My father likes to tell a story about the men living on the railroad
tracks where he grew up in central Connecticut. When he was boy, he
often rode the tracks on his bike and came across what he thought were
“hobos” along the way.
He was surprised when my grandfather, a World War II Army veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, ruefully told him they were veterans. In essence, they never came home from the war, he told his son, a child of the New Frontier who had grown up on John Wayne celluloid depictions of the war, snug in the can-do image of boom and fortitude reflected in the monochromatic images provided by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. There was no room for misfits or traumatized veterans in this American Dream. So they were easily marginalized and forgotten by society, at least in our town, there on the tracks.
As it turns out, not only were they not alone, but there were big hospitals (or in old-fashioned speak, sanitariums) for the thousands of men who returned from World War II with what the old timers called “shell shock” and we know now as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That there was a high rate of “psychotic neurosis” among those vets is no surprise considering the scope and violence of the war, which claimed some 500,000 American lives. That society had nearly airbrushed them out of our contemporary understanding of post-World War II American life is extraordinary.
There are numerous reasons why these hospitals and their patients may not be widely known to us today. One is plain censorship, as in the case of the 1946 documentary “Let there be Light,” which was commissioned by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1946. The film, directed by powerhouse director John Huston (who was then a major in the Corps) and beautifully photographed by a team led by Stanley Cortez, followed 75 returning World War II vets suffering “psychotic neurosis” from the war.
Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/once-censored-wwii-documentary-shatters-cliches/
He was surprised when my grandfather, a World War II Army veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, ruefully told him they were veterans. In essence, they never came home from the war, he told his son, a child of the New Frontier who had grown up on John Wayne celluloid depictions of the war, snug in the can-do image of boom and fortitude reflected in the monochromatic images provided by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. There was no room for misfits or traumatized veterans in this American Dream. So they were easily marginalized and forgotten by society, at least in our town, there on the tracks.
As it turns out, not only were they not alone, but there were big hospitals (or in old-fashioned speak, sanitariums) for the thousands of men who returned from World War II with what the old timers called “shell shock” and we know now as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That there was a high rate of “psychotic neurosis” among those vets is no surprise considering the scope and violence of the war, which claimed some 500,000 American lives. That society had nearly airbrushed them out of our contemporary understanding of post-World War II American life is extraordinary.
There are numerous reasons why these hospitals and their patients may not be widely known to us today. One is plain censorship, as in the case of the 1946 documentary “Let there be Light,” which was commissioned by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1946. The film, directed by powerhouse director John Huston (who was then a major in the Corps) and beautifully photographed by a team led by Stanley Cortez, followed 75 returning World War II vets suffering “psychotic neurosis” from the war.
Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/once-censored-wwii-documentary-shatters-cliches/
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