Original Title/Caption: "American Wounded,"
Invasion of France, 9 June 1944

Description: This black and white photograph is medics on the beach in Normandy tending to wounded soliders after the Allied invasion of German-occupied France. In the foreground three medics wearing the white badges with red crosses on them that distinguished them as medical aid personnel tend to an injured man on a stretcher who also appears to be a medic. Just behind these medics and on the left, you see the sides of two other medics at work. In the background, another medic sits by himself and appears to be staring off into space. The ground is scattered with shovels and other equiptment. This photograph was taken on June 9, 1944.

Source: “American Wounded.” Photograph, 1944.  From the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum Photos of World War II Public Domain Collection.
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/images/photodb/23-0440a.gif (accessed March 26, 2007).

Historical discussion: Notice the medic in the background who appears to be staring into space. This stare was a classic symptom of combat breakdown which was often followed by an abandonment of one's drive to protect one's self.

Soldiers in combat during World War II witnessed the terrifying horror of modern warfare, with its increasingly destructive weapons. Ernie Pyle, a famous war correspondent, reported that the beach at Normandy in the wake of D-Day, the invasion of France by Allied troops, was strewn with body parts, wrecked ships, and abandoned equipment. In the jungles of places like New Guinea, other soldiers faced different horrors in the war with Japan. The fighting was intense, and soldiers also battled insects which carried diseases like malaria as well as the strange darkness of the jungle. The destruction, the terrible noise, and the horror proved to be too much for many soldiers to bare.

Much of the Armed Forces viewed soldiers suffering from mental breakdowns as cowards. Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., infamously assaulted two soldiers hospitalized for psychological problems in Sicily. Patton smacked one soldier, who had been mistakenly diagnosed with severe anxiety, across the face with his gloves and physically tossed him out of the hospital tent. In his diary, Patton compared his actions to slapping a baby to make it come to. The young man, as it turns out, actually had malaria and dysentery. The scene was imblematic of the attitude many military officials took towards men facing mental breakdowns.

The military only truly began to try to salvage men facing mental breakdowns as the problem became increasingly widespread and as it became clear that the military would need to conserve its manpower.

See Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), especially Chapter 5; and Albert E. Cowdrey, Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1994), especially Chapters 7 and 12.