Mental Consequences of Soldiers during the First World War

World War I was the beginning of modern warfare. The use and creation of new weapons in the early 1900s like machine guns and dangerous gases left lasting physical wounds on soldiers. With these physical wounds came mental wounds that physicians of the time had never dealt with before. With the brutal tasks and imagery that soldiers came face to face with fighting in France and Germany during the first world war, the mental health of the men fighting began to decline.

These sights led to multiple veterans of World War I to write about these events, focusing largely on injuries sustained by themselves or comrades. Ernest Hemingway as a veteran of WWI himself would write of the war as something that would physically and mentally mark a soldier.

Harold Krebs, the protagonist in “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway has shell-shock, or what is now known as PTSD. Harold Krebs does not first describe his homecoming, but rather photographs that he holds in his possession: one with himself and his fraternity brothers and the other of himself and a fellow corporal over in Germany though “the Rhine does not show in the picture” (Hemingway 1). This shows a lack of attachment that Krebs has to his current state now that he has returned home from the war due to the fact that he would rather refer to old photos than describe his homecoming. Robert Paul Lamb of Purdue University states that “[l]ike other veterans, Hemingway’s Harold Krebs is unable to ‘adjust to the life he had left’ for the war” (1). It is the way Hemingway describes Krebs and his fraternity brothers: “all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar” (1). Here, there is a sense of uniformity that Krebs feels he has lost and can no longer gain after what he has seen on the front lines of World War II. The picture of Krebs and another corporal portrays them in uniforms that are too small for their bodies (Hemingway 1).

The physical outgrowth of their uniforms shows that Krebs has outgrown the perceivably small man he once was; Harold Krebs has witnessed and experienced things that he can never forget. Wartime Krebs differs from Harold Krebs at his Methodist college in Kansas: “The fraternity brother, whose sartorial conformity underscores his camaraderie, is hardly the isolated, passive figure Krebs seems after his return from Europe” (Roberts 516). Due to his lack of attachment to his return home, and rather wanting to return to Europe, or go anywhere else, Krebs has dissociated himself and has begun to show his altered mental state. When Krebs does describe his life after the war, he finds himself lying about his feelings and experiences and sleeps late into the afternoon (Hemingway 1-2). In Shell Shock to PTSD, shell shock symptoms varied from soldier to soldier, though the general symptoms include “fatigue, poor sleep, nightmares, jumpiness and … a variety of somatic symptoms” (Jones and Wessely 23).

Krebs finds himself suffering from such fatigue and depression that some days he does not feel the need to leave his bed. Hemingway even relays the fact that “[Krebs] mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it” (2). His mother, who would rather have her pre-war son, tries to treat him like a child, though she does not believe he is truly ill. She does attempt to ask him about the war, but his mother finds herself detaching herself from his stories and he knows she truly isn’t listening (Hemingway 2). The nausea Krebs feels when lying falls into the category of somatic symptoms. As a soldier suffering from PTSD, Harold Krebs really wants to tell someone his encounter with modern warfare: “unable to find an audience for the truth, the ex-soldier resorts to lies, an act that leads to self-loathing and further isolation from others” (Trout 152).

Hemingway’s choice of focusing on sleep is no coincidence, as Krebs’s life revolves around trying to sleep to escape his lies he must tell and further force him deeper into his PTSD. The vocalizations that Krebs makes regarding religion and his emotions to his mother reveal how far gone he is regarding his mental health. Krebs states that he’s “not in His Kingdom” and when asked if he loves his mother he responds “[n]o” just to elicit a reaction out of her. His attempt to elicit shock out of his own mother leaves Krebs numb to the feelings of those around him. David Ullrich in “‘What’s in a Name?’” states that “Hemingway constructs two voices for Krebs … enabling the narrator to articulate fully Krebs’s complex psychology through the summarized consciousness, and also to dramatize succinctly Krebs’s clumsy attempts at voicing his emotions, as illustrated in his clipped dialogue with his mother” (369).

Krebs tries to communicate to his mother how he is feeling, yet she decides to ignore the fact that pre-war Harold is gone and has been replaced by post-war Krebs. Roberts makes the point that “[w]hen his mother mentions God to him, Krebs feels embarrassed and resentful; such resentment also indicates the intense emotional turmoil just beneath the carefully controlled, bland surface” (516-517). After making his mother cry, Krebs has to again decide to resort to lying because of his mother’s lack of understanding: “He couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t make her see it … He had only hurt her”(Hemingway 7). After witnessing the atrocities of modern warfare, it is understandable that Krebs would hold hostilities to the God his mother loves, especially as a man suffering from shell shock who can not forget the carnage he had to witness. Harold Krebs does find a coping mechanism for his horrible experiences in World War I through expressing his emotions, thoughts, and feelings on the matter. Krebs believes that when he did tell the truth he “had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside of himself” (Hemingway 1). Being unable to talk about his war experiences, and how he himself feels, he is feeling a sensation that soldiers who suffer from PTSD know very well.

Jones and Wessely write of a Captain Wilfrid Harris, a World War I doctor, describing “men in this state may break down in tears if asked to describe their experiences at the front” (23). Krebs sees his lack of emotion as a form of emotion, by telling the truth he has found a way to cope with what has happened to him, but being forced to lie has halted his coping mechanism. Krebs choice of lying is “because it is the easiest way to avoid complications” but straying away from his form of coping forces him deeper into his mental state (Lamb 28). Krebs suffers a cognitive dissonance and if given the correct audience would perhaps not be overcome by his PTSD and could assimilate back into his town’s culture.  Hemingway makes mention of battles at “Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champagne, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne” which are some of the bloodiest battles of WWI (1). It is then understandable that Krebs would be haunted by these battles and these battles would evoke a strong emotion in Krebs.

Hemingway even makes note that for a while Krebs doesn’t talk about the war, but soon becomes infatuated with wartime materials like books and articles on the war (1-3). This is a common symptom of shell shock; sometimes the symptoms do not come about for months. Krebs becoming infatuated with war literature and his own story, though he can not share it, proves that “he is both shell-shocked and shell-bound”(Ullrich 366). He uses this literature to engulf himself back into his time of service when his purpose in life was simple: to not die. Though he has returned home, he no longer has that purpose and relives his days during the War as “neatly polarized, alternative choices, clarified through simplification” (Ullrich 366). His vivid wartime experiences and his mute voice on the subject due to lack of an audience reveals that he, in fact, is suffering from shell shock. Harold Krebs physically comes home from Germany, but mentally he is still in Germany, waging modern warfare upon his enemies.

His photographs that he carries portray pre-war and post-war Harold Krebs, the first of which has been forgotten. He can not return to his normal life because he is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he does not only remember his experiences but has to relive them, creating an emotional divide between himself and his town. His physical symptoms of nausea and his emotional numbness are just two symptoms of shell shock that WWI veterans experienced once home from the front lines. Krebs does find a way to cope, but without an invested audience he feels that he will go unheard. His silence forces him to lash out at his mother, who he once had a positive relationship with, to see if her emotional outburst would create one in himself. When that fails, he resorts back to lying which is the source of his shell shock. Harold Krebs in “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway is a classic case of PTSD, or what was known as shell shock during World War I, and is the source of why he can’t rejoin post-war society. 

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