PTSD - Battlefields and Beyond

[amweiner]

Forgive me if I sounded like I was tired of this topic - I'm not. I just didn't know if you had seen the others.

I had a GGGrandfather that was in the war and suffered from something. Call it what you will, but he would go to sleep in the bed and wake up on the floor just about every night. His son's wife's father was too old to participate in the war, but had a traumatic experience, as did his son.

I found this while researching the Sixteenth Tennessee infantry regiment. A young man named John Harman Nichols wrote a book called "Proof of the Pudding" that was published in 1913. In that autobiography, he mentioned my GGGrandfather. Daniel Grizzell lived near Gassaway, Tennessee (once know as Clear Fork). There was an infamous Federal guerrilla that became sheriff of Cannon County named Captain Hathaway.

At some point Captain Hathaway shot my GGGrandfather's fifteen year old son in the stomach (he recovered somehow) and pistol whipped my GGGrandfather so badly that he had horrific scars on his head for the rest of his life. I had always heard a folklore story that was similar to this, but never could verify it until I read this book to my surprise.

Imagine the trauma suffered by the three of them. One, being a combat veteran that served the entire war and was (at least) twice wounded in a unit that suffered extreme casualties. Second, a father that watched his son be shot in the stomach by a renegade and was pistol whipped only because the attacker ran out of ammunition. Third, a fifteen year old boy that was shot by a grown man - but survived.

The pain, physical and mental that all three had to experience must have been maddening.

Thanks @gunny, not at all!! I appreciate any feedback and certainly appreciate differing perspectives! I know that I get really fired up about the topic - having spent most of my career working with traumatized children, then adults who never got help as kids, I saw how trauma could, in the worst case, ruin a person. For many, as you indicated, death became a welcome escape. When it's recognized as something that touches everyone in a system, we tend to address it better and get better outcomes. Living in a community with a strong military presence, and seeing women and men in uniform daily, I can't help but think about how we can do better for soldiers and their families.

Thank you for sharing the story about your gggrandfather - I am so grateful for those opportunities to put names to ideas and take them back into the realm of real people who suffered. One can only guess what this did to your ancestors, and the people who cared for them. While I was researching for the OP, I came across a fragment of a letter that I should've written down but didn't, and now I'm trying to find it, because it gave me the chills. The soldier simply said he'd been in battle but would not talk about what he had seen.

Lots to think about. Thank you for sharing your ideas, my friend.
Adam

 

[amweiner]

Adam, I will be on this Forum when the book releases in October, and will make public its launch. It's to be sold on Amazon. Currently, I'm working with an editor to fine tune. Yesterday, this ex-military-man-turned-editor called me, virtually in tears, having read my manuscript's ending. This came after he had told me (when I had a male character misty-eyed), "Change this wording. Men don't shed tears." NOT! How can anyone experience the tragedy of war, and stuff inside their emotions? Of course, men try to do what is expected, and humanly impossible, and break down mentally.

Thanks Gladys, please keep me posted! These days, I tend to forget my own name if it's not screamed at me all day long. Comes with being 144 years old....

As you can imagine, there are countless letters and diaries of men admitting to crying, both during and after battles. Soldiers, regardless of time period, are human beings with real emotions. They may be told not to shed tears, but seeing what they've seen would strain the emotions of anyone.

Adam

 

[Cavalry Charger]

To be honest with you, the woman in the videos GGG'mother sounds like a bit of a 'black widow' to me! The husbands seemed to have managed to go on for several years after the war, and it was only after marrying her they were tipped over the edge...not to deny the reality of the veterans trauma, but her first husband didn't even come back to her!

 

[rpkennedy]

I've shared this story before but it is also relevant here.

In part of my family, three brothers will enlist during the war. The middle brother Andrew (19 years old in 1861) enlists in May 1861, joining the 16th New York Infantry. After 2 years service and a number of major engagements (the Peninsula, Seven Days, South Mountain, and Chancellorsville) and one minor wound, he goes home long enough to turn around and join the 13th New York Cavalry for the rest of the war.

The youngest brother, Joseph (15 years old in 1861) enlists in late 1861 with the 93rd New York. The 93rd New York was made the army headquarters guard in the summer of 1862 and acts in this capacity until spring 1864. They are severely battered at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania (losing more than 300 men between the two battles). In the assault on the Salient at Spotsylvania, Joseph is shot through the thigh and is evacuated to Washington. He will die of his wound in July.

The oldest brother, Patrick (30 years old in 1861) owned a small farm, was married and had 4 children of his own in 1861. He would enlist in late 1863, likely due to the bonus New York was paying out at the time. He would see heavy action during the Overland Campaign, Petersburg Campaign, and the Shenandoah Campaign before he goes home in July 1865.

By 1867, Patrick and Andrew were in a bad place. Patrick had crawled into a bottle, was arrested on several occasions for abusing his wife leading to her leaving him. A few years later, he had remarried and would have six more children from 1872-1880. He was in and out of his family's life, leaving his wife in the poor house on at least one occasion. While his wife was pregnant with their last child, he disappears from the historical record but a man bearing his description was found dead in a ditch a few dozen miles away from his home.

Andrew, after getting into a handful of scuffles in local bars, decides to leave New York and goes West to Montana in 1868. While there, he is described as living a solitary life and seems to have disliked crowds. In 1907, he's living in a soldier's home in Helena before deciding that it was time to come home. Over the next decade, he travels east, staying in soldier's homes along the way. He moves in with his older sister and her husband when he arrives in New York and will live out his life with them.

IMO, it's pretty clear that the war left them as broken men. How much of that is what they experienced, guilt over the death of their younger brother (and James Sempier, a close friend of Andrew and whose sister would be Patrick's second wife, who was killed at Petersburg), or a combination of the two is the question.

Ryan

 

[leftyhunter]

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/neuropsychiatric-casualties.118345/#post-1211408

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/did-civil-war-soldiers-have-ptsd.107363/

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/moral-injury-and-the-civil-war-soldier.128575/

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-and-the-civil-war.103106/

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/mental-health-in-from-the-civil-war.110456/

Hi @ReadingThroughHistory ,
Here are even more links.
Leftyhunter

 

[ReadingThroughHistory]

Hi @ReadingThroughHistory ,
Here are even more links.
Leftyhunter

Thank you! This is certainly a floodgate. I LOVE this forum.

 

[Burning Billy]

Thanks Gladys, please keep me posted! These days, I tend to forget my own name if it's not screamed at me all day long. Comes with being 144 years old....

As you can imagine, there are countless letters and diaries of men admitting to crying, both during and after battles. Soldiers, regardless of time period, are human beings with real emotions. They may be told not to shed tears, but seeing what they've seen would strain the emotions of anyone.

Adam

"No words can depict the ghastly picture. The track of the great charge was marked by bodies of men in all possible positions, wounded, bleeding, dying, and dead. Near the line where the final struggle occurred, the men lay in heaps, the wounded wiggling and groaning under the weight of the dead among whom they were entangled. In my weak and exhausted condition I could not long endure the gory, ghastly spectacle. I found my head reeling, the tears flowing and my stomach sick at the sight."

---Captain Benjamin W. Thompson of the 111th New York, describing the aftermath of Pickett's Charge. Thompson had been wounded in the second day's fighting at Gettysburg but had walked to Cemetery Ridge in the assault's aftermath.

 

[amweiner]

Thank you for sharing such powerful reminiscences, @Burning Billy.