Soldier's heart
FOREWORD
War is always, in all ways, appalling. Lives are stopped in youth, worlds are ended, and even for those who survive-and the vast majority of soilders who go to war do survive- the mental damage done is often permanent. What they have seen and been forced to do is frequently so horrific and devastating that it simply cannot be tolerated by human psyche.
Now there is an attempt to understand this form of injury and deal with it. It is called post-traumatic stress disorder by those who try to cure it. They give it a technical name in the attempt to make something almost incomprehensive understandable, in the hope that, by doing this, they will make it curable.
But in other times and other wars, they used more descriptive terms.
In the second World War the mental damage was called battle fatigue, and there were rudimentary efforts to help the victims. These usually involved bed rest and the use of sedatives or other drugs.
In the first World War it was called shell shock, based on the damage done by the overwhelming use, for the first time in modern war, of artillery fire against soldiers in stationary positions. The concussion of exploding incoming rounds, thousands upon thousands of them, often left men deaf and dazed, many of them with a symptom called the thousand-yard stare. The afflicted were essentially not helped at all and simply sent home for their families to care for. Most were irrational; many were in a vegetative state.
In the Civil War the syndrome was generally not recognized at all. While the same horrors exsited as those in modern war, in some ways they were even worse because the technological aspect of war being born then, the wholesale killing by men using raw firepower, was so new and misunderstood. The same young men were fed into the madness. But in those days there was no scientific knowledge of mental disorders and no effort was made to help the men who were damaged. Some men came through combat unscathed. Most did not. These men were somehow different from other men.
They were said to have soldier's heart.
Author's note
This is partly a work of fiction. Charley Goddard really existed, He enlisted in the First Minnesota Volunteers when he was fifteen, lying about his age, and fought through virtually the entire wall.
I have had to take some minor liberties with timing because no one man could have been everywhere at once. Charley, for instance, did not fight at Bull Run, although that was about the only battle he missed. He did not fight because he was laid up with dysentery. But in all respects everything in this book happened, either to Charley or to men around him.Every event is factual, including the building of a wall of dead bodies to stop the wind. Charley really did receive wounds at Gettysburg. The destruction at Greeysburg was nearly biblical in its proportions; more men were killed there in just two hours than in all the previours American wars, the Revolution included, combined. When the battle at Gettysburg was finished and they'd made their fateful charge, only forty-seven men were left standing of the thousand original soliders of the First Minnesota Volunteers.
Charley was not one of them. He was hit severely, and though they patched him up at best they could and he managed to fight in later actions, his wounds did not heal properly, nor did his mental anguish. When the war was finished he went back and tried to hold jobs and couldn't, eventually running for country clerk on the basis of his war record. He was elected, but before he could serve, his wounds and the stress took him and he died in December 1868. He was just twenty-three years old.
War is always, in all ways, appalling. Lives are stopped in youth, worlds are ended, and even for those who survive-and the vast majority of soilders who go to war do survive- the mental damage done is often permanent. What they have seen and been forced to do is frequently so horrific and devastating that it simply cannot be tolerated by human psyche.
Now there is an attempt to understand this form of injury and deal with it. It is called post-traumatic stress disorder by those who try to cure it. They give it a technical name in the attempt to make something almost incomprehensive understandable, in the hope that, by doing this, they will make it curable.
But in other times and other wars, they used more descriptive terms.
In the second World War the mental damage was called battle fatigue, and there were rudimentary efforts to help the victims. These usually involved bed rest and the use of sedatives or other drugs.
In the first World War it was called shell shock, based on the damage done by the overwhelming use, for the first time in modern war, of artillery fire against soldiers in stationary positions. The concussion of exploding incoming rounds, thousands upon thousands of them, often left men deaf and dazed, many of them with a symptom called the thousand-yard stare. The afflicted were essentially not helped at all and simply sent home for their families to care for. Most were irrational; many were in a vegetative state.
In the Civil War the syndrome was generally not recognized at all. While the same horrors exsited as those in modern war, in some ways they were even worse because the technological aspect of war being born then, the wholesale killing by men using raw firepower, was so new and misunderstood. The same young men were fed into the madness. But in those days there was no scientific knowledge of mental disorders and no effort was made to help the men who were damaged. Some men came through combat unscathed. Most did not. These men were somehow different from other men.
They were said to have soldier's heart.
Author's note
This is partly a work of fiction. Charley Goddard really existed, He enlisted in the First Minnesota Volunteers when he was fifteen, lying about his age, and fought through virtually the entire wall.
I have had to take some minor liberties with timing because no one man could have been everywhere at once. Charley, for instance, did not fight at Bull Run, although that was about the only battle he missed. He did not fight because he was laid up with dysentery. But in all respects everything in this book happened, either to Charley or to men around him.Every event is factual, including the building of a wall of dead bodies to stop the wind. Charley really did receive wounds at Gettysburg. The destruction at Greeysburg was nearly biblical in its proportions; more men were killed there in just two hours than in all the previours American wars, the Revolution included, combined. When the battle at Gettysburg was finished and they'd made their fateful charge, only forty-seven men were left standing of the thousand original soliders of the First Minnesota Volunteers.
Charley was not one of them. He was hit severely, and though they patched him up at best they could and he managed to fight in later actions, his wounds did not heal properly, nor did his mental anguish. When the war was finished he went back and tried to hold jobs and couldn't, eventually running for country clerk on the basis of his war record. He was elected, but before he could serve, his wounds and the stress took him and he died in December 1868. He was just twenty-three years old.
