War Neurosis in the 1920s (Part V)

Francis undergoes hypnotherapy

“Now, Francis, the moment that you feel my hand on your forehead, you will be back in your years in France during the Great War.  You will live again some of the experiences that have disturbed you ever since.”  Carmen touches her brother’s forehead.  “You are back near the Western Front.  What do you remember?”

“I remember the noise,” Francis replies.  “So many times, the violent hail of German fire.  The noise never stops.”

“More specifically?” Carmen asks. 

“I remember the crackle of the rifles,” Francis continues, “the hacking of the grenades, the clacking of the machine guns.”

“Noise that never stops,” Carmen coaxes him along.

“The thundering noises of battle,” says Francis, “day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.”

“Rifles, you say, and grenades and machine guns,” says Carmen.

“I remember the bullets,” Francis says.  “Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss.  I remember the machine guns.  Tat-tat-tat, tat-tat-tat.  I remember the shells.  Zwiing, crash, clang.”

“You hear these all the time?” asks Carmen.

“Away from the front lines I hear the dull booms from the howitzers,” Francis says.  “When I go closer to the front lines I hear the raging machine guns, the thunderous exploding shells, the angry rifles, the whistling bullets, the unending hisses and buzzes and whizzes and crashes.”

“What else?” asks Carmen.

“The air is heavy with lead,” says Francis.  “Deadly ammo rains from the sky.”

“Rains on people,” Carmen adds.

“The lead and the steel, always flying toward us,” says Francis.  “Bullets whipping over our heads.  Shells bursting all around us, detonating with awful force.” 

“What do you feel?” Carmen asks.

“All of us wondering ‘is that sound coming at me or not?’” Francis answers.  “With each bombarding roar, we’re left even more deaf.  With each new noise, we feel even more dread.  With each volley, we feel even more doomed.  There are men who break down, shrieking, when they hear a gun.  For the rest of us, it‘s always frightening and sometimes terrifying.  What do we feel?   We feel fear.”

“This is good for today,” Carmen says.  “Francis, you will be waking soon.  Upon waking, you will have no fear or terror about what you’ve recalled.” 

She directs him very specifically out of the hypnotic state.  “Remember the ladder you climbed down earlier.  Begin climbing back up this ladder.  Leave the bottom of the well behind.  The bottom rung of the ladder is the fifth rung.  Place your foot on the fifth rung and pull yourself up.  Climb up, up, up.  Stand on the fourth rung.  Step up to the third rung.  Climb up to the second rung.  Set your foot on the top rung of the ladder.  Step out of the well.  Wake up.”

Francis comes out of his trance state.  Carmen instructs Francis to repeat everything he’s said while under hypnosis.  Francis repeats it all faithfully.

Tuesday, April 11.  While he took about 12 minutes to enter the hypnotic trance state yesterday, today Francis takes about seven minutes.

“So, Francis, what are you doing in France these four years?” Carmen asks.

“My employer, the Guyton and Harrington Company, has its own veterinary hospitals,” Francis answers, “and I’m in charge of veterinary care for all the mules as they come through.” 

“Tell us more about your work,” says Carmen.

“One mule is having trouble walking and drops down to the ground,” Francis recalls.  “I feel my way across his back and find the problem is in the discs – those little pads of cartilage and fibrous tissue between the vertebrae.  I sense that two discs are protruding into his spinal canal.  I do what I can, but my surgical work fails.  He’s unable to walk.  He ends up with complete posterior paralysis, dragging his hind limbs behind him.  He has no reflexes and stares fixedly ahead.  I choose to not shoot him.  I let him die a natural death.”

“The most compassionate thing you can do,” Carmen observes. 

“But it isn’t usually like that,” Francis replies.  “Another mule gets hit with shrapnel in his hoof,” he says, recoiling from the memory.  “The circulation to the hoof is cut off and the leg gets cold and clammy.  I try washing out the wound with antiseptic, snipping away pieces of damaged muscle, and keeping it bandaged.  But the dead tissue keeps sloughing, and in places white bones can be seen.  They look like fingers with strands of skin covering them.  There’s nothing else I can do.  I have to shoot him in the head.” 

“Difficult,” says Carmen.

Francis remembers another incident.  “A mule is hit in the chest and some of her nerves near her ribs are paralyzed.  This puts some of her muscles out of action and her leg becomes useless.  A three-legged mule is of no use to anyone.  I have to shoot her in the head.”

“Devastating,” says Carmen.

“That may not be my worst failure,” Francis continues.  “I see a mule who develops a nasty abscess in the back of his throat.  It’s inaccessible and it gets larger and interferes more and more with his breathing.  I try to manage the abscess with salve and injections, hoping it’ll burst.  It doesn’t.  It keeps getting worse and so does he.  He becomes thin, skeletal.  He begins coughing painfully and his breathing becomes shallow, belabored, raspy.  He stares at the wall, laying there rigidly hour after hour, his eyes filled with terror.  I decide to perform surgery.  But it’s very risky surgery.  To save him I have to get my knife past both his carotid artery and his jugular vein.  I apply local anesthesia from his ear to his jaw, lay out my instruments, incise his skin, and hold thin layers of muscle apart with retractors.  But I nick his artery.  He’s dead within a minute.”  

“Oh, Francis, that’s tragic,” Carmen empathizes.

“It leaves me in shambles,” Francis observes.  “All of these events occur at the veterinary hospitals.  I never go all the way to the trenches on the Front, but a couple dozen times I accompany the mule-drawn wagons full of weapons and food.  Usually we have six mules pulling a wagon.  We only go so far forward and then we drop off the supplies a couple miles back from the front lines.  I tell you, the Germans know every inch of the roads that lead toward the Front.  At night, they aim their artillery at our convoys of wagons and wreak as much havoc as they can.”

“By havoc, you mean suffering,” says Carmen.

“Suffering for both the mules and the men,” Francis recalls.  “As they run the gauntlet, my mule teams are hurled into the air, like pieces of paper blown by the wind.  There will be a hole as big as 12 feet where the road had been.  The groans and shrieks of the wounded and dying mules make my blood run cold.  My job is to save as many mules as possible.”

“You probably save quite a few,” Carmen ventures.

“Many,” Francis replies.  “But so many I cannot.  Some of them suffer horrific injuries to their bodies.  To their hindquarters, to their torsos, to their bellies.  Their entrails will be lying beside them.  Giant wounds, but they’re still living.  I have to shoot them in the head, one by one, to end their suffering, their agony.”

“The most merciful thing you could do for each of them,” Carme offers.

Francis turns even more solemn.  “The mules that survive the war, some are sold as work animals but most of them are sent to the slaughterhouses.  I know about it, but there’s nothing I can do about it.  My mare Maria looks at me as she’s led away.  I swear, she knows.  But I’m powerless, completely helpless, to prevent her being slaughtered for meat.”

“None of this was your fault in any way, dear Francis,” Carmen concludes.  “You did everything in your power to save every creature you could.”

Carmen pulls Francis out of the hypnotic state and has him repeat all these memories a second time in a conscious state.

Wednesday, April 12.  Francis is inducted into trance in just five minutes. 

“You’ve remembered destruction and you’ve remembered the animals,” observes Carmen.  “What about human beings?  What do you remember most about people?”

“Death,” replies Francis.  “Everywhere, death.  Death always present.  We are always looking on death, so much death.  So many corpses.  All the land around us full of human bodies – bodies, bodies, bodies – sprawled out or piled up, stiff, pale, waxy, cold.”

“So many,” Carmen repeats.

“They come back from the trenches, and sometimes more of them have died than have lived,” Francis says.  “If more than half of a company was killed or wounded, the Brits would call the day’s battle ‘sharp and brisk’.  A Tommy would glance over at me and tell me ‘sharp and brisk.  We’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’”

“How did you think of the Western Front?” Carmen asks.

“As a slaughterhouse,” says Francis.  “As the Valley of Death.  As the Inferno.” 

“You usually saw the bodies from a distance?” asks Carmen.

“Usually,” he replies.  “But often you’d walk a few feet from them.  They’d lay, all clothed, with their matted hair, face down in the mud.  Or you’d see one standing, propped against a tree, his eyes – he’d seem to look right at you, but he couldn’t see you.  He was gone.”

“You witness horror,” Carmen observes.

“I am witness to so much human worth, closed in on by Death, taken from life by a piece of lead,” Francis says.  “Death makes them all Its own.  I am witness to a Grand Shame.  And always, the Spirit of Pity whispering to us ‘why’?”

“These scenes always disturbed you during the War,” says Carmen, “and continue to.”

Francis pauses a moment before he continues.  “I remember a British officer yelling to a medic, ‘leave that body be, boys, he’s dead.  Now move this dead one here over there with the older dead.’  It always seems like a sacrilege to step over a dead body.”

Carmen pulls Francis out of this induction and has him faithfully repeat his memories a second time.

Thursday, April 13.  Four minutes for the trance induction.  “Francis,” Carmen says gently, “what are your more vivid memories of death during the War?”

Francis is silent for half a minute, then answers.  “I see the Tommies.  I see their dead bodies riddled with bullets.  Standing.  Sitting.  Laying.  Crumpled up.  Their uniforms filthy with mud and soaked with blood.”

“So many bodies,” echoes Carmen.

“And I don’t just see bodies,” Francis shares.  “I see body parts.  A limb here – a leg laying on the ground, an arm flung out from a pile of bodies.  Smaller body parts.  Hands reaching up out of the mud.  Lips of ash that seem to wail.  Bits of dead men everywhere.  Bulged heads, oozing brains.  The bloodstains.  The slime.”

“Horrifying memories,” says Carmen.

“And I don’t just see them,” Francis declares.  “I smell them.  The stench.  Their flesh rotting, reeking, degrading, decaying.  Those pungent odors.  It’s all so filthy and vile.”

“What was the worst of it?” Carmen asks.

“The flies and the rats,” Francis replies.  “Buzzing flies.  Swarms of flies.  Flies by the millions, crawling over the unburied corpses.  And rats.  Legions of rats.  Huge rats.  Rats feasting on the flesh of cadavers.  Rats gorging on human remains.”

“You still have nightmares about the rats,” Carmen observes.

“I dream that the rats mistake me for a dead man,” Francis says, “and bite one of my knuckles and then eat me alive.”

Carmen pulls Francis out of the induction and he repeats a second time in a normal state of mind what he’s just recalled under hypnosis.

Friday, April 14.  Three minutes for the trance induction.  Francis begins.  “I can still hear a truck full of wounded men motoring up to the casualty clearing station.  Some of the Tommies are quiet, including every Tommy who’s in shock.  The other arriving Tommies offer up a grisly chorus of groans, cries, sobs, and screams.”

“You hear this sometimes in your nightmares,” Carmen adds.

“Yes,” Francis says.  “And I see it.  I still see the blood – the trickling of warm, sticky blood.  I see Tommy clutch his wounds with his fist.  I see him grope his neck with his fingers.  I see his face grimace with each lance of pain.”

“Each one has a unique wound?” Carmen asks. 

“Yes,” he replies.  “One by one they are carried to a table.  I see and hear them writhing, their flesh mangled by lead and steel.”

“What parts of their body are injured?” asks Carmen.

“If they have a wound of the foot or the hand, they call it ‘a lucky wound’,” Francis observes.  “If a muscle is slashed or a bone smashed in an arm or a leg, you know they’ll be fine once it heals.  They’ll say, ‘I can spare an arm, but I cannot lose my leg.’  But in time the one-armed man sits in one bed while the one-legged man sits next to him.  Each is an amputee, each has a hump, and each has bandages with blood seeping out.”

“Who else do you see?” she asks him.

“I see the soldier with a gash in his forehead,” Francis continues.  “He gets sewn up and a bandage is wrapped around his head.  He’ll be all right.  I see the young man with his ear torn off by shrapnel.  At least he’ll be functional the rest of his life.  I see the man strafed by metal in his stomach, bleeding profusely.  He makes it too.”

“And you see cases worse that this,” Carmen prompts him.

“I also see the young men who are blinded, who are maimed for months, who are crippled for life,” Francis says, getting more agitated.  “I see young men with severe facial wounds.  The surgeon’s work is sophisticated but they are left with disfigurements of their faces, and some of these disfigurements are hideous.  They are depressed.  Some say, ‘I’ll never go in public again.’  Some get suicidal.  But some say, ‘I’m going to devote the rest of my life to caring for other people with facial wounds.’” 

“Inspiring,” says Carmen, “and instructive.  Any worse than these?”

“Yes,” says Francis, shaking.  “I see those with wounds beyond the skilled work of any surgeon.  Those with a charred body.  Those with a torso torn horribly by machine-gun fire.  Those shot in the head.  Those who’ve been ripped open as if they’d run into the full swing of an ax.  With each of these young men, the doctor declares ‘he hasn’t a chance’.  They get extra morphine.” 

“How does all this make you feel?” asks Carmen.

“There’s nothing left to feel,” says Francis.  “Amidst all this carnage, we do all we can to reduce Tommy’s suffering.  But we have no tears left.”

One last time Carmen guides Francis out of the hypnotic state and back into normal awareness.  One last time she has him repeat what he recalled under hypnosis.  One last time he does so faithfully.