The Valour and the Horror

"For the Canadians, the three weeks between le Mesnil-Patry and the July 4 attack on Carpiquet airfield were a period of frustration involving long hours under enemy mortar fire, constant night patrols and the first signs of a "battle exhaustion" crisis." (Copp: 171)

Ducat
"An 88 shell bounced off our old trench and within one minute we had 3 guys go wacky. One officer, a corporal and one private. The Officer, God what a big man, spooked out and cried - had to get him out of there quick. The private jumped up out of the trench and started running circles in the field. One of the guys tackled him, held him down, and finally got him back to the aid post." "Valour and Horror" script

According to the Valour and the Horror, "psychiatric collapse was skyrocketing, responsible for almost one of every three casualties." V&H Copp is a bit more cautious in his estimation:

"By the middle of July, one in four non-fatal casualties was due to battle exhaustion and some officers questioned the humanitarian approach taken by the medical corps. The Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, especially, was committed to policies that placed the welfare of the individual soldier above considerations of manpower shortages, and Guy Simonds, among others, criticized the army's policy. The RCAMC, with the support of the General Officer Commanding, First Canadian Army, Harry Crerar, maintained its approach throughout the war, evacuating thousands of Canadian soldiers, most of whom were judged unable to return to combat."
(Copp: 171-2)

Other armies recognized shell shock for what it was: Acute psychiatric collapse; but, in the Canadian army, men breaking down with combat shock were always under suspicion. General Simonds, whose standards were "punishingly high" (Graham: 67) and who cursorily dismissed any of his officers who did not perform as he demanded ( Graham: 133) considered shell shock victims as cowards and malingerers.

SIMONDS
It requires the close attention of commanders to see that malingering is not only discouraged, but made a disgraceful offence. V&H

Normandy was not the first time the Canadian Army faced the frustration of losing troops to battle fatigue. "In the first years of the war, aircrew who refused to fly were labelled as LMF - lacking moral fibre - and removed from active service. They were treated harshly for the balance of their service, and were sometimes sent to work in the coal mines." (Bercuson 1995: 183)

"Nervous reaction to the strain of operation took many forms. Don Saunders, a 424 Squadron pilot, saw a rear gunner who "lost control in his walk. His legs shot out to the sides, his arms were flying all over the place, and he jibbered." Wilbur "Wib" Pierce, a flight commander with 433 Squadron based at Skipton-on-Swale, Yorkshire comments: "One could spot someone getting 'edgy' and give him a rest for a few days. I never had any cases of LMF and never would have. I felt it was an unfair categorization of a perfectly understandable stress situation." Edith Kup, formerly a WAAF intelligence officer with 405 Squadron ... debriefed one crew who had returned early from their first op and "it became apparent that something had happened with one of the young sergeants." The WAAFs took him into the Ops Room and had him lie down on a cot there, while they concocted a story of engine failure for the crew. Later they sent for the MO: "When he came and they lifted the sergeant, he was as stiff as a board. The MO said we were looking at someone literally scared stiff. He was carted off, never to reappear..." ( Dunmore 1991: 261-2)

Fighting in Sicily and Italy, had seen mounting casualties, 2119 fatal out of 9934. "[The] nature of the war in Italy and the daily dangers faced by the men had caused battle exhaustion casualties to mount at a rapid pace." (Bercuson 1995: 183)

"There is a wealth of evidence that all soldiers face battle exhaustion. Once known as shell-shock or battle fatigue, battle exhaustion generally results from a soldier's being too long in a combat zone with too little apparent prospect of survival. It is a phenomenon far more evident in long campaigns, even of relatively low intensity, than in short ones. Any soldier in a line unit, of any rank, can be stricken with battle exhaustion. Men too long under fire, watching comrades being killed in the most horrible fashion, getting more and more fatigued from lack of sleep and constant movement, living in mud and dirt with little or no news from home, would eventually crack. Even the bravest had their limits: no one was exempt..." (Bercuson 1995: 183)

"Battle exhaustion, the Second World War equivalent of the "shell shock" of the Great War or today's Combat Stress Reaction, had been a major problem for all three Allied armies in Italy, and the medical services were well prepared to deal with it in Normandy. Soldiers who broke under the pressure of battle usually suffered panic states that they could not control. Evacuated to Casualty Clearing Stations set aside for this purpose, the soldier was given twenty-four hours to rest and recuperate. A psychiatrist then tried to determine if he was fit to return to his unit or needed to be posted to a communications job away from combat."(Copp: 171)

The Canadian Army tried to prevent battle exhaustion through a regimen of troop morale: hot food when possible, regular mail, mobile baths, and fresh changes of clothing. Since such amenities are rarely available in action on the front, units rotated out of the line as often as the combat situation would allow. Men also took turns being LOB - left out of battle - so that some men were always fresh, ready for their next turn. When in reserve, men could avail themselves of canteens, movies, and live entertainment from the British-run NAAFI - the civilian Navy, Army, Air Force Institute - to the accompaniment of beer and hot meals. R&R reduced the likelihood of battle exhaustion. However:

"In the Italian theatre, men marched for days on end over bad roads, crossed rivers without apparent end, slept in the open in cold rainy winters and hot dusty summers, endured flies and disease, and witnessed the poverty and misery of the population. Combined with the tenacious and deadly defence of the German enemy, these conditions inevitably produced battle exhaustion in large numbers. Thus treatment was as important as prevention.
"Canadian army psychiatry was in its infancy at the beginning of the war, but knowledge about battle exhaustion eventually expanded and, with it, sensitivity to the problem. The key breakthrough was to recognize that ... those who did succumb were not "slacker" or coward, but men who had reached their limit.... that battle exhaustion was temporary -- a good sleep and a few calm days with food and rest usually restored a man's sense of balance and allowed him to return to his unit. In other cases, reassignment to other, noncombat duties was called for. In very rare cases, complete discharge was necessary. ... But it still took some convincing to win over old-line army officers... Simonds is a case in point. After weeks of hard fighting in Normandy, he concluded that infantry battalion commanding officers had to be replaced every four months because of the constant strain they were under and the consequent danger of mental breakdown. He also realized that adverse fighting conditions ... were major factors.. At the same time, however, he cautioned army medical officers not to take too lenient a view of battle exhaustion... [as in the] late August 1944 memo to his divisional commanders: [noted above]. (Bercuson 1995: 184)

In any war, the issue of psychiatric collapse will arise. In the first world war it was called 'shell shock', in the second world war it was sometimes called 'battle exhaustion', but often it was termed 'malingering.'

The soldiers who were brought to France without sufficient training would necessarily suffer greater degrees of psychiatric collapse. Joseph LeBouthilier, a corporal in the North Shore regiment recalls: "Some guys just stopped taking it. This fellow fell down like a dead man. We had to put him on a stretcher and carry him back. He said nothing; he just wasn't a man after that." V&H

General Guy Simonds was one of many who were unsympathetic to this condition. He is quoted in the film: "It requires the close attention of commanders to see that malingering is not only discouraged, but made a disgraceful offence." To the Canadian army, it was an offence, punishable by five years of hard labour in prison.

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Valour and Horror, Second World War, Canadian history, World War II, W.W.II