Unfit for fighting –
Home ties cause more breakdowns of soldiers than battlefield
Too many are tied to apron strings; others see themselves as unwanted
By Marjorie Van de Water
Clinging-vine and hateful relatives in the home are bad for a soldier’s morale, and Marjorie Van de Water points out in her third article on the Army’s neuropsychiatric cases, cause more breakdowns than the battlefields.
The home, not the battlefield, is the cause of breakdown for most of the men discharged from the Army as neurotic.
Combat can and does cause men to crack up. But the great majority of the men so far discharged have had their difficulties right here in this country, in the training camps.
The trouble with most of these men is that, although their birth certificates indicate they are of “military age,” their behavior shows they are boys not yet grown up emotionally.
Many are tied to the apron strings of mother, sister, wife or perhaps father. They are affectionate boys dependent upon some loved one and literally cannot get along without her.
So homesick they’re ill
Nearly all normal boys need the love and care of someone. Most boys who go into the Army are homesick now and then and long with a wistful pain for Main Street and the old back porch, or a certain flight of stone steps in the city. Nearly all are delighted with a letter from home or a snapshot. But the pain of separation from home and family is so intense for a few that it is impossible for them to put heart into their military duties. They sit and brood. They are actually ill. Finally, they have to be sent home.
It may not be the boy himself who is the dependent one. It may be the mother or the wife who is utterly helpless when the draft takes away the man of the house. If there is serious illness, or the roof leaks, the only solution seems to be to send posthaste for the man who is now in uniform. If he is not able to drop Uncle Sam’s affairs immediately and go to the rescue of those at home, he feels guilty and worried and the home folks feel deserted and sunk.
Blind leading blind
And sometimes the man in uniform not only is held back by the stranglehold of a clinging vine at home, but he is also helplessly dependent on the same persons who must lean on him. It seems a little like the blind leading the blind, but it often happens that the mother-son or husband-wife ties are so intimate and tight that neither can get along without the companionship and help of the other.
But not all the soldiers discharged for mental or emotional unfitness have such indulgent mothers or wives and happy, comfortable homes. Contrasted with this type are the men who never get mail from home, nor do they want it. They have no home worthy of the name – no place or person to look back on with loving memory or to look forward to with longing. They see themselves as unwanted children, resented by unwilling parents or hated by jealous brothers and sisters.
4 in 10 from broken homes
Anticipation of return to such a hateful spot may be harder for a soldier to face than are the hand grenades and rifle fire of the enemy. When the going gets extremely tough, he has less need to cling to life than has the man with affection awaiting him after victory.
And so it is the home – with demanding and dependent love, or with rejecting and embittering hate – that may out too much burden on the soldier and cause his breakdown.
NEXT: Soldier with NP discharge makes excellent worker.