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00:00During the Second World War, an entire generation recorded their personal experiences for posterity.
00:08Combat cameramen braved enemy fire to send home moving images, many of them in color.
00:15They captured history, and in the process they captured ordinary people caught up in
00:20extraordinary events, bearing witness to the color of war.
00:49More than 400,000 Allied servicemen died in action during World War II.
00:54More than one million more were wounded.
00:58Hundreds of thousands of others suffered from painful, debilitating disease.
01:04The tragedy of this enormous number of casualties could have been much worse.
01:09For even as the war raged on, another battle was being waged at and just behind the front lines.
01:17A battle to save lives.
01:20The victories and losses of this crusade are the stories of the price of war.
01:26Fortunately, it was a conflict that many of its victims survived.
01:31The fact that so many servicemen did live to tell the tale is a testament to the brave men and women
01:37who fought daily against death under some of the worst physical and psychological conditions imaginable.
01:45But most of all, it speaks to the fortitude of the soldiers themselves, whose indomitable will to live
01:51allowed them to defeat the greatest enemy of all.
02:06The price paid in human lives during the Second World War was staggering.
02:11Depending on the circumstances, it could be heroic or futile, quick or agonizing.
02:18No GI was ever prepared to die, yet every man thought about the possibility.
02:25More often than not, soldiers who paid the ultimate price never knew what hit them.
02:31This was especially true of sniper victims, who were frequently shot in the head.
02:37A medic in the 30th U.S. Division assessed a man's chances of surviving such a wound.
02:45The bullet passes through the helmet, scalp, skull, small blood vessels' membrane
02:52into the soft sponginess of the brain.
02:56Then you're either paralyzed or you're blind, or you can't smell anything,
03:02or your memory is gone, or you can't talk, or you're bleeding, or you're dead.
03:13The effects of shells could be far more devastating than bullets.
03:18Sometimes a shell obliterated a man so completely that there was hardly anything of him left.
03:25An American captain saw the aftermath of one direct hit on a group of sleeping soldiers.
03:31At the bottom and down one side of the gully was a pile of gray shredded fabric.
03:38It had no shape and was not very big.
03:41The whole bottom of the gully was coated evenly with a gray powder
03:45and you would not have noticed the pile of gray shredded fabric
03:48except for a foot and a shoe with no body attached to it.
03:53This object lay by the edge of the pile.
03:56There was no blood whatsoever.
03:59All the blood had been blown out of the man who wore this shoe.
04:04Such complete obliteration was especially unnerving to other soldiers.
04:08That men could be killed was bad enough.
04:11That they could be blown to nothingness was almost too much to contemplate.
04:16And then there was the grim job of collecting the soldiers' remains.
04:21In the U.S. Army, this task fell to a specially designated cadre of soldiers
04:26in the Quartermaster Corps, detailed to graves registration.
04:32Two graves registration guys were poking around looking for the body
04:36of some captain that got it yesterday.
04:40They got an empty rations box and what they found of him went in that.
04:46Must have caught an enemy shell but good.
04:50Just think of that.
04:52All that's left can rattle around in a frigging cardboard box.
04:58Jesus Christ, that's something, isn't it?
05:03Obliteration had one advantage.
05:05It was immediate.
05:08The ordeal of death was even more cruel for those soldiers who died slowly
05:13and for their comrades who had to witness a friend's final moments.
05:19One soldier described the death of a wounded buddy.
05:23The hoarse breathing stopped.
05:26For what seemed like a long time, nothing happened.
05:30Just the silence and the somber faces behind
05:33and the man on the edge of nothingness in front.
05:37Then as some unbidden muscle tensed,
05:40his mouth fell open and sucked in a great gasp of air.
05:44The last desperate mouthful of life.
05:48Long sighs as though a ghost had passed, rustling through the gaping mouth.
05:54He was dead.
05:57For the survivors, death was always painful.
06:00It was a constant reminder of the brutal nature of war.
06:04It meant the loss of a fellow soldier, maybe a friend.
06:09The aftermath of death carried its own horrors.
06:12Bodies were never left on the battlefield for wild dogs and vultures.
06:17They were collected.
06:19Attempts were made by graves registration teams to identify the bodies.
06:23Sometimes they took fingerprints from the corpses who were otherwise unidentifiable.
06:30The most hardened soldier could not remain stoic in the face of such carnage.
06:35We went out to the tanks we'd lost in order to identify the dead.
06:39In some cases, the bodies were indistinguishable from one another.
06:43Simply a mass of cooked flesh, welded together in the great heat.
06:49We had to sift through this for identity tags.
06:53Each tank held the same story.
06:55Broken legs, broken arms, open chest wounds and so on.
07:01Many had been burnt alive.
07:04The screams I thought I had heard during the action had not been imaginary after all.
07:11For thousands of servicemen, the war ended with a burial in foreign soil.
07:16Their war was over.
07:18But for the men who dug their graves, it was a continuing ordeal.
07:23There were lots of bodies we never identified.
07:27You know what a direct hit by a shell does to a guy?
07:31Or a mine, or a solid hit with a grenade even?
07:36Sometimes all we have left is a leg or a hunk of an arm.
07:41You never get used to it either.
07:45As long as you live, you never get used to it.
07:49As ominous as the specter of death was for the servicemen of World War II,
07:54far more common was their survival in the face of devastating circumstances.
07:59Indeed, throughout the conflict, less than 5 out of 100 casualties
08:04were forced to pay the ultimate price of war.
08:07But in every theater of operations, there was another enemy beyond the one faced in combat.
08:13It was an insidious attacker who didn't use conventional weapons
08:18and yet claimed more victims than fell on the front lines.
08:30One of the toughest things the doctors are up against
08:34is the mental depression of some of the men.
08:36Malaria, dysentery, infections, etc.
08:40These doctors say another month
08:43and the fighting strength of the 1st Marine Division will be useless.
09:00In every theater of World War II,
09:04more men fell victim to germs and viruses than to enemy action.
09:09Although battle casualties among front line troops were high,
09:13for the medical authorities, they were only a small part of the job.
09:18Illness caused more than 20 times as many casualties as actual combat.
09:24The Americans had 640,000 men wounded in battle
09:29but treated more than 17.5 million total casualties.
09:35In spite of these huge numbers,
09:37medical advances meant that very few soldiers actually died from disease.
09:43One ailment was so prevalent
09:45that the armed forces produced several films addressing the problem.
09:49Perhaps they've been referred to by several names.
09:53Syphilis, pox, gonorrhea, cleft, chancroid, or soft chancre.
10:01Let us now examine the diseases these germs caused.
10:06VD was not life-threatening.
10:09But as this film showed,
10:11it was an epidemic that filled hospital beds far quicker than battle.
10:15Venereal disease ravaged the troops from the moment they enlisted.
10:21Depending on the location,
10:23between 3% and 7% of any given company was stricken.
10:28Stringent efforts to control the problem generally proved futile.
10:33The captain called me in one day.
10:35I suspect he knew somehow that I was a virgin and immoral.
10:39He said,
10:41we have a tremendous outbreak of venereal diseases.
10:44I'll tell you what I want you to do.
10:46I want you to hang around the shower and just check genitals.
10:50By sight only.
10:51And if you see any that look inflamed,
10:53I want you to get the name of the GI and report back to me.
10:58I did that for a week.
11:00It was a lovely experience.
11:02I didn't report any names.
11:07Throughout the war,
11:08all the Allied forces fought a continual battle against VD.
11:12But far from home, seeking solace from the war,
11:15many Allied soldiers paid more attention to their libidos
11:18than to their hygiene officer.
11:22We know the risks.
11:23Doc said that we were sticking our things where he wouldn't put
11:26the heel of his dirty boot.
11:28Doc is worried.
11:30He says more soldiers fall from VD than from bullets.
11:34But as one old-timer said,
11:35which would you rather have, laddie?
11:37A dose of VD or a packet of shrapnel up your arse?
11:41Other common diseases among soldiers
11:43afflicted their digestive tracts.
11:45Usually caused by parasites,
11:47these disorders were almost always the result
11:49of extremely poor sanitary conditions on the front lines.
11:56Okinawa was one of the worst examples.
11:59300,000 soldiers were crammed into an area
12:02of only a few thousand square yards.
12:05Author William Manchester recorded
12:08In the densest combats of World War I,
12:10battalion frontage had been approximately 800 yards.
12:14Here, it was less than 600 yards.
12:16The sewage was appalling.
12:18You could smell the front line long before you saw it.
12:22It was one vast cesspool.
12:26Wherever men concentrated,
12:28so, too, did garbage and excrement.
12:31Flies, rats, and other scavengers soon followed.
12:35Disease was the inevitable result.
12:40An American doctor described the scene
12:42after the last battle of the war
12:44as one of the worst in the history of mankind.
12:47He said,
12:50An American doctor described the scene
12:52after the liberation of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.
12:56Once the Japs are dead,
12:58sanitation becomes the major problem.
13:01We bury the filth and the stinking corpses.
13:03We dig latrines and screen them.
13:06From now on, flies are enemy number one.
13:09We screen the mess tents and the galleys
13:12and all refuse containers.
13:14We fight the rats.
13:16We fight the rats.
13:18We oil the standing water against mosquitoes.
13:21The way to fight flies and rats is to starve them out.
13:25The presence of lice, flies, fleas, rats,
13:29and other disease-bearing vermin
13:31subjected thousands of men to a wide variety
13:34of potentially lethal illnesses,
13:36including typhus, dengue fever, and cholera.
13:42Three or four people died from yellow fever.
13:45Everybody had either a full case or a partial.
13:48We were walking around in a daze.
13:50No energy, you know.
13:52Some of us had turned yellow or slightly so,
13:55and we were half sick.
13:57But as it turned out, it was a salvation.
14:00If we hadn't got sick, we'd have went to the Philippines,
14:04and we all know what happened in the Philippines later on.
14:07We'd have all been captured, killed, or shot.
14:10But we never made it.
14:13Malaria reached epidemic proportions
14:15in the Pacific and Far East.
14:17On Guadalcanal, some American units
14:19suffered 75% casualties from this disease alone.
14:25In Burma in 1943,
14:27the hospital admission rate for malaria
14:29was 628 cases per 1,000 men,
14:3345 times the number of battle casualties.
14:38While drugs ultimately brought the epidemic under control,
14:41thousands of men suffered in remote locations like Bataan,
14:44which was the subject of this radio dispatch
14:47made by a U.S. Army nurse.
14:50We had so many wounded and sick by that time
14:54that they'd overflowed the flimsy little building
14:57we'd tried to build for them.
15:00Hundreds of cots were placed side by side in a big field.
15:05As many men were dying of malaria as were dying of wounds.
15:10All day long, men lay in the sun.
15:13They tried to be cheerful.
15:16They wondered when help was coming from America.
15:24Whereas malaria thrived in a warm climate,
15:27cold and damp environments produced equally dangerous problems.
15:31One of the worst was trench foot.
15:34Very similar to frostbite,
15:36trench foot struck when a soldier's feet
15:39were wet for an extended period of time.
15:43At best, it was uncomfortable for the stricken soldier.
15:47At worst, gangrene set in and amputation was necessary.
15:52In Northwest Europe in 1945,
15:55nearly 45,000 men were hospitalized for trench foot alone.
16:04Behind the lines, the dressing stations and field hospitals
16:07were full of soldiers whose toes had turned a dull purple.
16:12If they were lucky, the medics caught the complaint in time
16:15and they would be put in bed in long lines of cots
16:18on which lay soldier after soldier,
16:20their feet sticking out from under the blankets
16:22with a little ball of cotton wool separating each toe.
16:28If they were unlucky, their toes would come away with their wet socks
16:32when the medics had finally eased them off.
16:38There was one other significant contributor to non-battle casualties, accidents.
16:44Fractures and head wounds were among the most common injuries,
16:49usually caused by traffic mishaps.
16:52Burns were another frequent problem
16:55and were often the result of careless use of gasoline.
16:58Though all such incidents were avoidable,
17:01the most tragic were freakish mistakes that had deadly results.
17:07One of our officers was marching down a road just in front of one of our tanks
17:11when the gunner in the turret was thrown against his weapon,
17:14discharging it and killing the young father
17:17who left a small child for his wife to raise.
17:20This tragedy would be repeated many times in the coming months,
17:23not in the same way but with the same outcome,
17:27the deaths of the flower of young manhood.
17:30War is senseless.
17:34As the war continued, medical advancements and safety precautions
17:38went a long way towards limiting casualties caused by disease and accidents.
17:43With each day of combat, however, the number of wounded grew,
17:48pushing soldiers to the limits of endurance
17:51and their caregivers to the ultimate test of their abilities.
18:04With each new mission, I become more and more proud of my aid men.
18:09They have guts and stamina and are cool-headed under fire.
18:13It tears my heart out every time one of them gets hit.
18:16One was killed on Corregidor.
18:19During this action, one of them lost a leg as a result of his wounds.
18:23He was hit while working his way under fire toward a wounded rifleman.
18:27Despite his wound, he reached the rifleman and treated him.
18:33He is an example of the kind of men I have in my section.
18:48Over the course of World War II,
18:50more than a million and a half Allied soldiers suffered combat wounds.
18:55Often in great pain, they struggled to make sense of what had just happened to them.
19:01In one frantic moment, they were transformed from healthy young soldiers into broken men.
19:08For the wounded soldier, the best chance for survival was the medic.
19:13Medical corpsmen were non-doctors
19:16who had been given a few weeks of rudimentary medical training
19:19and became part of each combat company.
19:23Many of them were conscientious objectors,
19:26but their religious or moral beliefs prevented their participation in combat.
19:31As a result, and in accordance with pre-war international agreements,
19:35medics went into battle completely unarmed.
19:39This, in theory, made them off-limits as targets.
19:43In the chaos of combat, however, international law was not always obeyed,
19:49and casualties among medics were extremely high
19:52as they fearlessly exposed themselves to enemy fire to help their wounded comrades.
19:58The lieutenant started to run across the road when a machine gun opened up on him.
20:05It dropped to the ground in the middle of the road to take over,
20:09and a bullet struck him in the top of his head.
20:13Our medic ran out to help.
20:16When he kneeled down, a string of machine gun bullets cut across his chest,
20:21killing him instantly.
20:24He slumped over, holding the lieutenant.
20:27When I saw this, I got real mad.
20:30I never hated the enemy so much.
20:34In spite of the risks, medics worked tirelessly to stop a victim's bleeding,
20:39bandage his wounds and ease his pain.
20:43They were greatly aided by three new advancements in wartime medicine.
20:48Penicillin and sulfa drugs were administered on the spot to prevent infection.
20:53Penicillin, the world's first antibiotic, had only been discovered in 1928.
20:59U.S. Army studies estimated that this drug saved 12 to 15 percent of wounded men
21:05who otherwise would have died.
21:07The other major advance was blood transfusions.
21:11Two substances were employed in this process.
21:14The first was blood plasma, human blood that has had the red corpuscles removed,
21:20thus giving it its dull yellowish color.
21:23This was used to replace the fluid part of the blood
21:26that seeped away through the walls of the capillaries when a soldier was wounded.
21:32Its main advantage over whole blood
21:34was that it could be transported and stored without refrigeration.
21:38Whole blood was also extensively used.
21:42On average, between 10 and 12 percent of all wounded men were transfused.
21:47In the European theater alone,
21:49the U.S. Army used over 385,000 pints of whole blood and plasma.
21:56Penicillin, sulfa drugs and blood transfusions
21:59helped lower the percentage of wound fatalities
22:02from more than 8 percent in World War I to 4.5 percent in World War II.
22:08Yet there were many cases where medical personnel
22:11and all the Allied forces were utterly powerless.
22:16Our casualties were very heavy.
22:18I was not able to do much more than give morphine and put on the odd bandage.
22:23It's no fun to see your friends with legs and arms off, dying slowly,
22:27and knowing that if only they could get to hospital,
22:29they would have a chance of living.
22:31In all, it was a ghastly day,
22:34and I hope I never have to undergo another like it.
22:38Even though medics worked under grueling conditions,
22:41there were extremely few recorded instances
22:44of corpsmen succumbing to cowardice or combat fatigue.
22:49Far more common was the praise and commendations
22:52heaped upon them for their valor and life-saving work.
22:58Corpsmen in the U.S. Navy alone received seven Congressional Medals of Honor
23:02and nearly a thousand other major awards and citations.
23:07For the medics, their satisfaction came in knowing they were doing all they could
23:11to counter the darkest side of war.
23:14Every life they saved was another victory.
23:19Sometimes their best ally in this battle was the wounded man himself.
23:25One fellow was on his back on a stretcher,
23:27and a corpsman was giving him some plasma.
23:29He had a hole in his forehead and one in the back of his head.
23:32We mentioned to the corpsman that he was probably wasting his time
23:35because no one could live with a slug going in one side of his head
23:38and coming out the other.
23:40The man opened his eyes and said,
23:42Like hell.
23:45The slug hit him at an angle,
23:47gone through the skin and under it,
23:49across the top of his head and out the back.
23:51It looked as if it had gone straight through.
23:54He lost a lot of blood but was far from dead,
23:57and made sure we knew it.
24:02Once the wounded man was stabilized,
24:04the next step was to get him to the battalion aid station
24:07that was situated just behind the fighting lines.
24:10Litter bearers were responsible for carrying the wounded
24:13across hundreds of yards of battlefield.
24:16Like the medics, these men were called upon
24:19to help their fallen brothers in arms without regard for their own safety.
24:23In the Pacific theater,
24:25stretcher bearers were often African Americans
24:28who, because of segregation,
24:30were not allowed to fight in combat units.
24:35We passed a stretcher team carrying a man who was shot in the thigh.
24:39I don't know who was worse off,
24:41the wounded man or the stretcher team.
24:44They were dripping with sweat.
24:46He kept bleeding with them to put him down and that he could walk.
24:50Or at least for them to take a rest.
24:53They wouldn't have stopped unless someone killed them.
24:57When the wounded reached the aid stations,
25:00they received more comprehensive medical care from the battalion surgeons.
25:04Here in makeshift hospitals,
25:06the patients went through a process called triage,
25:09where the doctors prioritized the casualties
25:12by the severity of their wounds,
25:14with the most critically injured chosen for immediate attention.
25:19To aid this procedure,
25:21each casualty was tagged with vital information
25:24to help medical personnel quickly assess the treatment he required.
25:30Often, these makeshift facilities close to the front
25:33lacked some of the basic tools needed to treat the more severe cases.
25:39But when a soldier was gravely wounded,
25:42doctors had no choice but to do what they could
25:45under the difficult circumstances.
25:48Combat cameramen on Iwo Jima recorded just such an instance.
25:52Here, medical personnel operate on a serious abdominal wound
25:56by the illumination of a flashlight,
25:58without the benefit of surgical gloves.
26:03For the most part, once the seriously wounded soldiers reached the aid stations,
26:08they received enough emergency treatment
26:10to allow them to be safely evacuated farther to the rear.
26:14There, the brutal task of dealing with the wounded
26:17fell onto the shoulders of the doctors and nurses
26:20who served at hospitals behind the lines.
26:23These men and women fought their battles,
26:26not with guns and grenades,
26:28but with sutures and scalpels.
26:37The men were dying like flies.
26:40We had four tables set up, stretchers on sawhorses.
26:44They had a great big vat filled with alcohol.
26:47After a case, we dumped all our instruments and gloves into the vat.
26:51We had no gowns or masks, of course.
26:54We had 400 serious casualties.
26:57There were 400 more walking casualties.
27:01We didn't bother with them.
27:11World War II
27:14The most significant medical innovation of World War II,
27:17and the one that was directly responsible for saving the most lives,
27:21was the field surgical installation.
27:25For the first time, mobile medical units kept up
27:28with the constantly moving battle lines
27:30and were adequately equipped to provide emergency attention.
27:34Even in the most unfavorable circumstances,
27:37doctors and nurses managed to intervene with swift surgical operations.
27:45The doctors and nurses were all running around.
27:48They were trying to evaluate who was wounded, who to wait on,
27:51because they were pouring into that hospital from the whole front.
27:55They were overwhelmed with wounded.
27:57I mean, guys were laying there. Some of them died.
28:00Some of them had half their leg cut off.
28:03It was a mess.
28:05They were working like crazy, those doctors and nurses.
28:08All of them deserved medals.
28:11They were really doing their best.
28:14The efforts of the doctors and nurses were especially remarkable
28:17given that most of them came from private practices and other settings
28:21where they treated one patient at a time
28:23with all of the desired equipment and supplies.
28:27Medical personnel called this new setting spaghetti surgery
28:32and it frayed the nerves of even veteran professionals.
28:36My darling Lucille, when I think of the days at the hospital in Chicago
28:41when I thought that we were being overworked, it makes me laugh.
28:46We actually do more surgery here in one day than they do there in one week.
28:52This morning, four of us did 35 cases.
28:56It is hectic work with inadequate anesthesia, inadequate linen supplies,
29:00inadequate help, and never-ending tension.
29:05The work itself does not suffer, though.
29:08The attitude is that the man we are working on at the moment
29:11is the most valuable man in the Army.
29:14We never really know whether he is a private or an officer, and we don't care.
29:21The surgery usually dealt with serious wounds.
29:24Many were caused by gunshots.
29:27According to the great number and variety of explosive devices used during the conflict,
29:3280% of all injuries were the result of hits from mortars, grenades, aerial bombs, and shells.
29:42The wounds these weapons caused were much more devastating to the human body than bullets.
29:48One Red Cross nurse wrote about the injuries she and her fellow nurses treated.
29:55It was pretty horrific, the severe casualties we heard to nurse.
30:00I had a patient on the most dangerous case list,
30:03who had been given approximately only two more hours to live.
30:07But he was only 22, not even on his own soul, way down my heart.
30:13I sensed there was a decent family, hoping and waiting for his return.
30:19Silently praying, I pleaded from my heart that he be at least allowed to get home.
30:27Even for those patients whose surgery was not life-threatening,
30:31the consequences could be devastating.
30:36A doctor came to me and told me they would have to amputate my leg.
30:40My first reaction is to begin to wonder what women are going to think of me.
30:44Here I am, facing the loss of a leg, and that's one of my first thoughts.
30:51Excluding fingers and toes,
30:5316,000 partial and full amputations were performed by the U.S. Army during World War II,
31:00making it one of the most common surgeries.
31:03Amputation was so frequent that these training films were produced
31:08to teach surgeons the most efficient procedures.
31:11But no film could prepare any doctor for the carnage in the operating room.
31:16It was a unique experience that called for the utmost skill and a thick skin.
31:23During the course of doing this work, one of the colonels got a little perturbed
31:27because I was taking limbs off.
31:29He came down to see what was going on and said,
31:32I understand you're taking them off right and left here.
31:35I said, yep, those that need to come off.
31:38He said, well, I'm not quite sure they do.
31:42So I picked a mangled limb up and handed it to him.
31:46He just about passed out.
31:49He never said another word.
31:52The overwhelming nature of working in field hospitals did have its rewards.
31:57At the height of the Civil War in 1864,
32:00more than 50% of the soldiers admitted to hospitals died.
32:05In 1944, the figure was less than 5%.
32:10Far more often than not, seemingly hopeless cases responded
32:14to the skilled level of care administered by thousands of dedicated medical personnel.
32:20I had been shot in the head, so they took me right up to an operating room.
32:26I was on the operating table and two or three doctors were looking at my eye.
32:30They were saying, take the eye out, get the bullet and take the eye out.
32:35And then one says, no, no, we can save this eye.
32:39After the operation, I was totally blind.
32:43Then one day, I'm laying in bed and all of a sudden I could see something above me.
32:48I hollered to the guy in the bed next to me, tell the doctors I can see something.
32:52The vision came back into my left eye.
32:55Up until then, I was prepared to study Braille.
32:59I thought I was going to be blind for the rest of my life.
33:03In stark contrast to actual battle injuries were the rare times
33:07when soldiers inflicted minor wounds on themselves to escape the horrors of combat.
33:14According to one U.S. Army study of 30,000 casualties
33:17suffered in a four-month period in 1944, only 179 were self-inflicted.
33:25Still, it was common enough to be a concern amongst both surgeons and commanding officers.
33:32One day, General Patton was making rounds on my ward.
33:36I had a patient who had accidentally shot himself in the ankle.
33:39Patton says, son, what happened to you?
33:43He replied, I shot myself in the foot.
33:46Well, Patton blew up. He called him everything he could.
33:50Finally, when Patton was done, the patient said,
33:53General, I've been in Africa, Italy, France, and now Germany.
33:59If I was going to do this to get out of the service, I'd have done it a long time before.
34:04Patton went on down, saw two or three more patients, came back, and said,
34:10Son, I'm sorry. I made a mistake.
34:15One type of casualty that was not rare was combat fatigue,
34:19sometimes called battle exhaustion,
34:22a debilitating psychological condition in which the many stresses on a fighting soldier
34:27gradually wore down his ability to function.
34:31A study by U.S. Army psychiatrists in 1944 determined that any soldier,
34:37no matter how brave, would begin to show signs of battle exhaustion
34:41after only four weeks in combat.
34:44After six weeks, the study reported, more pronounced symptoms appeared.
34:54These included a general slowing of mental processes and apathy,
34:59a belief that as far as they were concerned, the situation was one of absolute hopelessness.
35:05Memory defects became so extreme that the soldier could not be counted on to relay a verbal order.
35:11If such a soldier was not evacuated, he became practically nonreactive both physically and emotionally.
35:17During acute actions, he took little or no part, trembling constantly.
35:26These men were casualties as surely as those who had been shot or had stepped on a mine.
35:33Like tens of thousands of seriously wounded soldiers, their combat days were now over.
35:39Ahead lay an entirely different war,
35:42a battle to recover from their injuries both physically and emotionally.
35:47For many of these men, it would be the most difficult battle of all.
35:59The surgeon offered me a choice between amputating both legs in survival
36:04or cutting off the rotten bits of flesh with the odds against its working.
36:09I opted for the latter, but the method was so intensely painful
36:14that I would start weeping an hour or so before the daily treatment.
36:18The End
36:29Once casualties had been stabilized with treatment at the field surgical installations,
36:34they were evacuated to hospitals farther in the rear.
36:38Depending on the location, that meant a trip via sea or air.
36:43Both methods of evacuation handled tens of thousands of cases.
36:48Up until this point, only essential procedures had been performed.
36:53Once a wounded soldier reached his destination, comprehensive course of treatment began.
37:01The transition from fighting soldier to helpless patient was not easy.
37:06For these young men in the prime of their lives,
37:09facing the loss of a limb or severe burns or other permanent disabilities
37:14was the biggest challenge they had ever faced.
37:18Dear folks, you asked me to tell you exactly how serious my injury is.
37:23The wound is not serious as far as my life is concerned,
37:27but it is fairly serious as far as the use of my hand is concerned.
37:31The doctor says that it will be a long time before I'm able to use the hand,
37:35and he doubts very much if I'll ever use it like I was once able.
37:39It will take a long time for the bones to mend as they were all broken.
37:43I went through quite a bit of pain the first week.
37:48Different types of injuries required different types of treatment.
37:52In many instances, soldiers found themselves in the hands
37:55of some of the most skilled surgeons in the country.
37:58State-of-the-art techniques and equipment
38:01helped restore bodies that had been ripped apart by various weapons of war.
38:06In some severe burn cases, the best treatments involved methods that,
38:10at first glance, appeared to be something out of the Middle Ages.
38:19They put a plaster of Paris mask on.
38:22Then they put thousands of maggots in there, little bitty ones.
38:26It was standard procedure.
38:28The maggots will eat up all the dead flesh.
38:30They will not touch a live cell.
38:32They'll do a better job of cleaning up a badly burned man like me than a surgeon can.
38:38They left them in there for eight days.
38:40About the second or third day, they began to crawl.
38:43I nearly went nuts, and it stunk something awful.
38:52A huge part of recuperation included physical therapy.
38:56Amputees needed to learn how to use prosthetic limbs.
39:00Men who had suffered eye and head injuries required comprehensive rehabilitation.
39:07Others with various localized wounds needed to regain circulation, strength, and flexibility.
39:14Tuesday morning, they really went to work on my hand in physical therapy
39:18and have been keeping it up all week.
39:20The nurse started breaking the adhesions that had formed in all the fingers.
39:25It is an altogether very unpleasant business.
39:28These adhesions are small fibers growths over all the tendons and joints
39:33that form when you don't move your fingers at all.
39:36If they're allowed to continue, it will be impossible to ever use the fingers again.
39:41So she started in, bending the fingers, and I could feel and hear all sorts of things going on in them.
39:48It is by far the most painful thing that I've had to endure so far,
39:52and I'm pretty much of a wreck when she gets through with me each day.
39:56I hope that it doesn't keep up too much longer, but I have a feeling that it will for some time yet.
40:03Slowly, with the help of both physical and psychological therapy,
40:07men began to make the long journey back from the battlefield.
40:12Once they began to accept their condition, their thoughts turned towards their loved ones.
40:17They had left home as healthy young men.
40:20Now they would have to learn to live with permanent disabilities.
40:24Only their strength of will and spirit would get them through the trials that lay ahead.
40:30Dear folks, the story in brief is that my right foot had to be amputated at the ankle.
40:36However, it has in no way broken me up or made me miserable
40:40because my main concern was just to come through alive.
40:43My plans for the future are the same,
40:46and I believe more apt to be realized because of some good first-hand experiences.
40:51I just want you to remember that the Good Lord has been a lot kinder to me than you could ever imagine.
41:00After the medical procedures were completed and the initial steps toward healing had been accomplished,
41:06the time finally arrived for those too seriously injured to return to their combat units to ship out and head for home.
41:14But what should have been joyous news was weighted down by conflicting emotions.
41:21How hard it is, the joy of knowing you were going home,
41:26but at the same time the deep sadness of leaving friends who had shared the toughest,
41:31meanest and most terrible years of our lives.
41:35Once who had protected you and you them in the deadly game of life or death.
41:41Ahead, what?
41:44We had been away so long, so used to another way of life.
41:48We had become animals.
41:51Now we had to convert back to decent, lovable, caring human beings again.
41:58Would people understand and give us help and above all, time to reconvert ourselves?
42:03Lord, give me the strength to cope with this new and unexpected fear.
42:09I'm so scared I could cry.
42:16Some wounds would take a lifetime to heal, some never would.
42:22The emotional scars inflicted by the death of friends and comrades were among the deepest.
42:27One US Marine wrote a poem about his great sense of loss.
42:32At last it's quiet on Iwo. At last the battle's won.
42:37And we few who are left say a prayer of thanks, because our job is done.
42:43In the shadow of Mount Suribachi, where the crosses mark our dead,
42:48we read the names of our buddies and stand with bended heads.
42:52We read the names of our buddies and stand with bended heads.
42:57We recall good times together and the sacrifices shared,
43:02and we can't see why they had to die while the rest of us were spared.
43:09In the end, it was this bottomless human sorrow that was perhaps the greatest price of war.
43:16But for the fighting men of World War II and the doctors and nurses who treated their wounds,
43:23it was the promise of a new life ahead that enabled them to persevere
43:28through the enormous trials that tested their bodies and their souls.
43:46World War II
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