This is what they used to do to soldiers with PTSD

Researchers look to WWI soldiers for clues about traumatic brain injuries
By JAY PRICE
The News and Observer
Published: August 5, 2012

DURHAM — Second Lt. Eric Poole was sharp enough to earn a string of promotions and make that rare leap from enlisted man to officer, but his rise through the British Army ranks ended when his superiors ordered him shot.

Pvt. William Alfred Moon was, said a command sergeant major who knew him for two years, “one of the best of soldiers.” They executed him, too.

Pvt. Arthur Wild, as well, had been a solid soldier, one of his officers testified. Wild’s death by firing squad “was instantaneous” wrote the witnessing medical officer.

The trio fought in the French trenches of World War I in conditions almost unimaginably horrific, even by the terrible standards of war. All three were court-martialed for desertion.


They and other executed British soldiers were likely the innocent victims of a scourge that still stalks battlefields nearly a century later: blast-induced traumatic brain injury.

That’s according to the findings of an unusual, multidisciplinary team of Duke University researchers. They include a psychiatrist who served in Afghanistan, a psychologist, a biomedical engineer, and an engineer with a doctorate who is an expert in explaining the precise mechanics of explosions and other forces that can injure humans.

Taking another look

The kind of information the team needs, so many years later, is scarce. What researchers needed in each case was two things: something that offered reasonable clues about the men’s mental health before the trauma, and a report with at least some detail about his exposure to the effects of a blast.

They found it in enough cases to present the results formally at the neurotrauma meeting.

Some of the men, perhaps 10 percent to 15 percent, had poor excuses for deserting or their other behavior. In many of the other cases, there wasn’t enough information in the records to tell much.

But in the cases of about 10 percent of those executed, there appears to be evidence of neurotrauma, said Cameron R. “Dale” Bass, an associate research professor with Duke’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Injury and Orthopedic Biomechanics Laboratory.
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