TOPIC:

Berenice has very kindly sent me several cuttings from newspapers indicating ex-soldiers experiencing breakdowns or crises which we'd nowadays consider to be PTSD or shell-shock.
I have come across other accounts, too, for example this letter from the Kings Own Royal Lancasters:
"All our nerves are shook, so that the sudden crack of a K*****s whip makes us jump, and we all retired back on this side of the Tugela. 
Half our officers are dead, wounded or missing, & the same with our N.C.O.s, so I am afraid it will be some time before we can get at them again.  Gen. Woodgate was severely wounded too, but I don't believe any of us are funking it."

I'd be very grateful if anyone could let me know if they have come across descriptions of mental or physical illness, brief or prolonged, which could possibly fit with PTSD, especially among the troops who survived Spion Kop.

thanks in anticipation
Rob

www.angloboerwar.com/forum/7-genealogy-a...cide-july-1900#62850

www.angloboerwar.com/forum/7-genealogy-a...e-on-19-4-1908#56391

A nurse - www.angloboerwar.com/forum/7-genealogy-a...mouth-6-6-1901#68401

Here's Surgeon Sir Frederick Treves' observations from No 4 Stationary Field Hospital near Spion Kop:

One of the wounded from Spion Kop had evidently engraved upon his mind the hideous scene of slaughter which the trenches on that hill presented. As he was being anæsthetised it was apparent that in his dream he was back again in the trenches, and was once more among his dead and mangled comrades. The vision of one wounded man especially haunted him and fascinated him, and at last he screamed out: "There goes that bloke again whose leg was shot away; blimy, if he ain't crawling now!"

Another poor fellow had before his eye the spectre of an awful kopje. His fragmentary utterances made vivid the unearthly land he was traversing. All who stood by could picture the ghostly kopje, and could almost share in his anguish when he yelled: "There they are on the hill! For God's sake, shoot! Why don't we shoot?"

Not shellshock-related, but an odd story about Spion Kop. newspapers.library.wales/view/3473626/3473630/131/

That story of the Boer being killed drawing a rifle from a dead man's grasp seems to be true. The Boer was, if I recall correctly, burger Smit from Heilbron Cdo.

Back to PTSD, I have an 3-page article from the Lancet, 1900, of 9 cases of PTSD in soldiers, several from Spion Kop - "GENERAL NERVOUS SHOCK, IMMEDIATE AND REMOTE, AFTER GUNSHOT AND SHELL INJURIES IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN." BY MORGAN I. FINUCANE, M.R.C.S. ENG., L.S.A., CIVIL SURGEON ATTACHED TO THE CONNAUGHT HOSPITAL, NORTH CAMP, ALDERSHOT. I'd be happy to send a copy to anyone interested.

I'd very much like a copy. This is a most interesting topic. Perhaps David would upload that article on the site.