A Summary Of The Impact Of Australian Soldiers On The Western Front

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World War 1, also known as the Great War, began on the 28th of July 1914 and ended on the 11th of November 1918. It involved fighting between the Central Powers and the Allied forces across the world in places such as Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. During WW1 trench warfare was extensively used by the military as their main form of battle, it involved soldiers digging trenches mere meters away from the enemies and charging across no-man’s land to the surrounding trenches, this type of fighting almost always ended in a stalemate. Australian Soldiers on the western front played a crucial part in the war and were responsible for arming the artillery and other weapons as well as fighting the enemies they had to endure many long hours of fighting from their combat and experienced extreme fatigue, loss of morale and paranoia and took heavy casualties. Nurses also played an essential role in the war; they provided much needed medical care for both physically and physiologically injured soldiers, they experienced extreme exhaustion and drowsiness from the overly long working hours and endured much psychological stress from this. Despite the fact that they’re perspectives on WW1 were quite different, they both shared similar physical strains and psychological impacts. …show more content…
Although the soldiers were stationed amongst the trenches and front lines and the nurses in the medical stations, both experienced looming fears of death which caused the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among both the nurses and soldiers. PTSD, also known as “shellshock” is caused by the underlying factor of experiencing a severely traumatic event associated with