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| Two Exhausted Doughboys "Off Duty" By Harvey Dunn |
Almost 70,000 U.S. men in World War One were permanently evacuated from the line [for what was in those times mislabeled as "Shell Shock"]. More than 36,000 of these men were hospitalized for long periods from its effects. All told, 158,994 Doughboys were inactivated for some time for psychiatric reasons, [about 7.5% of all the men deployed to France, or nearly double that percentage for the likely victims, the 1 to 1.2 million troops who got to the front line.]
Veterans of Foreign Wars Magazine, Sept. 1997
Editor's Introduction
When I first ran across the figures quoted above—almost 30 years ago—I was astonished. I had known, of course, of the phenomenon, but I had no feel for the scale of the damage that had been done to America's forces. Re-reading the article sourced above in February 2026 has led me into a renewed level of astonishment. Recall that the AEF conducted major combat operations for only five and one-half months. Looking for some explanation for these huge numbers in published sources, I found a very helpful 2002 article on the Doughboy experience, "Americans as Warriors: 'Doughboys' in Battle during the First World War" by Professor Jennifer D. Keene. In this excerpt, while not getting into the psychological roots of shell shock or the modern approaches to PTSD, she vividly describes the experience of World War One combat and the battlefield environment into which inexperienced, under-trained men were thrown in 1918, and the early methods of patient care the injured received. After reading the selection, I think you will have a better appreciation of why the Doughboys suffered so many shell shock casualties.
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| The Eyes Have It Men of the 314th Infantry During the Meuse-Argonne |
By Jennifer D. Keene
In the trenches, American soldiers adjusted to living with mud, rats, human waste, and the stench of decomposing bodies. Constant artillery barrages and the ever present threat of an attack frayed the nerves of even the most steadfast. "To be shelled is the worse thing in the world," author Hervy Allen of the 28th Division noted. "It is impossible to adequately imagine it. In absolute darkness we simply lay and trembled from sheer nerve tension". Even if one could ignore the noise, the lice crawling on their skin or rats running over their bodies prevented many men from sleeping while in the front lines.
Steady shell fire meant constant casual ties, and men on the front lines often had to share their abode with the dead and dying, or the various body parts that remained after a shell explosion. One lieutenant recalled taking the time to bury an assortment of hands, arms, and legs to clear his trench at Chateau-Thierry of human debris. Mustard gas attacks that blinded and blistered their victims only compounded the physical and psychological misery of a stint in the trenches. "Those that weren't scared, weren't there," Medal of Honor recipient Private Clayton Slack later commented about the experience of trench warfare.
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| A Volunteer Corpsman Aids a Distressed Soldier |
Trying to make sense of their precarious situation, many soldiers developed superstitions or rituals that they felt offered protection at the front. Soldiers often contended that fate had targeted a specific shell expressly for them, a shell with "their name or number on it." One night, Bernard Eubanks recalled in his memoirs, "I had a strange dream or nightmare really. My company number was 84. During an intense bombardment I saw a huge missile coming my way with my number, 84, on it... but it passed over and never touched me." His temperament changed dramatically after this dream, because it "seemed to give me a sense of immunity that stayed with me for quite a while. I lost my jittery feeling." Just as Eubanks's positive vision gave him comfort, others believed that poorly chosen thoughts or conversations jinxed them. Corporal Ernie Hilton recalled the time he and his buddies overcame their reluctance to discuss the future, a subject they usually considered taboo, and had a long conversation about what they planned to do after the war. The next day, 34 of the 40 men in the trench were wounded or killed during a shell attack. "From then on I never spoke of the future," Hilton said. Others turned to more traditional sources for resolve. "My prayer book gave me courage and comfort when under fire," Sergeant Stephen Morray recalled.
In the trenches, American soldiers lived within a few hundred yards of their German opponents, yet rarely saw them. An array of rumors helped soldiers create tangible images of their unseen enemy, who, according to these "soldier's tales," was a particularly clever and brutal foe. In a favorite ruse, according to soldier storytellers, German soldiers wore French uniforms or Red Cross brassards, pretended they were wounded, and lay on the battlefield to lure Allied soldiers into direct range of German machine guns. Another German trick began with a group of German machine gunners pretending to surrender by yelling "Comrade" in order to draw the troops who came to collect the prisoners into the open. Equally gory stories of the bloodthirsty revenge American soldiers exacted for such crimes countered these lavish tales of barbaric treachery. Soldiers repeatedly spoke of companies that captured snipers, gave them shovels, forced them to dig their own graves, then shot them.
Once they came into actual contact with dead Germans, many doughboys abandoned their taste for such macabre tales. Coming upon a German corpse in the Argonne Forest, one sergeant surprised himself by thinking that "these Germans didn't look like such bloody monsters. Quite an ordinary everyday crowd." A corporal undoubtedly spoke for others when he noted that "in the heat of battle men do not realize that the enemy is only a scared, frightened boy like we are, killing for self preservation and because he has to and hating it as bad as we do".
When Americans left the trenches to actively pursue the Germans, fighting on the open battlefield also disappointed those seeking glory in combat. In the Meuse-Argonne campaign, Donald Kyler found himself going numb as the horrors multiplied. "I had seen mercy killings, both of our hopelessly wounded and those of the enemy. I had seen the murder of prisoners of war, singly and as many as several at one time. I had seen men rob the dead of money and valuables, and had seen men cut off the fingers of corpses to get rings," he explained.
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| Unidentified Shell Shock Patient |
In the closing months of the war, a significant number of undertrained soldiers headed to the front lines. General John J. Pershing had expected these recently arrived replacement troops to receive additional training in France, but with Germany falling back, circumstances forced him to send these desperately needed men into battle. Division commanders complained bitterly about hem, feeling, as one inspector general put it, that sending untrained men into battle was "little short of murder. How we have escaped a catastrophe is a clear demonstration of the German demoralization." Although aware of their poor preparation, few untrained troops refused to fight. Instead, "when issued rifles they asked to be shown 'how to work this thing so that they could go up and get a "boche,"'" exclaimed the inspector general.
All battle accounts include some mention of soldiers collapsing from the strain of continuous artillery bombardments, the sight of bodies blown to bits, wearing tight gas masks for hours, or sheer exhaustion. After morning-to-night bombardments during the three straight weeks the 78th Division spent along the front lines in the Meuse-Argonne campaign, some soldiers "went into shock or coma from which they could not be aroused ... these shell-shock victims fell down as if they had been hit but actually they hadn't been touched," Corporal Paul Murphy later recalled, "they were completely helpless, mumbling and trembling at each new explosion"). Despite these soldiers' obvious suffering, the army did not consider shell-shock a legiti mate war injury. According to the chief surgeon of the Medical Department, "the so-called 'shell-shock' patients are no more entitled to a 'wound' chevron than are soldiers who are seized with an acute medical complaint due to exposure in battle, to the elements or to bad water or indigestible food".
Men diagnosed with shell-shock suffered from nightmares and panic attacks. Some could not sleep or speak. Private Duncan Kemerer of the 28th Division arrived at the base hospital in such poor condition that the sound of a spoon dropping sent him frantically searching for cover under his bed. After resting and eating well for a few days, however, Kemerer returned to his unit. Most soldiers who suffered from shell shock, battle exhaustion, or gas hysteria (a malady in which soldiers described physical symptoms associated with gas but had no actual injuries) voluntarily returned to thefront after a few days rest in a field hospital. If rest and food were not enough to convince men to take this step once the tremors had stopped and speech and memory returned, field psychiatrists emphasized to each man that their comrades needed them and that the glory of victory would be lost to them forever if they failed to return to the front.
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| Regardless of the Human Toll, the Army Marched On |
Men usually responded to these appeals to their honor, masculinity, duty, and ambition. Whether these soldiers were cured is another question. Three out of every five beds in government hospitals were filled in the interwar period with veterans suffering from shell-shock. Anecdotal evidence also underscores that many veterans had difficulty forgetting the wartime horrors they had witnessed. Three years after returning home, for instance, Walter Zukowski was not alone in noting that he was still fighting the war in his dreams. Many other veterans described themselves as nervous, jumpy, and unstable for years afterwards.
Sources: "Americans as Warriors: "Doughboys" in Battle during the First World War", Jennifer D. Keene, Magazine of History, Oct. 2002, Full Article; "Brotherhood of the Damned", VFM Magazine, Sept. 1997, Full Article
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