Comments by "Crotchet" (@quaver1239) on "World at War" channel.

  1. My South African dad was fighting for the British in the Western Desert (North Africa) when I was born in 1942. The world knew of "shell shock" but PTSD diagnoses did not happen until very many years later. In fact, no soldier was granted even an interview upon returning from WWII. It took me more than 40 years to realise that the Dad who I thought hated me was actually suffering from PTSD. His moods were unpredictable; he would shout or hit, or both, out of the blue, would insult me publicly, and on and on it went for both my and my brother's entire childhoods. I lived in fear, and only in my early fifties did the fear gradually leave me. My brother simply became a hypochondriac; he feared illness of fearing our father. So, as I eventually realised many years later in a nursing career, all three of us were suffering from PTSD: my dad, my brother, myself. It is an appalling condition, and very difficult to understand why even today it is given so little care and attention. Our service men and women deserve far more care than they receive. As does every person who receives this potentially fatal diagnosis.
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