It is encouraging that the Canadian Forces have recently acknowledged the human toll that their operations may have on individuals. It is past due. Although lip service is often paid to the notion that in war the moral is to the physical as three is to one, the human factor is usually taken for granted or neglected altogether. That experience may offer some context for discussing the condition being considered here.
Recognizable threads connect past with present.
First, the phenomenon of battle exhaustion came as a very unwelcome surprise to the army, particularly its senior commanders. Considering the common incidence of shellshock in the Great War, of which they were veterans, it is not clear why they should have been surprised. Communities across the country had their individuals, town characters, who had been left severely disabled as a result of their time in the trenches. But shellshock and its aftermath were not topics raised in polite company. They were affronts to traditional attitudes about proper soldierly behaviour.