsory conscription was introduced to enable the government to keep a steady supply of cannon fodder to the frontline. They must have been terrified.
I don’t think I could label any man then as a coward … especially if he was shell shocked or been affected by mustard gas.
I’ve always had trouble getting my head around the fact that there was this wiggly trench cutting across the countryside and it moved back and forth, back and forth, a few feet at a time … and to gain those few feet and then win them back cost thousands of young men’s lives.
What a waste.
Just madness sending men ‘over the top’ just to be mown down with machine gun fire.
Nobody actually won anything just a massive loss of life on both sides.
True, although by the latter stages of the second world war the allies tried to apply an approach of “metal not men”. This meant, where possible, protecting men through extensive use of equipment. This was enabled by an enormous volume of production, a massively weakened Nazi military and by the Russians in the east, who were still very much of the “just throw a few million at the enemy” thinking.
This thinking has progressed to today’s “don’t use men much at all”.
It rather defeats the object of keeping the population in check by having a war every now and then. And there’s nothing wrong with a world where women outnumber men, at least, they can multi-task…
However, the population can be kept in check these days with the apparent rise in deadly viruses.
I don’t think the numbers support that hypothesis. Moat estimates of the excess deaths from the covid pandemic are about 15 million, over 2 years. Population growth, however, is 70 million per year. That is, 10 times the rate of the excess deaths from deadly viruses.
Even the terrible toll of the first world war was about 10 million military and the same for civilians. That was over 4 years. So again, not enough to dent the overall increase in world population.
If that disgusts you then do not read about how soldiers were treated by their own side in other wars. For example, in attacks the Russian commissars had pistols - but not for shooting at the enemy.
During the covid epidemic it was stated on the media that more people died from covid than died in both the world wars.
Even if most of the deceased died from something else, but to justify shutdown and then the need to have a vaccine they stuck covid on the death certificate anyway.
I was vaccinated and subscribed to wearing the mask when outside so was not against some precautions but was against the shut down though not bad here .
I do think that plenty of deaths were attributed to COVID even when COVID did not have anything to do with the death and I for one am not prone to conspiracy theories unless I start them myself .
