reduced to approximately 180 men (from 600). I have neither ammunition nor food. What am I to do?” (Keegan). This kind of massive loss of life in individual units was not uncommon in the larger offensives of the War. The generals in charge of the various armies adopted the tactics of hurling men at each other in direct charges that more often than not resulted in failure. Mackay writes in his diary about one such failure at the battle of Arras in 1917, “Our attack was a failure. The barrage was too fast and of the wrong nature and our men were mown down by guns and by M.G. fire. All the officers except Tobermory, A.G.Cameron and G.H.Mitchell were either killed or wounded”(Mackay). General incompetence in the higher levels of command is undoubted one of the factors that led to such horrible conditions during the First World War. All of this had a deep pshyological impact on the men in the trenches. Remarque says “ The terror of the front sinks deep down when we turn our backs upon it; we make grim, coarse jests about it…. And so we speak of everything that keeps us from going mad” (Remarque). Psychiatric trauma or “going mad” was a common problem during World War One. In 1915 a British physician named C.S. Myers coined the phrase “shell shock” to be applied to all psychiatric causalities (The Great War). Shell shock happened to many men during the war, and it was not always the fault of the individual soldier, but the fault of the stress that the men had to deal with everyday. The strain of having to deal with miserable living conditions on the front line, seeing your comrades killed or wounded, and the complete arbitrariness of being killed or wounded yourself, was simply to much for many men to take. All of the different factors mentioned above cam together to create the lasting impression that the survivors of World War One took home with them. The First World War was so ...
