Today we have TBI(traumatic brain injury) to go along with PTSD(post traumatic stress disorder) from the VietNam era. My dad used to talk about "battle fatigue" and "shaking with patriotism" in a muddy foxhole with rats, land crabs and blowflies. Ah, progress!
My little hometown email-network, "Geezer News" had this entry re: WWI or The Great War or The War To End All Wars, sure, right!!
Reunion of War Buddies Clears 31-Year-Old Mystery--When Shell-Shocked Arthur Goetzman Meets Roy DeMay, Former's Heroism Becomes Known
(By Bertha Berdel)
After 31 long years, two buddies of World War I had a happy reunion on Thanksgiving Day. Arthur Goetzman, formerly of Lock Berlin and Pilgrimport, and who has been a patient in the U. S. Veterans' Facility at Canandaigua and other hospitals since World War I because of shell shock, and Roy DeMay, now a farmer in East Williamson, met at the home of Mr. Goetzman's brother, Walter, in East Williamson last Thursday. While Arthur and his aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Burton Allee of Lyons, were holiday guests of the Goetzmans in East Williamson, DeMay came to visit, and the two met for the first time since that terrible night in No Man's Land, 31 years ago, when they were sent out through heavy artillery fire to deliver some important messages to the American commander at the front. Privates in Co. F. 305th Regiment, 77th Division, stationed at Mousson, France, following the battle of Chateau Thierry, in which they took part; Goetzman and DeMay, carrying the messages, were proceeding between heavy artillery fire from both sides. The night was pitch dark; the only light coming from flashes of the big guns. The two soldiers crawled along over the rough terrain, fell into shell holes half full of water, through barbed wire, with the guns constantly booming around them, when suddenly DeMay missed his comrade but could not find him, and proceeded without him. Upon his return, DeMay reported Goetzman missing. The next morning, Goetzman was found lying close to the German lines. Arthur was placed in a hospital in France and his mother, the late Mrs. Bertha Goetzman of Lock Berlin, was notified to this effect. Arthur has been in hospitals most of the time since, suffering from shell-shock. He remembered starting out with DeMay to deliver the messages, but as to what happened to him after that, his mind has always been a blank; and no one of Arthur's family has ever known what happened to him on that terrible night so long ago, until Thanksgiving Day when DeMay cleared up the mystery that has hung over Arthur's illness all these years. Much improved in health, Goetzman is able to assist in the farm work at the Veterans' hospital in Canandaigua, where he has been a patient for 14 years.
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