Soldier's Heart

Today is Veterans' Day, and on this day, 92 years ago, the armistice was signed that ended the Great War. Unfortunately, many soldiers know that the war doesn't end with the fighting. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, afflicts many war veterans.

Today HBO premiered their documentary, about PTSD from the Civil War to the Iraq War, called Wartorn: 1861-2010.  It is a heartbreaking look into the lives of soldiers who suffer psychologically from war. The studying of war's psychological effects started with the Civil War. These soldiers were said to have suffered from soldier's heart, hysteria, melancholy, insanity, and with each war this "affliction" was named differently. In WWI it was Shell Shock; WWII it was battle fatigue; Vietnam War it was Post-Vietnam Syndrome.

I had put up a post a few weeks ago called Shell Shocked, about PTSD in WWI survivors. But much of what I posted was from the British Army. In Wartorn, they read an anecdote of a shell-shocked American WWI vet. It describes how little the government did to help these soldiers after the war ended. They actually touch upon this in HBO's new drama Boardwalk Empire . One of the characters, James Darmody, has just returned from fighting in France during WWI, and you can see how the war affected him both physically and mentally. He calls himself a murder.

Watch Wartorn. It will make you extremely gratefully to the soldiers who are fighting for this country right this minute.

The photo above is from www.Old-Picture.com . Great site with great photos. Click on the picture for more info about it.  I always did love old Civil War photos. The quality for the time is amazing. I use my $100 digital camera, and sometimes you can barely tell who is in the picture. Then again, the men in this photo probably had to pose like that for 15 minutes.