The Battlefield Traumas of Gallipoli

Gallipoli was one of the most hostile and intense battlefields of the first world war, with over 26,000 Australian casualties and 8,000 of those being deaths in the heat of battle; however, not all of the casualties that survived the ordeal had physical injuries alone. There were many different types of trauma that the soldiers experienced apart from the physical damage to their bodies, such as short term psychological ailments such as Battle Fatigue and Shellshock from living in a constant life or death situation, and also dealing with the after effects of war with their families back home and the long term damage that was inflicted on their psyche. The First World War did not leave one person who experienced its horrors from the frontline untouched, and the damage it wreaked on those who fought spanned both the body and mind, and lingered long after the guns had stopped firing and the men returned home.
The most widely experienced traumas soldiers in the field at Gallipoli initially suffered were physical wounds and ailments that were caused from the fighting and from exposure to living in incredibly squalid conditions that were common in trench based warfare. The Soldiers had to endure constant artillery barrages and brave fire from enemy machinegun nests and hidden snipers all while living in damp and muddy trenches that were breeding grounds for bacteria, which made day to day living a hair’s breadth away from danger. Gunshot wounds, shrapnel and severed limbs from explosives were the most common physical traumas that casualties endured, and those who survived had the constant threat of infection due to the unsanitary environment and squalid conditions in the trenches, turning a relatively minor injury such as a flesh wound o...

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...esponses to certain sounds and sights which caused them to relive the fear and the horror that they had witnessed, or were so scarred from their experiences that living a normal life became a slim hope at best.
World War One sew unprecedented havoc on the soldiers who were unfortunate enough to participate, especially those who fought in the Gallipoli campaign. The men who fought suffered untold physical traumas from the battlefield fighting as well as developing mental traumas that lasted long after the gunfire ceased, leaving them to attempt to pick up the pieces of their former lives and try to move on with their lives. The Gallipoli campaign changed the lives of all it touched, and while the physical scars faded and the wounds they suffered closed up, they never truly faded away, with countless soldiers living with the trauma of war for the rest of their days.