What really happens to nineteen year old young men in heavy combat can never really be “recreated “ in film or even books. Films and books may give others some idea of the emotions and horror but most veterans will never find the depictions totally spot on. It is a tragedy when necessity forces young men to engage in such horrors.
I had a patient in 1998 who was admitted to my service overnight for left upper quadrant pain. CT scan showed a lesion in the spleen, possibly embolic.
At that stage of my life, I had an entourage of 8-12 interns, residents, fellows and nurses who followed me around.
I went in the room. An old man, hair cut high and tight, looked fit enough to put on the uniform he hung up in 1945. The nurses report was “no pain”, because a) he hadn’t rung for the nurse; and b) he hadn’t asked for pain medicine.
The first thing I noticed was he was bolt upright, sweating bullets, and obviously in pain.
My entourage was mystified. I had seen this before.
“Tell my colleagues here why you didn’t call the nurse or the resident for pain medicine”, I said.
The inevitable answer: “Infantrymen only talk to infantrymen”.
Here’s this man, had a whole life after he came back from Europe, got married, had kids, sold insurance, raised a family - but in a way, the life of the man who went to Europe ended on a freezeing cold patrol (”so cold the snow squeaked”) who shot dead a 13 year old who popped up out of a ditch, pointed a rifle at him, then threw the rifle down and put up his hands, and a new life began right then and there.
When I was a medical student, there was a VA hospital (in Massachusetts, if I remember right) with 3000 beds devoted to psychiatric casualties from Europe and the Pacific, men who never really got to come home.
It is, as you say, horrific.
My grandfather was in the trenches in WW 1. He was 23 and a captain in the US Army. He had to order men to go over the top and go with them. He never spoke of his time in France to anyone. My uncle prodded him several times to talk about it, but he refused. He went on to live a prosperous life and died at 90 years old.
To a man they never really liked to talk much about combat but when they did it was very illuminating.
What becomes apparent is Hollywood NEVER gets it right, books about half right.
When you talk with men you were actually there it's incredible.
Almost all of the narratives I heard went thus; “Well, the lieutenant got his head blown off pretty much right away and we were pinned down for hours''. Another reoccurring theme is how quickly casualties piled up. An infantry company in WW2 was about 130 to 140 men. Some of these vets told me and entire company, with about four lieutenants would be almost wiped out in three or four days of fighting.