How were soldiers dealing with stress pre 20th century? I imagine bayonet charges or medieval melee was a nerve wracking clusterfuck.
>>887972
Booze and beating their wife, sometimes harder drugs. I heard that US Civil War led to an influx of morphine addicts because of that.
The stress we see today on soldiers is much greater than before. The industrialised and mechanised variation of warfare is unfamiliar to the human mind that we can't fully process it just yet. The scale of calamity and death is also much greater. Men die quicker now.
>>887972
Depends on the time period we're talking about.
A lot of older cultures were militaristic and the passage into manhood included mentally preparing for war.
>>887972
They didn't.
Psychology was shit back then and they didn't consider things like PTSD and shell shock to be real?
We have been beating each other's head in since before the dawn of man, I suppose we have some sort of "thing" that helps us in battle.
Get fucking wasted before you fought.
>>887972
It didn't use to be okay for men to be pussies.
>>887972
PTSD is largely caused by helplessness not horror according to studies which I can't be bothered to find and cite.
I've read it's much more common for POGs than combat soldiers to get PTSD and the best way to avoid PTSD in a combat situation is to actively engage the enemy. Therefore your brain settles not only into focussing on an incredibly important activity but also rationalises that this is a situation your skills and abilities can get you through.
War has always been horrible ofcourse but modern war brought a new age of complete helplessness on the battlefield. Death by shelling was by far the most common and your personal aptitude made no iota of difference wether you survived or not. It was entirely chance.
A bayonet charge on the otherhand can be won and survived by your training and natural talent for fighting with the bayonet and it's well recorded that engagements of that nature usually lead to euphoria and even arousal rather than debilitating shock.
Think of it in a nonwar setting. PTSD is common among rape victims, earthquake survivors, things were they had no power over their survival.
>>887972
Things like PTSD/shell shock, soldiers heart etc have been recognized for thousands of years. The only difference now is that 21st century military's tend to be short term volunteer troops as opposed to the mass conscription (even man in the tribe or city is a warrior) or long term enlistment in the army (25 years for a Roman Legionnaire, 15 years for a British redcoat). Back then someone who was too stressed out to fight was considered a coward or someone too weak willed to fight.
>>888006
they die quicker but soldiers fatality rate is way lower than before
>>887972
Today our biggest worry is whether there will be one explosion in one city somewhere around the western world provoking 30 deaths out of hundreds of millions of people, being presented with even a 5% probability of death is very scary, having a 30% probability is shocking
Back then it was a lot more normal, the absence of war in the western world was stranger than the presence of it
>>888038
that seems bullshit they might drink a little but not enough to get piss drunk otherwise they couldn't maintain formations
>>888089
spoken like someone who has never been in the military
Honestly, modern day "PTSD" is used too much as an umbrella term for multiple issues, the main one being the adjustment and reintegration back into civilian society which is the biggest issue for veterans with one of the major factors being the "hero" complex that American society has for soldiers who are honestly just people, most of them college age kids and are really not that much culturally different that their civilian counterparts
>>888030
Fucking BTFO
>>888089
so technically when soldiers actually see enemy they go into reap and tear mode? Are we hard wired to be murderous apes? That's kinda dark.
>>888021
>it wasn't diagnosed yet so it didn't exist
>>887972
god.
>>888150
>Praising genocide
You sick fuck, reported you to the local hate-crime police!
>>888145
(Still me)
I saw a kind of mini-documentary of italian troops in lebanon stationed near the israeli border, and the people worried about the most common daily shit, there was this girl with her cellphone, she called home daily, her dad used to be her superior.
She cried just thinking of the remote possibility of something going wrong.
She's a fucking soldier, it's her job, and the minimal entertainment of the idea she could die got her in tears.
I think it's just that today's world puts us in a WAY more individualistic mentality than it used to
>>888148
You're right but I never implied i was speaking from experience only from the hundreds of iterations of this thread that have existed on /k/.
The most notorious and earliest popularised example of PTSD is shellshock. I think that alone backs up my assertion.
>>888151
yes and no. Rip and tear mode isn't an automatic reaction it's something that is trained and is the last remaining element of bayonet training that survives in modern armies other than the simplest of basic techniques.
In the British Army and Royal Marines at least bayonet training is a psychological trick that lasts at least a week where training instructors who have otherwise recently lightened up to the now advancing recruits revert back to treating them like shit. Trashing their accomodation. Giving them lessons and then testing them on material they didn't teach and punishing them for failure on a bid to get them murderously angry. So that at the end of the week when they get their go at stabbing dummies they'll forever equate having a bayonet fitted to their rifles with being really fucking pissed off. It's all about screaming and charging with your comerades. Horrible ofcourse no doubt.
I've met a soldier who bayoneted someone. So he told me at least and I have no reason to doubt him. We were working security together and he was pulling the grizzled war vet shtick and he had a lot to be furrowed about but I being a kid asked him if he'd ever bayonetted anyone and he lit up and regaled it like it was a fond memory. He got so fond of me after he gave me a sweet regiment jersey.
I don't think we're hardwired killers but I think killing doesn't come naturally is a modern and overrated meme.
>>888210
And what makes you think /k/ knows what they are talking about? Most of that board are just gun enthusiasts who think they know about war and soldiers because they read some books.
>>887972
Alcohol, religion, and pretending like it wasn't a problem.
>>888231
the lowliest poster is every bit as credible as you are.
I'm sorry if I'm ruining the image of war as the ultimate in unabating misery but I've just met too many war veterans to believe that. Combat is a high to at least some people that can't be matched. I've had dozens of men tell me that the military is fucking shit. War is fucking shit but they'd go back tommorrow if they had the chance.
All of them volunteers. Almost all of them with multiple tours they weren't forced to go on. Just like alot of posters on /k/ as it happens.
I have no experience in the matter personally and am passed the age of caring to find out really.
>>887972
Pre-20th century warfare was a lot less 'stressful' in the biological sense. Yes, a bayonet charge is terrifying, but a bayonet charge is clear when it's happening, lasts a short period of time, and then clearly stops, for the most part.
Your body is meant to deal with stuff like this, and it's what the stress response is built around. It is not used to being in a life or death situation for weeks on end, with the difference between life and death and normalcy being blurred.
>>888251
Most people complain about their job everyday yet keep going to work because it is a familiar setting and most people like things to be the same because it is what they have grown comfortable with, soldiers are no exception.
>>888272
again I was referring specifically to how much they enjoyed combat. Even brutal hand to hand stuff. Though in fairness the only stories I've heard of that first hand were from exPara's who were complete headcase nutters. No doubt they didn't have a fraction of the combat experience you have had ofcourse.
>>888210
Not very accurate. I was in the Infantry. Before I joined I had no problem getting very angry and fighting someone. I didn't do it often but I could get murderous angry at times. Being in the Infantry was more conditioning to act quickly without thinking. Of course they also treated you like shit and robbed you of humanity, but I think that was more to keep you disciplined and know your place. We didn't use bayonets when I went through. We didn't even train for them. USA here.
>>888282
And you didn't stop to think that they might be lying to you? One thing common with all soldiers is that we love telling bullshit stories to civilians who ask too many questions.
>>887972
As they always did, by raping whatever is left after the battle.
>>887972
Not that battlefield stress wasn't a thing before, but I think the contradictory values that our society teaches now play a big part in why so many American troops have problems. We've come to a point where almost everyone has it engrained in them that what they did has to have a moral purpose, that killing or being killed has to come with some clear gratification. Few people can appreciate the political dynamic behind war, so few can see war as anything other than death.
I think eastern europeans are a good counterexample. Aggression and violence are viewed completely different over there, and even though we can see PTSD clearly in many Slavic soldiers, the dialogue surrounding it and the way people handle it is different. PTSD is a scab that many people wear proudly there. The underlying nationalism in everything Slavic also makes it easy to avoid questioning if you did the right thing, whereas here in the US it's basically thrown in everyone's face.
>>888291
This is specifically a British practice and is one week of training. It's like week 22 or something of infantry training. If you want to research it.
>>888292
Might have been but the fact of the matter is they all had provable combat records and didn't have any sort of PTSD. Whereas a girl I work with now does after the Wellington Earthquakes and has never killed anyone.
That said I guess she's probably lying too.
If you've ever been LARPing I want your feedback. Do you think it's a good way to understand, what the conditions were like in say 3000 BC. Or pre colonial America?
>>888313
Like I said before, PTSD in modern terms is abused as an umbrella term for multiple issues many of which are not even disorders. A combat vet who was Billy-Badass in the army now working as a mall cop back at home and is unable to pick up a non violent profession can be said to have readjustment issues
^So much this
Do any soldiers on /his/ have any good war stories...
>>888338
Not my story but worth sharing.
>>888325
I can agree from experience. Going from a trained robot soldier without emotion to a civilian job is a frustrating mind rape. However after having been the target of dozens of rockets. The fear of getting blown apart has never left me. Also IEDs. I still jump when I hear a loud noise and my hair stands on end. I wouldn't call it PTSD exactly. More like a natural human response to severe danger.
I would prefer hand to hand combat over explosions and bullets because it's less extreme and ends when the fucker is dead instead of being on edge worrying about rockets all the time. I imagine hand to hand combat would produce a similar long lasting fear/adrenaline reaction, just not as extreme.
>>887972
I have read that there is a huge increase on hours spent in combat per soldier in recent times which has lead to an increase in stress.
Men who fought in battle may have had hours in combat in the 1700s under their belt, while men in Vietnam may have had months and months in battle.
Looking at the huge increase of combat hours per soldier in the last hundred years (something im more familiar with) this explanation makes sense to me.
>>888089
Probably why knights have roomy codpieces, i think id find medival warfare if i was winning somewhat arousing. I get tons of pussy when i win.
>>887972
PTSD used to just be the norm, especially if your society had recently experienced an epidemic or famine.
>>888089
makes sense, back in the day events like the Black Death or Potato Blight seem to have messed people up more than warfare.
If I remember right, there's some passages in the old testament about soldiers ritualistically cleaning themselves after battles, which were supposed to have eased soldiers psychologically in addition to its religious significance. I would consider pre-modern warfare easier to deal with for human psychology though, as in the old days you'd show up to the battlefield, fight, and then it would largely be over after that (obviously with some noteworthy exceptions). But now that we have explosives, guns that allow you to kill a man as soon as you see him from a long distance, and a constant threat of death any time you're near a warzone, (warzones that can persist for years at a time), I would consider modern war much more difficult to deal with psychologically. History is rather full of accounts of men that seemingly highly enjoyed soldiering and fighting, but I think modern warfare has removed many of the things that your viking or mongol would have liked about war. Obviously PTSD was a thing even back then, but I don't think they had quite the same stressors that we do now.
>>888765
"PTSD" itself is subjective. People who live in a more violent world were death, disease, war, crime and poverty are the norm will be a hardier people (Russians) while soft people who are accustomed to luxury are going to be traumatized more easily
>>889062
>(Russians)
[Substance abuse and suicide intensifies]
But seriously though, Russia has a massive substance abuse problem and people are jumping off their commieblocks every day.
>>888210
that guy sounds like an attention whore,whole family was millitary, Dad was a LRRP in Vietnam from 68-69, went through tet and hamburger hill, he never talked about infact no one i know thats any worth in the military says stuff like that to strangers
>>888089
PTSD is more of an adrenal disorder than psychological, an adrenaline rush triggers those feelings because their body has been trained to react that way during previous adrenaline rushes. It manifests itself in people who do martial arts/wrestling/boxing or even serious weightlifting, except when they get a rush they turn into beasts that want to tear everyone to shreds.
I guess it depends on how the originally responded to the initial stressors. If hearing bangs in the distance made you hide in a hole and pee your pants that's more likely how you'll react when a similar stressor is introduced. If you were fighting hand to hand though like back in the day, and I would consider that to be way more serious than fucking lifting weights, you'd probably go HAM and charge whoever you think is the enemy.
>>888147
I know of at least one incident, during the Munster rebellion, where a battalion of Dutch troops were so shittered that they charged at sunset, thinking it was dawn (when the attack was supposed to happen). The rest of the army was wasted too and charged with them, it ended up being a rout and set the catholic forces back a year
