International conference
War wounds: medicine and the trauma of conflict
- Introduction
- Program
- Speakers
- Abstracts
BAE Systems Theatre,
Australian War Memorial, Canberra
Thursday 24 and Friday 25 September, 2009
Abstracts
Shell shock and the shadow of the Great War
Shell shock is the emblematic term invented and developed during the 1914-18 conflict itself to set off the Great War from other conflicts. It moved from being a medical category, almost immediately disowned by its inventor, to a military metaphor, used to characterize the effects of industrialized warfare on the men who engaged in it and who suffered because of it. On the medical side, the statistics we have of the incidence of shell shock radically understate its prevalence among infantrymen. In the British case, the prominence of contemporary comment on shell shock, and its lingering power to conjure up the Great War, arose in part out of the relatively minor role veterans' played in inter-war politics. In contrast, where veterans were more powerful politically, discussions of shell shock were more muted. This paper presents comparative evidence on the emergence and life history of this category of traumatic memory during the twentieth century and beyond
Chewing cordite: self-inflicted wounds among soldiers of the Great War
The global conflict of 1914-1918 saw the mobilisation of immense national armies. Seventy million men, mostly volunteers and conscripts, were raised, trained and sent to the battle fronts. Some proved to be reluctant warriors. Soldiers unwilling to serve or fight found numerous ways to avoid duty and danger, even resorting to self-inflicted wounds. These ranged from minor injuries and poisoning to shooting, mutilation and in extreme cases, suicide.
During the battles on the Somme and at Verdun in 1916 and at Passchendaele in 1917, the utter misery of soldiers’ conditions produced ‘epidemics’ of self-inflicted wounds. The official histories are generally silent about these or downplay the details. The frequency of self-inflicted wounds could be a measure of battle exhaustion and declining morale, but there was little attempt to measure the extent of self-inflicted wounds except as a record of discipline. Medical responses blurred the boundaries between treatment and coercion as regimental doctors became agents of military justice, often unwillingly. Doctors were expected to help identify and report suspected offenders while also sustaining soldiers’ motivation and morale.
The incidence of self-inflicted wounds was higher than generally recognised. As one of the virtually unknown dimensions of military experience in the armies of the First World War, the story of men who made this desperate choice deserves to be told.
University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy
Scarred by war: medical responses to facially disfigured soldiers of the Great War
Disfiguring facial wounds were one of the human costs of trench warfare in the Great War. Advances in medical techniques enabled some soldiers’ faces to be repaired, but maxillo-facial reconstructive surgery was still in its infancy. Consequently, the level of repair varied, and many veterans were left permanently disfigured.
Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
Nazi human experiments and the replication of war wounds
After the assassination of Himmler’s deputy Reinhardt Heydrich in 1942, the SS surgeon in charge of his treatment gashed and infected the legs of
74 women prisoners at the concentration camp of Ravensbrück. The aim was to show whether Heydrich’s life might have been saved with more effective treatment. A range of experiments took place when prisoners were used to replicate combat conditions.
This paper will provide an overview of the Nazi experiments to determine what percentage of the experiments was oriented to military combat conditions. The types of victims will be analysed – partisans, priests and prisoners of war etc. The victims of the war wound experiments were articulate in protesting against their treatment, raising ethical issues, and in the campaign for compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany.
University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy
“I have no words”: medical responses to the liberation of Nazi camps
In the last months of the Second World War, Allied military forces stumbled across a network of concentration and work camps, spread throughout Germany and Occupied Europe. Combat-hardened veterans were totally unprepared for what they found. The condition of the inmates was beyond description. The immediate shock of the liberation—on the liberators and on the home fronts—was profound. But the real task of liberation was the care of the survivors. For this the Allies were also unprepared. They lacked the knowledge as well as the means to cope with the monstrous scale of the camp system and to heal the ‘walking dead’ who had somehow survived the Nazi genocide. In camps whose names have come to symbolise man’s inhumanity to man—Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau—thousands died in the weeks after liberation. Rescuers had to learn and learn quickly how to deal with long-term starvation and multiple diseases. Perhaps inevitably mistakes were made but the achievement of the medical liberators was phenomenal. This paper seeks to understand the healing process from the point of view of the liberators and the liberated.
Vietnam Veterans Federation of Australia
The official history’s Agent Orange account: the veterans’ perspective
Professor FB Smith believed the 1980s was a time when ‘private greed became, for some, a public good’. Into that category he lumped Vietnam veterans campaigning for acknowledgement that their exposure to Agent Orange might cause cancer in themselves and birth defects in their children.
In his account of the Agent Orange controversy published as part of the Official History, Professor Smith accuses the campaigning veterans of bearing venal motives and confusing allegation with proof. He is scathing of those who supported the veterans’ fears.
However some feel that Professor Smith’s account shows a lack of understanding of the law, of the Agent Orange Royal Commission report, of the leaders of the veterans’ Agent Orange campaign and of the veterans’ case.
His contribution was deeply flawed when it was written; and since then its credibility has continued to crumble so that it is now a discredited relic.
It must be rewritten.
Official historian of the Vietnam War
Agent Orange and the official history: an historian’s perspective
This paper takes a new look at the long debate over the effects on Australian Vietnam veterans of the herbicides often known collectively as Agent Orange. It particularly examines events in the early 1990s, including reports produced in the United States and in Australia, which are usually seen as a major turning-point in the long battle by a group of veterans for compensation for ailments caused by Agent Orange. The paper also examines the relationship of these reports to the section of the Australian Official History, written by F.B.Smith, which deals with this topic.
Regimental Medical Officer, 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, South Vietnam, 1966-67
A short walk in a minefield: a doctor’s experiences of mine casualties
In February 1967, the 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (5RAR) planned Operation Renmark, a six-day search-and-destroy sweep over the Long Hai hills in the south-east of Phuoc Tuy province, South Vietnam. Known to the Viet Cong as the Minh Dam Secret Zone, the hills had been a sanctuary for the National Liberation Front since French colonial times. Troop bases, tunnels, arms caches, mines and booby traps were abundant. The US 173rd Airborne Brigade had suffered heavy casualties in the area eight months previously.
On Day 3 of the operation B Company 5RAR, mounted on APCs, ran into a minefield. The lead APC was destroyed, killing five soldiers and wounding nine others. Troops moving forward to assist triggered a M16 mine resulting in more casualties, including all the medics. The RMO was dropped into the area by helicopter to arrange evacuation of the casualties. This was completed within 90 minutes of the initial blast. During the subsequent mine clearance, several more M16 mines were discovered in the area.
Surgery under fire: civilian surgical teams in Vietnam
Early in the Vietnam War the South Vietnamese government appealed to the United States and its allies, including Australia, for desperately needed medical help. Most of the country’s doctors had been conscripted into the army and the civilian population was facing a medical crisis.
From October 1964 until the end of 1972, over 450 surgeons, nurses and medical specialists from Australian hospitals volunteered to work in South Vietnam. They brought expert medical and surgical care, comfort and support to a war-weary and traumatised civilian population. Their story has never been told before.
Regimental Medical Officer, 4 Field Regiment Royal Australian Artillery, South Vietnam, 1967-68
Diggers and a "dose of the clap": the problem of sexually transmitted infections among Australian soldiers in Vietnam
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have always posed a threat to the health and well-being of soldiers serving in stressful wartime situations away from home, although generally this aspect of soldiers’ health is kept rather quiet. Australasia has a reasonable record of paying attention to the sexual health of soldiers, due largely to the pioneering work of a courageous NZ woman, Ettie Rout, during the First World War. STIs were a notable problem during the Vietnam conflict for Australian soldiers. During their twelve months tour of duty in South Vietnam, Australian & NZ combat soldiers at Nui Dat were given only 10 days leave in total. STIs were a common consequence of these periods of leave. This presentation will discuss the epidemiology and the physical and psychological impact of STIs on serving Australian troops as seen by a regimental medical officer at Nui Dat in 1967/68. Other aspects of an RMO’s life at Nui Dat will be discussed including the effects of alcohol on the health of soldiers and on the maintenance of Army discipline during active service in a war zone.
Royal Australian Air Force
Military nursing in Afghanistan, 2008
Since 2004, six ADF critical care teams have been deployed to war. Three to Iraq and three to Afghanistan. All six were commanded by nurses. In 2008 SQNLDR Sharon Cooper was entrusted with the opportunity to follow in the finest traditions of those Nursing Officers who went before her to command in a theatre of war. Not only has the ADF Nursing Service of today been built upon the service of those before us, but increasingly it is the ADF Nursing Service who lead the way.
In the spirit of the diary extracts of the Australian Service Nurses Memorial, which stands on ANZAC Parade in commemoration of Australia's Nurses of the Navy, Army, and Air Force, and in honour of SQNLDR Cooper’s Australian Service Nursing colleagues, she provides an insight into today’s service with some extracts from her own Afghanistan diary.
SQNLDR Cooper reflects upon the continued service of Australian Service Nurses who have consistently exhibited great courage and sacrifice in every major military operation in which Australia has been involved. She explores the realities that not only have Service Nurses tended to the wounds of war, but they themselves have suffered and survived them. Through their actions, Australian Service Nurses demonstrate that although conflict and war demonstrate the very worst of humanity it also succeeds in revealing the very best.
The burdens of sacrifice: disabled soldiers and family life after the First World War
This paper will examine the vital role of family caregivers – particularly wives and mothers – in healing the nation’s ‘shattered Anzacs’ after the First World War. After being invalided back to Australia many physically and mentally damaged soldiers spent weeks and months in repatriation hospitals. Some were permanently confined to convalescent homes and mental institutions. However, the majority was discharged into the care of their families when the limits of medical treatment were reached. During the 1920s and 1930s, the family became a key site of repatriation for disabled ex-servicemen. Yet the Repatriation Department rarely acknowledged the sacrifices of family caregivers and the personal cost of their labours. This paper brings to light the private struggles of Australia’s 90,000 ‘changed men’ and their families. It also reflects on the challenges faced by historians who take on the project of ‘finding families’ in the repatriation archive.
Veterans’ health specialist
Veterans’ health: the long term effects of war service on Australian veterans of conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq
The first documentation of a long-term effect of war service can be found among the Ancient Greeks. Since that time, there have been many generations of research into the long-term health effects of war service. In examining Australian veterans, there are long-term effects noted among veterans from both the Vietnam and Koreas wars. Research is now beginning that aims to map out the long-term effects of war service in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also research of a historical nature being undertaken into a variety of wars, showing that long-term effects of war service appear to be universal. While contemporary knowledge of and experience with the long-term effects of war service have greatly increased since the time of the Ancient Greeks, our fundamental understanding of the long-term effects of war service may not have improved in the past two and a half millennium.
Vietnam veteran and former Member of Parliament
Living with war wounds: a soldier’s view
Graham Edwards served some four months in Vietnam in 1970 with the 7th Battalion RAR. He was wounded twice. The first incident was the result of ‘friendly’ mortar fire. The second was more serious and resulted in the above knee amputation of his legs following a land mine explosion – a ‘friendly’ mine. Graham was lucky to survive and has always seen life as a bonus. But the next few years of rehabilitation sorely tested his spirit as he encountered a minefield of obstacles at home. Wounded Vietnam veterans often found themselves in another war. One where they had to confront and combat indifference, ignorance, hostility, and senseless bureaucracy in their own country.
Despite numerous challenges and difficulties Graham emerged, strengthened by the love and support of his family, buoyed and encouraged by many professional people in the medical field, determined to make a go of life, enthused by the challenges ahead. Graham has a view that if a glass is half empty it is full and lives his life accordingly.
Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute
An Australian army doctor in Korea: reminiscences
Bryan Gandevia graduated in Medicine in 1948 from the University of Melbourne, and subsequently enlisted in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, serving with the rank of Captain, later Major, in the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan, and as Regimental Medical Officer to the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment in Korea. There, he noted the effect of war and the harsh environment on Australian soldiers and casualties. He subsequently became a respiratory physician and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, and inaugural Chairman of the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Prince Henry/Prince of Wales Hospitals in Sydney. He influenced the development of medical and other branches of history in Australia. He served the Australian War Memorial with distinction for 16 years from 1967 to 1983 on its Board of Trustees (later, Council) and for this work he was awarded an AM in 1985. This presentation will cover a number of aspects of his life and contributions. It will serve as background to the establishment of an award bearing his name for early career historians. This award will acknowledge his contribution to the Memorial and to Australian history.
This conference was convened by the Australian War Memorial. The support of the Australian Government through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs is gratefully acknowledged.
