WHY SOLDIERS GO MAD.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 593, 4 January 1916, Page 11

WHY SOLDIERS GO MAD.

SHOCK OF ARTILLERY FIRE.

"DUST, EARTH, AND SMOKE

A British officer at the front gives the following description of bombardment by German artillery and its effects:—

"Soon the trench was wrapped in all eddying fog of dust, earth, and smoke. You did not merely hear the noise with your ears; you became physically stunned by it. Howitzers are generally dotted about singly in concealed positions, but on this occasion the Germans had them in batteries of four, placed together like field guns. You could hear the four muffled thuds in quick succession as the batteries fired. A moment's pause, and then the shells came hurrying into hearing, starting as a murmur/and rising to a shriek as they rushed at you. "Would this lot get you? Yes—no—yes—no—they would burst altogether with a splitting crash that bounced you up and down as if the trench was a tramcar in motion. "I think it is this lying listening to the shells that drives people insane during big bombardments. The ground heaves up and down when they burst, but when they strike and fail to burst you oscilate from side to side if you are close enough. I don't know why there should be this difference. Buried Under Tons of Earth. "No place is safer than another in the trench, as these great shells dig out the entire section of trench they hit, and bury everything and everyone under tons of earth. At the end of the day there were hundreds of yards of trench that were only traced in the ground. Quite early in the day my pack and equipment were blown to nothingness, where they lay on the back parapet. There is absolutely nothing to do but lie and wait, feeling like a moth pinned on a cork. "So the endless day wore on. Survivors were rushing to the places where the last salvos had burst, where the half-buried and crushed were shrieking hoarsely for help, digging, frenziedly with tools and hands, with bleeding nails, like dogs in their efforts to get them out before they were suffocated. If you found legs sticking out from the earth you pulled at them, and if there was any response you tried, to dig them out, but if they made no response you concluded they were; dead, and dug where you would be of more use. "An oldish, grey-looking, man near me, who had been quietly chuckling to himself and drawing figures in the mud with his finger, suddenly gave yells of laughter and sprang out of the trench before anyone could save him. He ran about jumping and shouting, until he fell, riddled by the machine guns that had been sweeping up and down the top . of our parapets all the time, in the hope of catching unwary heads. Just before that I had to tell off an orderly to look after a man whose hand had been shot off, who was trying to do just the same thing. Self-control Slipping Away. "It is an extraordinary sensation to feel your reason tottering and your self-control slipping. It is a real, almost physical, sensation. You feel it slipping as plainly as the first quickening glide on a switchback at Karl's Court, and the effort to hold on is as real as grip-ring the sides as the car plunges downwards.

"I think everyone has had to build up a dual personality. For instance, take the universal phenomenon out here of the man who at home would certainly not have made a hearty meal if it had been served to him in a well-stocked mortuary, but because you see him now eating jam and biscuit amid appalling human wreckage, it does not mean that he has been brutalised. On the contrary, he is now, and for always a far sadder man with a vast capacity for human pity that he never knew before."