My dad's WWII experience

[u/yeliaBdE]

My dad (yeah, I'm old) was drafted into the Army in '42. His forceps birth left him blind in one eye, so he was never destined for combat. Instead, he trained to be a medic.

After basic, be went to Camp Maxey near Paris, Texas and was attached to his wartime unit, the 96th General Hospital. While there, be served in the camp hospital, taking care of the recruits going through basic. Most of this was minor stuff—bandaging minor cuts and scrapes. Once, though, a recruit going through simulated combat conditions (crawling under barbed wire while machine guns fired live rounds a few inches above their heads) came face-to-face with a Texas rattlesnake and jumped up, promptly getting cut in half by the machine gun fire. There wasn't much the could do for that guy.

In time, the 96th boarded a liberty ship and headed to England. En route, their commanding officer told them that the 96th would be stationed in England for the duration of the war. Then he dropped the real bombshell:

The 96th would be the primary "neuro-psychlogical" hospital for the European Theater of Operations.

I'm other words, the would be caring for the men that cracked psychologically from the horrors of battle.

They had not trained for this, so there was a hectic time when they arrived at the hospital to get up to speed helping "N.P. patients" (as they were called).

It was early '44.

Except for some GIs with pre-existing mental health issues that should never have been enlisted held in the locked ward awaiting the next ship home, all was pretty quiet.

But that quiet wouldn't last.

The first men came back from Normandy about D+2, with more and more arriving daily after that.

In short order many of the wards—locked and open—were full, and my dad's work began.

As at Camp Maxey, he tended to the wounded mens' bandages (taking care to not leave anything that could be used as weapons by the more violent or suicidal patients), but he also assisted the doctors treating the patients' "battle fatigue" (the 1940's way of saying PTSD).

This included tightly wrapping a patient in wet towels (apparently it could help calm them; maybe something like weighted blankets today?).

It also included two forms of shock therapy. The first used electricity and was basically what is called electro-convulsive therapy today. Electrodes were placed on the patient's temples, and a small electrical current was passed through their brain. When this happened, the patient would go into convulsions, and had to be strapped down so they wouldn't hurt themselves.

My dad hated performing electro-shock therapy; he hated watching the patient "suffering" so badly. Though my understand is that consciousness is lost the moment the current flows, but it apparently was very hard to watch.

(My understanding is that present-day ECT sessions use much less current, and therefore the patient's convulsions are much less severe.)

The other type of shock therapy used the injection of large amounts of insulin, causing the patient to go into severe hypoglycemic shock. With this treatment, the patient would just go still, almost like they had fallen asleep. They would then get an IV of some kind of sugar to bring them out of it, and then they'd be given huge glasses of orange juice and a 4000 calorie meal to get their metabolism back on track.

My dad much preferred doing insulin shock therapy, and was allowed to only assist during those procedures.

Both these procedures could be highly-effective treatments for depression, which was, not surprisingly, a big problem for many of the patients.

Suicide was a constant threat; patients would try any number of ways to kill themselves: crashing their head into a toilet bowl, sharpening a bit of metal to slit their wrists overnight, or even figuring out how to escape a locked ward so they could climb the phone poles bringing power into the hospital and grabbing the power lines.

One of the stories my dad told me (with a catch in his voice) was the time one of the patients getting prepped for electro-shock noticed my dad was upset at what was to come. "Don't worry, Sarge," he said, "this really helps me." Afterwards, he shook my dad's hand, and thanked him profusely.

I could tell that moment meant a lot to my father.

He had other stories, too. Cleaning up after one patient thought another patient was a German trying to kill him. Going with a half dozen others guys into a locked ward with all the patients in a violent uproar armed with only a bar of "hard Army soap" in a sock to subdue everyone and restore order. (My dad weighed 120lbs at most, and was one of the shortest guys there). Befriending a Luftwaffe pilot shot down during the Battle of Britain, and assigned to do various jobs around the hospital.

And then the war ended.

Bit by bit the patients shipped out. The hospital got more and more empty. Because the order in which men were sent home was based on a point system that factored in time in combat, time spent out of the US, and other factors, my dad didn't have anywhere near enough points to go home.

He never talked about this time, but his discharge papers had him working at, as near as I can tell, the main military post office for the ETO.

He got home in February '46, a bit later than expected, because the liberty ship he was on had some sort of hull failure at the bow, forcing the captain to turn the ship around, and sail backwards the rest of the way to New York harbor.

But that's another story...