Funny how that shows every person online claiming to have PTSD from online bullying have nothing of the sort.
Funny to use the word "funny" in relation to other people's suffering.
Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
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Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#12If 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.
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#13There 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).
It is available free as a Kindle ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Over-Top-Arthur-Guy-Empey-ebook/dp/B0... (some reviews can be found here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1517707.Over_The_Top)
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.
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#14Funny how that shows every person online claiming to have PTSD from online bullying have nothing of the sort.
Funny to use the word "funny" in relation to other people's suffering.
You are right, it isn't so funny that people would equate being bullied with having your brain literally scrambled by explosive concussion.
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny to use the word "funny" in relation to other people's suffering.
You are right, it isn't so funny that people would equate being bullied with having your brain literally scrambled by explosive concussion.
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."
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#16The 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 an…
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.
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#17France is still digging up and disposing of tons of unexploded ordnance from WWI. About 900 tons a year, every year.
This is the so called red zone, here are some pictures about it: http://imgur.com/gallery/CdxZM
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right, it isn't so funny that people would equate being bullied with having your brain literally scrambled by explosive concussion.
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."
> They're just saying "I hurt," not "I am just as damaged as a veteran at the receiving end of an artillery barrage."
No, that is literally what they are saying.
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
> They're just saying "I hurt," not "I am just as damaged as a veteran at the receiving end of an artillery barrage." No, that is literally what they are saying.
Literally, as in those exact words? I'm going to have to ask for a source on that.
Re: Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
#20France is still digging up and disposing of tons of unexploded ordnance from WWI. About 900 tons a year, every year.
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.
I'd run across a good article on that a year or so back. Search doesn't turn it up, though a NatGeo piece covers it: http://nationalgeographic.org/news/red-zone/
42,000 acres, which is 170 km^2 or 65 mi^2.