Coming Home

331, 781 Australian soldiers embarked off to war in 1914. Of these 330 000 soldiers, around 61,000 soldiers were killed and of the remaining 270 000 soldiers, over 155,000 had sustained injuries. This number does not include those with mental illnesses.

These statistics show us the impact the War would have had on Australian society, on employment and life in general.

During the war, with the majority of healthy men away fighting, women had charged into the workforce taking the jobs that were usually occupied by men. Women worked as efficiently as men and they only had to be paid half the wage of a man, so when the soldiers returned employers were not always willing to give them jobs, leaving many of the returned soldiers without employment. The government had a plan to reduce returned soldiers unemployment though, this plan was to set aside land for the soldiers to farm and live on. Although this was a very generous idea, farming was difficult for those who had injuries or had been affected by poisonous gasses (which could leave soldiers with severe breathing difficulties), unfortunately this concerned the majority of returned soldiers.

Returning back to family life would not have always been straightforward for the returned soldiers either, changes had been made to the way the family run to compensate for the soldiers absence and it was not always easy for them to fit back in. Wives were off getting jobs to support their family and it was not uncommon for young to not remember their fathers. 

Overall, comi home from war was not easy for soldiers. Life had changed so dramatically while they were away and managed to function that when they came back there was not always space for them. However, despite the differences, all of the soldiers who returned were relieved they made it home.

Video Analysis

We chose this video because it shows some possible symptoms of PTSD during WW1. This video is good as you can see just how affected they were and you can only imagine what they went through. Unfortunately, symptoms like these were seen as 'cowardice' and soldiers could be shot for showing them.
For the returned soldiers soldiers who had PTSD (and hadn't been shot), returning to normal life would have been very difficult. Many symptoms of the illness would limit employment options for the soldiers; for example, physical PTSD symptoms (constantly shaking/ trembing, inability to stop moving) would have impacted on their ability to farm. This would have been especially difficult as the main employment for returned soldiers was farming as all Australian states had a Returned Soldiers Settlement Scheme in which land was set aside and  either given, or sold at a low price to returned soldiers. For returned soldiers with symptoms such as constant mumbling, selective deafness, being easily startled  or frightened by loud noises or images (such as soldiers uniforms) it would have made doing almost every job difficult.

There have been some suggestions that in this video the symptoms had been exaggerated by a mental hospital who took the footage, to convince family and friends of soldiers suffering this to send them there. However, there are other videos which depict similar symptoms and which wasn't taken by a hospital so it is pretty likely these are true. (Before you ask why we didn't use them- it was because they were extremely depressing)

Peter's Wife

Peter had only been back from war for a month and already I could tell he was a different man. He used to be so full of life, always happy and smiling: it was why I fell in love with him. Now, he paces around lifeless, ignorant of everything and everyone else. He shows no emotion towards his family and me but will often burst into tears for his comrades that didn’t return with him. He drowns his sorrows by drinking but this leads to violence. 

At night, he screams out in his sleep, shouting “Kill him! Get down!” It wakes up the children. I hear them crying in the other room. In the morning, he’ll wake up in tears, but he won’t let me comfort him, and it kills me. He doesn’t trust me anymore; he doesn’t trust anyone except his comrades, and they’re all gone now.

Sometimes, it’s like he’s never left the war. We’ll be walking down the street and we’ll hear a noise, nothing out of the ordinary, and he’ll drop to the ground, ready for combat. It breaks my heart to see him so afraid of everyday things, shaking the mere sight of a soldier’s uniform.

I don’t know if there is a way he can ever get better, shell shock is not a noble disability that is openly discussed, but I’m afraid that if he doesn’t get better we will all suffer. If the violent rampages he goes on do not stop I will be living in constant fear for all our lives. If he can’t control his aversion to loud noises he will never get a job and I can’t sustain this family on what we have now.

I miss the old Peter terribly and I dread he will never return from his war.

Diggers finding work

Returning back to Australia for many soldiers that fought in World War One was not an easy task. After waiting almost a year in some cases to return home, due to the large numbers of troops, the returned soldiers, or “diggers”, as they were called, came back to a new Australia, one that had matured and changed over the many years they had been away for.

Many diggers endeavoured to try and settle back into their normal lives, and this involved searching for employment. Of the 250,000 soldiers that returned to Australia, initially only 13 000 were unemployed, but this number began to increase in the lead up to the Great Depression in the 1920’s. However, finding a job was not as easy in many cases. During the war, many great technological advances were made, and the diggers did not have the skills to be able to work in these environments. Also, in their absence, many soldiers found that women had taken over control of jobs usually occupied by men, and many employers were wary of firing the women in favour of unskilled diggers.

Many soldiers came back from war with horrific injuries, many that rendered them unable to work. They were incapable to look after and support their families. Therefore, they, as well as those who couldn’t find employment, turned to the government for financial assistance. The government also established a reward scheme for the soldiers with the Soldier Settlement Scheme, in which veterans were given small gifts of farming land. In Victoria, almost 12,000 soldiers were given a gift like this by the government. But in many cases, this gift wasn’t enough for the soldiers to be able to continue to support their families.

World War One

World War One is one of the most important events in modern history to date. It was obviously, the first war involving countries from all around the world (hence the name World War One), and it was the first time that trench, mechanized, chemical, air and submarine warfare were all used. It was also the first time that the capacity of the human race to destroy  was displayed.

In 1871 Germany invaded France and took the French states Alsace- Lorraine as their own . The French felt threatened by this- causing the alliance systems to be formed. There were two main alliance systems- the Triple Entente (France, Britain and Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy*).

The first signs of the beginnings of a war was the tension between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. The Serbs had felt oppressed  by the Austria-Hungarians,  as many of them lived in the provinces of Bosnia  and Herzegovina where they were under Turkish rule but governed by the Austria- Hungarians. When the Turkish Empire began to weaken at the beginning of the 20^th century the Austrians took over the largely Slavic provinces.

A  Slavic terrorist organisation, the Black Hand, which was made up of  young men who were sick of this oppression  and decided to ‘make a political statement while striking a blow against oppression’ by murdering the heir to the Hapsburg Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This was the trigger to the war that spanned 4 years, involved many of countries, not only in Europe, but all over the world, and resulted in over 35 million casualties, 215 585 of which were Australian.

*Italy was allianced with the Triple Alliance at the outbreak of war, however they later swapped into the Triple Entente to support France.