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Shell shock: losing your nerve

A full year before the D-Day landings in Normandy, there were the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy. Canada played a major role in the Allies' first breach of Hitler's "Fortress Europe" in 1943 and 1944. Canadian soldiers defeated entrenched German forces but paid a terrible price. Seaside towns and mountain passes became places of horror: Ortona, Cassino, Rimini. But with the events of D-Day and the Allied push across Europe, the Italian Campaign became a forgotten front, a deadly sideshow that cost nearly 6,000 Canadian lives. Sixty years later, their bravery is remembered.

Most war reports focus on stories that will inspire the war effort, but there are some things that can't be sugar-coated. One of them is "shell shock" -- soldiers suffering a kind of mental breakdown after days of unbearable terror on the front. In a grimly frank report Sgt. Joe Grieves, staff writer for the Canadian service newspaper The Maple Leaf, describes Canadian soldiers breaking down and losing their nerve in Northern Italy.

• "Shell shock" or "battle fatigue" was first diagnosed by British military doctors in 1914. Some thought it was brain damage caused by artillery shells bursting overhead; others thought it was simply cowardice and sent their patients back to the front. Some of these soldiers disobeyed orders, deserted or committed suicide. Today it is called post-traumatic stress disorder: a witness or victim of something terrible is mentally or physically affected by their ordeal.

• The Maple Leaf newspaper is still published weekly and can be read on the Department of National Defence website:
http://www.dnd.ca/menu/maple/main_e.htm

Photo: Alexander M. Stirton / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / National Archives of Canada PA-144979
Medium: Radio
Program: CBC Radio News
Broadcast Date: Dec. 4, 1944
Reporter: Sgt. Joe Grieves, Bill Herbert
Duration: 4:47

Last updated: April 3, 2012

Page consulted on May 8, 2013

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