On December 7, 1941, I saw the U.S.S. Shaw blown up by a Japanese air bomb in Pearl Harbor. “That tin can is pau,” remarked a sailor who prided himself on a Hawaiian vocabulary. The Shaw certainly looked wiped out, finished. The next day I encountered a naval officer, a friend I had known for many years. Call him Commander Morris, because he was neither a commander nor a Morris. I had seen Morris the day before the Japanese attack: healthy looking, good natured, alert, capable. Now his face had become drawn, he was nervous, jumpy, depressed, apathetic. In two days he had aged ten years.
The U.S.S. Shaw and Commander Morris were just two of the many casualties of the Japanese attack. The same attack that had produced a physical casualty in the warship had produced a mental casualty in my friend. And that made me think of warships and men’s minds, their points of similarity.
Two months after the Japanese attack the U.S.S. Shaw, under her own steam, sailed in a convoy to the west coast. When the Shaw has a new bow built on her, she will be as good as ever. A patient in one of the ships of that convoy was Commander Morris. As far as the Navy is concerned, it is Morris not the Shaw who is "pan.”
The cruisers constructed a few years ago were built with defective design. Was it not their rudderposts which cracked? As commissioned they could not withstand the requirements of even a peace-time Navy. They corresponded to the half-witted recruits who would be turned down by the recruiting petty officer. Correspond except for the most important difference that ships can be rebuilt.
There are ships built for peace which with a little training and armament will do a good war-time job. A destroyer may carry on successfully in tests and target practice, even stay afloat after a shell or two strikes it; but sink with the first torpedo. A cruiser can stand more punishment. A battleship may take one, even two, torpedoes and be sunk with the third.
Human minds are like that too: Some cannot accept the responsibility of a day laborer or a clerkship. Others may join the peace-time military services and get away with it. Some of these may be sent to sea or to foreign duty and cannot adapt themselves to their new environment. They develop neurasthenia, psychosis, or one may simply put a 45 bullet through the roof of his mouth. Suicide ranked number one as cause of death in most of the “pacification” expeditions before our good- neighbor policy moved into Latin America. Even in peace time suicide is the usual number one cause of death in the Army.
In real war the percentage of mental casualties mounts high. That does not mean that all those without perfect mental stability are sunk in war. For in war there are men and ships under conditions closely resembling peace time, just as in peace there are often men and ships in disasters which resemble war.
The recruiting officer in war is put to a less rigid test than the sea captain in a storm in times of peace, just as the lake steamer in war runs less risk of sinking than the North Atlantic tramp in peace. Both men and ships go down for the same reason in peace as in war—when their stability, their bouyancy has been destroyed. The bouyancy of neither can he made indestructible.
After a French officer had gone through African campaigns and three years of the first World War in France, I saw him go mad during the bombardment around Chateau Thierry. And in the end, even the Bismarck sank. For men like ships will stay in action only as [long as they can take the punishment that is given them.
But men differ from ships in that ships have usually been built for their mission— for peace or for war. Only since the coming of Hitler has the attempt been made to build men designed for war. In this country we shall have to go on selecting from men produced for peace, those who can best withstand war. We examine them, weigh them, measure them, take pictures of their hearts and lungs and the rest. An important part of the rest (the part which is the particular concern of this article) is an investigation of their mental stability. Then those selected are put through a conversion comparable to the conversion of merchant ships for war. They are immunized against typhoid, tetanus, yellow fever, and perhaps against plague, typhus, and cholera. They are taught to shoot, their muscles are developed, and they are taught to live in the intimacy of a disciplined restricted community with definitely marked distinctions of rank and privileges.
It is this last, this adjustment to a new and vastly different environment, which is the first shock upon the mental buoyancy of the man of peace selected to make war. Of those who could not keep mentally afloat during World War I, about a tenth went under on the first day and 42 per cent in the first 6 months. Sixty per cent of the veterans of the last war who required hospitalization were sick with neuropsychiatric disorders. Each case cost the taxpayers thirty thousand dollars.
Every effort is now being made to select men with stable minds and thus reduce this percentage in this war. But let the taxpayer not be too optimistic as to the result.
Too many specialists in mental diseases have published too many articles emphasizing the value of an expert neurological examination in preventing the induction into the military services of men whose mental stability will not withstand the shock of war. I have read too many of these articles—so many that with the last I am impelled to repeat the English equivalent of General Cambronne’s famous exclamation at the Battle of Waterloo.
Obviously mental cripples do not make good soldiers, good sailors, or good marines. The recruiting sergeant, the Navy chief pharmacist’s mate, and the recruiting officer all know that—and act upon it. If the examining medical officer of the Army or Navy, regular or reserve, is as observant and careful as he should be, he will be able to prevent a few more mentally unfit from entering the military service; and consequently save not only time and money in vain attempts at training during the present crisis, but also save the taxpayer-of- the-future’s money in pensions and in the institutional care of men for whose mental conditions war and the nation are not responsible.
It is admitted that a good psychiatrist if he has plenty of time (he needs plenty) will improve upon the average of the nonspecialist in weeding out the mentally unfit. But the psychiatrist will have to be both very very good, and in addition have firsthand knowledge of the service for which he is selecting men, if he does not pull out some good military seedlings along with the weeds. If the best psychiatrist under the best conditions thinks he can approach a perfect score, he is simply fooling himself.
This is not the psychiatrist’s fault. Granting for the sake of argument, that he can produce an exact picture of the recruit’s background and construct an exact gauge of the new man’s present mental stability, there are still two variables either of which in the future may upset the psychiatrist’s calculations: (1) The effect of training in improving or destroying the man’s present mental stability; (2) the man’s future military environment. And each of these two variables is made up of a host of other variables, any of which may be the deciding factor. As examples: the personality of an instructor or drill sergeant, the make-up of the military outfit, the attitude of officers (particularly the commanding officer), climate, food, quarters, health, the kind of war, and the personal role this particular recruit is destined to play in that particular war.
In the face of the numerous variables, the best that can be done is the exclusion from military service of the mental diseased, the unsocial, the moron, and the neurotic.
But there are men who are misfits in peace-time society who are even useless, troublesome peace-time soldiers and sailors, who make good, if not the best, fighting men. Every experienced man or officer can recall a man who was always in trouble in peace time, but made the best sort of fighting man in war. This is equally true of officers.
“Admiral------,” remarked a ranking naval officer recently, “has just enough of the sundowner in him to make a first class leader.”
In a fighting outfit these types must not be excluded. Unfortunately, they are the ones likely to be excluded even by the good psychiatrist, if the psychiatrist is not also a good medical officer.
The active naval service must accept the men who are enlisted or selected as mentally stable. Some will go down. And when they lose their mental buoyancy they cannot be raised like ships and be rebuilt as good or better than new. The man who sinks mentally in war is finished as far as fighting is concerned. He is never as good as new. And this is true whether the man loses his mental buoyancy because his shipmates give him a nickname he dislikes, or because he develops an anxiety neurosis after great fatigue and a week of bombardment in which he has seen all his best friends blown to bloody bits. In other words, whether he entered the Navy with mental stability corresponding to a leaky punt or to a superdreadnought.
It is the job of the active service to keep afloat and in action all that can be useful, all men and ships fit to fight. To accomplish this for ships, the Navy has developed damage control. At this writing in the fighting Navy a third of all non-battle casualties requiring medical survey are due to loss of mental buoyancy (mental conditions). Is it not time to take seriously mental damage control?
But damage control of ships does not prevent all sinkings, and it must not be expected that any procedure would prevent the destruction of mental buoyancy when minds are subjected to overpowering shock.
What would be the procedure in mental damage control?
Favorably influencing, whenever possible, those variables which make up the environment of the officers and men of the service.
The first mental shock is the period of conversion during which the naval recruit is transformed at the training station from a civilian to a fighting man. Care of the recruit is not entirely neglected at present. The chaplain and the medical officer are at the disposition of any man who will present his problems. But it takes an intrepid recruit to have enough gall to bridge the social gulf between himself and the average chaplain or medical officer. The usual result is that only those able to take care of themselves are aided. “God helps those who help themselves.”
The recruits in the naval training station are usually formed into companies, each commanded by a chief petty officer. Judging by the descriptions obtained from several Navy men these petty officers are (or try to be) tough, tyrannical, and rule more often by fear than example. “Gee, I’d never have gone to him with any personal problems,” is the usual reaction. Ask the Navy man about his period at the training station and he will say: “I was scared to death all the time,” or “It was my worst time in the Navy.”
This conversion period of the recruit could and should be improved by a monitor system in which an experienced man with some knowledge of the Navy would be in more intimate contact and in sympathy with the recruit. He would act as sort of father confessor, a valuable function which always has been recognized as one of the greatest boons to the mental stability of Catholics. Every mature officer has witnessed (or experienced) the salutary effect of a frank discussion of intimate personal problems. And if the discussion leads to a solution, so much the better.
Not only would such a monitor be valuable in helping the recruit with his problems or in bringing cases of injustice to the attention of proper authority, but he would also be able to discover quickly any abnormality in the recruit. No time would be lost in taking proper action: save the recruit if he is worth saving, or get rid of him if he is not.
Where could satisfactory monitors be obtained? Navy men surveyed for physical disabilities or in a convalescent status would be an ideal source. Unfortunately, there will be no dearth of this source for many years to come. These monitors should have definite instructions as to their duties and responsibilities. They must have a workable idea of the extent they should go in the solution of the recruit’s problems. The important thing to emphasize is that neuroses can frequently be prevented in the prodromal stage by a frank confession and solution of personal problems. Once fully developed a neurosis marks the end of a man’s active military career.
From the recruit training station the Navy man goes to a ship, where usually he joins the “X” division, a temporary pool of men to be distributed to other regular divisions. Here and elsewhere in the Navy there are sufficient men of varied experience to observe everyone. This observation is actually made. But what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business, and in most cases nobody acts on these observations until too late. After a man develops a frank neurosis, on inquiry the medical officer will learn from the man’s petty officer, “I thought he seemed a little queer,” or “He’s seemed to be nervous and worried about something for weeks.”
What is true of the enlisted man is also true of the officers, particularly the newly commissioned non-Academy officers who do not have intimate classmates with whom to talk things over. Experienced officers and men may not need the confessional frequently, but when they do need it the need is as great or greater than the case of the recruit. This need, as far as the Navy is concerned, is certainly more important. A key officer with a neurosis or psychosis is the worst blow to morale and mental damage control.
The mechanism of the confessional, therefore, should be maintained for everyone, so that every man in the Navy—admiral to apprentice seaman—shall have some one readily at hand to help him with his mental problems. So much for the confessional.
But there are other elements besides the confessional which will advantageously influence mental stability. Every opportunity must be taken for favorably influencing environment in the Navy. Let us consider the more important:
Mental shock actually precipitates neurosis, but fatigue, particularly mental fatigue, increases the effect of any mental shock. When fatigue is increased the ability to withstand shock is decreased. Every man has his limit. I have been told these limits are particularly well defined in some aviators: one may be able to stand nine hours flying, another only six before he becomes nervous or loses judgment and efficiency. Aviator or sailor, when what a man can stand of fatigue and shock falls too low, he has no place in the fighting service. Otherwise it is the Navy’s job to keep fatigue and shock within a man’s limit of resistance. Fatigue is usually governed by the mission allotted to the man, ship, or unit. Therefore some control can be exercised. Shock, in war, is usually the result of enemy action. Therefore shock can only be estimated from intelligence reports. Possibly it may be modified by passive defense. It cannot be controlled.
Damage control against fatigue was provided for in the armies of World War I: for the unit, by change of duty from an active front to a rest area or an inactive front; for the individual, by compulsory periods of leave. The rule was, ten days leave every three months. In this war naval units are sometimes given a period of rest after the accomplishment of a hard mission. A submarine crew or an aviation squadron, for example, is given a period of complete relaxation as free as possible from all responsibility. The principle must be extended to other units as indicated.
Loyalty is most important. Loyalty from above downward is more important than loyalty from below upward, because the first will insure the second. When loyalty is established, discipline becomes a palatable diet seasoned by human understanding, and not just disagreeable nourishment. With loyalty the attention of each man is turned outward from himself to his ship or unit. His little personal problems drop into obscurity.
A good captain, if not too much hampered by bad officers, means a happy ship; and a happy ship is remarkably free from neuroses. Conversely, an officer, particularly a commanding officer, who is egotistical, acquires a perverted sense of values or is unjust and unsympathetic, is sure to endanger the mental stability of his men.
Next to loyalty comes example. Though it is important in peace, the highest compliment an enlisted man can pay an officer is: “If there’s a war I want to be with him.” The officer who inspires confidence is doing much for the mental damage control of his men. If he is afraid he must hide his fear, or if necessary, camouflage it with braggadocio or even facetiousness.
But example is not all one can do in war to maintain mental buoyancy of men. A word of sympathy, advice, or encouragement, or a good cussing-out, or a job to do, each in its proper place, may re-establish mental stability and prevent the precipitation of a neurosis. Men cowering under bombardment like dogs in a thunderstorm usually find themselves when given the proper stimulation plus a job.
Whatever is good damage control is also good for morale. In fact, mental damage control is the extension of the maintenance of morale beyond the unit and into the intimate life of every man and officer of the Navy.
We are now at war. We have ships and men to fight that war. True, we will get more ships and more men. But it is the Navy’s job to keep in action all that we have as long as we can—men’s minds as well as ships. In the past almost all emphasis has been placed upon the selection of new men with stable minds to serve in the military forces. Very little emphasis has been put on keeping stable the minds we have. It has been-only vaguely realized that the mental buoyancy of minds is no more indestructible than the physical buoyancy of ships; and it is only vaguely realized that men’s minds as well as ships may be saved by damage control.