Morality, First World War, Mental Health Issues - Case Study Example

MORALITY, FIRST WORLD WAR, MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES Name Institution The film Gallipoli was released in 1981, and it depicts how several young men mostly from the rural areas of Western Australia were recruited in the Australian army and participated in the First World War (Rae, 2007). The movie shows the ideal and condition the Australians faced during the war. As the movie continue the young soldiers slowly loose their innocence and the purpose of the war (Alexander, 2010). The climax of the movie is the battle of Nek which took place at Anzac Gallipoli in the empire of ottoman (present day turkey) (Weir’s, 1981). This thesis evaluates the morality depicted in the film and gives an account on the historical shock the young frontline soldiers experienced. The film unfairly portrays Englishmen as incompetent due to the character of Colonel Robinson. Robinson in the movie defies the chain of command at the Nek (Weir’s, 1981). The tragedy that ensues afterwards shifts the blame squarely to 3rd Australian light horse commander brigadier Frederic Hughes and his counterpart Antill (Australian Government Department of Veteran’s Affair, 2009). However in reality the 4th wave charged without orders ant the regimental commander of the brigade tried to call off the attack. This scene in the film shows that the Australian commanders in the battlefield were incompetent. The Australians who were fighting for the allies died for the British who took their time to assist in the attack at Nek (Weir’s, 1981). The disdain between the British army and Australian troop is clearly portrayed as the Britons blame the indiscipline of Australian troops on that tragedy (Australian Government Department of Veteran’s Affair, 2009). This shows that the commanders of the troops were morally incorrect in all their decisions causing significant battle damages. The Gallipoli campaign had close to 50,000 Australian soldiers. These soldiers were stationed off the beaches fighting Turkish defenders on the ridges inland. The initial plan was to move swiftly and capture the straits of Dardanelles. However, the causalities of the battle kept increasing minute by minute. The troops encountered a strong opposition Turkish opposition, and they lost 2000 soldiers on the first day (Weir’s, 1981). This decision to attack from the beach seemed not to bear fruits. It showed that the Australian army was not well organised and prepared for this battle (Alexander, 2010). They were forced to take drastic measures by digging a trench along the ridge line to hide from the Turkish attacks. As a result of the battle, 8709 Australians lost their lives. This prompted the British to begin evacuating the soldiers from the battle zone (Weir’s, 1981). This move was successful since they succeeded to save a considerable number of soldiers from the battle. The film gives an account on how the Australian army strategized and their experiences in the battlefield (Weir’s, 1981). The strategy of attacking the enemy in waves also hit a snag as the Turkish kept overpowering them in each strike. This led to the collapse of the offensive allied forces and immediately the campaign stalled. The evacuation process was the only successful mission in the war. The harsh experience of the war had mental impact on the survived soldiers. Many of these individual were treated with disdain of sabotaging the mission at Gallipoli. Most of them attributed social distrust character after they were brought back home (Scheff, 1966). During and after the war the medical services offered these by the Australian government were insignificant. There was a low level of diagnostic of the mental ill patients. The doctors and nurses claimed that they were ill equipped to deal with the psychiatric phenomenon (Rae, 2007). During the war not only did the soldiers endure pain, but also mental and emotional distress (Alexander, 2010). Soldiers were becoming emotionally challenged in line of duty and outside the battle zone. Most of the soldiers were young men and the scenes of dead bodies and loud blasts and injuries were disturbing hence making them unstable. In addition, the lethality of the war was unbearable to such young minds (Rae, 2007). This caused hysteria to the soldiers (Micale, 1990). As a result of lacking a professional term, the medics on the battle field termed the symptoms as shell shock. This was due to the fact that the brains of the soldiers were shaken by the shrapnel from the explosion of grenades and artillery shells. The symptoms were severe that they influenced other soldiers who were not on the battle line (Micale, 1990). The film Gallipoli shows the brutal battle that ensued during their encounter with the Turkish forces (Alexander, 2010). This provides evidence that the terror and stress of warfare was the main cause of the psychological ailment. The high tech war weapons such as chemical weapons, breech loading riffles and big berthas led to the high numbers of causalities in the war (Rae, 2007). The constant exposure of deaths and the fear of being the next victim broke the spirit of the young men and hence they developed hysteria. The mental ailment was blamed for the defeat of the Australian forces (Moore, 1980). Although many critics lament that the failure of the Australian imperial forces was due to the incompetence of the young age. It was wrong for the troop leadership to start blame games instead of seeking possible solutions on how to assist the ill soldiers. The soldiers endured unrelated symptoms of shell shock. These symptoms reduced the once respected men to mental ill persons. This made those who were once seen as heroes to be reduced to zero (Ibell, 2004). Doctors who examined many of the patients linked illness to the defective morality in military activities, in the global conflict. Many civilians trained health professionals had a different view on the shell shock military personnel. They changed the attitude towards the patients, and as a result, there was advancement in the field of mental treatment (Rae, 2007). The imperative of the First World War was an increase in Post war stress disorder in almost all the survivors of the First World War soldiers from Australia. Physicians ascertain that the shell shock disorder was caused by trench fever and stress of combat (Rae, 2007). These soldiers had common characters such as insomnia, extreme shaking fits, paralysis and confusion (Scheff, 1966). The initial cases of these symptoms led to the severe punishment of the ill soldiers by their commanders. In some incidences, the patients were shot dead to minimise liability in the battle field. Another drastic measure they took was to recall the shell shocked soldiers’ from the trenches to bomb proof areas (Ibell, 2004). Despite these measures, the military commanders questioned the manhood of these soldiers since they believed that hysteria was a feminine illness (Moore, 1980). The physicians and psychologists started to review different therapies to cure the mental distress. Among the therapies used was the electroshock therapy where they administer an electric shock to patients to try to make them stop twitching or cure their paralysis (Rae, 2007). On the contrary, this was a brutal way to treat hysteria (Moore, 1980). Other therapies were psychotherapy, vibratory massage and gym exercises. The progress of mental illness treatment continued from 1918 to 1939. However, the beginning of the Second World War negated the development. This impaired the efforts to manage post war trauma inflicted to the soldiers (Micale, 1990). This was vivid since soldiers who participated in the Second World War did not benefit from the lessons learnt from the First World War. There were still soldiers who suffered from post war traumatic stress. Today, the Australian government have intensified clinical assistance to the historical war soldiers. It was morally wrong for the Australian government to take the soldiers to war without assessing the post war impacts and how to treat this issue (Rae, 2007). Most of the decisions taken on the battle field such as shooting the shell shocked patients just to do away with battle liability. However, it was morally right for the medics to try and come up with a perfect cure for the mental illness. The therapies they came up with were inhuman and they shadowed the moral act of trying to cure the illness. These actions taken by most of these commanders in the battle field does not qualify the definition of morality. References Alexander, Caroline. (2010). "THE SHOCK OF WAR." Smithsonian, 41(5), 58-66. Australian Government Department of Veteran’s Affair (2009). “Anzac Day,” 1-2 http://www.dva.gov.au/news_archive/Documents/090327_GallipoliCampaign.pdf Ibell, Bernadette Mary. (2004). “An analysis of mental health care in Australia from a social justice and human rights perspective, with special reference to the influences of England and the united states of America: 1800-2004.” School of philosophy Australian catholic university, 1-392 http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/digitaltheses/public/adt-acuvp113.25102006/02whole.pdf Micale, Mark S. (1990). “Charcot and the Idea of Hysteria in the Male: Gender, Mental Science, and Medical Diagnosis in Late Nineteenth-Century France.” Medical History, 34, 363-411. Moore, M. (1980). Legal Conceptions of Mental Illness. In Mental Illness Law And Public Policy. London: Reidel. Print. Rae, Ruth. (2007). "An historical account of shell shock during the First World War and reforms in mental health in Australia 1914–1939." International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 16(4),. 266-273. Scheff, T. (1966). Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory, Chicago: Algine. Print. Weir's, Peter (Director). (1981). Gallipoli. Read More