From our special correspondent – The trauma experienced by World War II veterans of D-Day left a lasting impact on their children at a time before post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was recognised, leaving families struggling to understand and cope with the psychological scars. Recent gatherings of experts in Normandy highlight both the enduring challenges and the resilience that was passed down through generations.
For the largest seaborne invasion of World War II – along Normandy’s coastline on June 6, 1944 – to be a success, three important conditions had to be met. There had to be a full moon, so Allied paratroopers could have more visibility when landing. The tide had to be low enough that thousands of amphibious landing craft could reach the shores of Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold and Sword beaches. And a morning fog on the horizon was needed to hide the arrival of Operation Overlord from German forces.
They did not know it at the time, but what US paratrooper Arthur 'Dutch' Schultz and British Royal Marine Thomas Nicholls experienced on D-Day would outlast their lifetimes. Both men returned to their homes with varying degrees of post-traumatic stress disorder. They struggled with symptoms like intrusive thoughts, irritability, anxiety, depression and nightmares. While the two veterans dealt with their pain differently, their condition had a lasting impact on their families and especially on their children.
On May 21, 30 experts from around the world gathered on the historic sites of the Normandy landings to discuss the lasting mental health consequences of traumatic events like D-Day. Though PTSD is now a widely known condition, war trauma took decades to become recognised by the medical profession. And researchers have found that, even if veterans like Schultz and Nicholls have now passed, their children still bear the signs of having grown up with a traumatised parent.
As a thick fog begins to set on the horizon, the low tide swells in and out, tickling the shores of the coastline. Eighty years after the landings took place here in Normandy, the weather conditions are uncannily similar to that fateful day back in June 1944.
‘We were all sort of clueless’
Post-traumatic stress disorder was only officially recognised decades after WWII veterans ended their service, in the wake of the Vietnam War. It first appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association to define and classify mental disorders, in 1980. For the nearly 160,000 Allied troops who landed in Normandy in 1944, the lack of a diagnosis or framework made it difficult to seek proper treatment.
Before PTSD was recognised, it went by many other names. After World War I, PTSD symptoms such as panic, tremors or sleep issues were known as “shell shock” and seen as a direct reaction to artillery shells exploding. “War neuroses” was another name given to the condition at the time, as well as “combat fatigue”. Both terms reflected the prevailing belief that once a soldier was no longer on the front line and had time to relax, his war-related trauma would disappear. As a result, soldiers often received only a few days of rest before returning to battle.
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Dominant theories to explain war trauma before 1980 were based on Freudian psychoanalysis. According to this approach, the main reason veterans had psychological issues was repressed childhood feelings of anxiety and hostility, awakened by their experience of war. The horror of combat was not considered an independent cause of psychological trauma. Instead, it was assumed that soldiers already had emotional issues before their service.
“[Now we know] that in order for someone to develop PTSD, they have to experience a life-threatening traumatic event,” explains Dr. Sonya Norman, professor of clinical psychology at the University of California San Diego, who travelled across the Atlantic to share her experience working with PTSD patients. “Someone could have a genetic predisposition to PTSD but if they don’t experience this kind of event, they will never develop it.”
Dangerous societal myths in the post-war era also contributed to stifling the legitimacy of PTSD as a serious disorder. “People would say veterans were just ‘nervous from the service’ or even tell them that: ‘The war is over, buddy, get on with it’,” sighs US paratrooper Schultz’s daughter, Carol Schultz Vento. The dominant discourse at the time was that of the “Greatest Generation”, who fought heroically in what was known as the “Good War” and returned from battle healthy and well-adjusted.
Portrayals of World War II on the silver screen were also far from what servicemen had experienced on the ground. Vento’s father, a US paratrooper, was portrayed by the actor Richard Beymer in the 1962 film, “The Longest Day”. But the narrative did not reflect the real horrors her father witnessed on D-Day. His young and hapless character gets lost after being dropped at the wrong location and never seems to reach the active combat around him. “I only found out 30 years later that yes, he was lost, but he was actually at battle,” a stunned Vento admits. After making contact with other lost soldiers on June 6, Schultz came under violent fire and even witnessed the chilling mercy killing of a wounded US compatriot.
For many WWII veterans and their children, it wasn’t until Steven Spielberg’s 1998 war epic “Saving Private Ryan” that the trauma of their experience was unveiled. “My father said it was the most realistic movie he had ever seen in terms of actually demonstrating what happened in the war,” says Vento.
Secondary trauma
“[PTSD] is a significant mental health issue and it impacts the way you parent. And then your children suffer because of that,” says Diane Elmore Borbon, executive director of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), while walking the dunes of Utah Beach. “People didn’t realise that there were consequences they could pass down to their children and even grandchildren.”
Vento is now 72 years old and lives in New Jersey. Her early memories of her father are of a man who “drank, but was highly functioning”, a “good and involved father”. As a child, her dad would play marching games with her and her sister, so she knew that he had been a soldier. But “he didn’t talk about it very much”, she says.
It was only at around age 13, when Vento’s mother and father divorced, that she began to see her father’s symptoms worsen. “He slid down into a much more severe alcoholism and depression … he basically fell apart,” she describes. Going in and out of rehab, her father became distant. He attempted suicide. He had recurrent nightmares. He missed important moments of Vento’s life, like her high school graduation. But she understood that to a certain extent, it was not his fault. Following their divorce, her mother had explained that her father had, in fact, been struggling with trauma symptoms since the first day of their marriage.
“I was hurt and I felt somewhat abandoned. But at the same time, I felt sorry for him,” she says.
The field of intergenerational trauma is still relatively young. After PTSD was officially recognised in 1980, researchers started looking at its impact on the families of war survivors and veterans. Studies on the children of Holocaust survivors suggested that they were deeply affected by the trauma of their parents. But research on the families of World War II veterans with PTSD has been much sparser. A 1986 study by Robert Rosenheck, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, found that some children seemed “embroiled in a shared emotional cauldron” with their fathers. Of the dozen children he studied, some over-identified and experienced “secondary traumatisation” while others were aloof and chose to distance themselves.
“I became the rescuer,” Vento explains, “which is a big burden. When you are going through something [tough in life], you think it is normal. But I didn’t realise until after a lot of therapy that it is really parentification,” a phenomenon where children take on caregiving responsibilities at the expense of their own developmental needs.
It was only when Vento was in her 40s, during her first foray into psychotherapy, that she began to understand how her father’s trauma had shaped her. “My therapist asked me how I felt and I said: ‘What do you mean by ‘feel’?’ I was very repressed. I could not even express how I was feeling.”
Up until that point, Vento had coped with her emotions by burying herself in her studies. “I told my therapist that I thought I was addicted to education. He said yes, but that I was essentially trying not to deal with my suppressed emotions,” she explains.
It was only a year and a half ago, at age 71, that Vento began trauma therapy after her daughter suggested she find a specialised counsellor.
“I have been told I definitely have secondary PTSD,” she says.
The transmission of resilience
In the late 1960s, Vento’s father Schultz eventually turned his life around. He got sober and spent the rest of his career as the director of drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes in Philadelphia.
“There is incredible resilience in these families,” ISTSS director Borbon explains. “For a lot of people, war experiences help them find meaning in their lives. At a young age, they knew what it was like to lose people.”
British soldier Thomas Nicholls was only 19 years old on D-Day. Though he did not take part in front-line active combat on the June 6, 1944, he witnessed gruesome scenes. He came under fire when he landed on Juno beach with Canadian soldiers as part of a follow-up reinforcement wave and was involved in fighting. "I believe these were memories he never shared with me in order to protect me," says his son Philip. After Operation Overlord was well under way, the young soldier was ordered to retrieve bodies from the sea, which Philip says was the worst memory his father had of the war.
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But the now 62-year-old did not know any of this until he was well into his 20s and began to take an interest in his father’s past. Once a week, Nicholls would bring his father to the pub and buy him a few drinks. Over time, he began to open up and share experiences of his past as a young serviceman in World War II.
“I wanted to know more,” says Nicholls. “I wanted to know why he repressed it for 40 years.”
Nicholls describes his childhood relationship with his father as “very much one of distance”. The pub conversations fostered proximity, a sense of connectedness, and eventually transformed their relationship. Down the line, however, his curiosity became “an obsession”. And though he has not felt particularly anxious, depressed or stressed throughout his life, Nicholls admits that this obsession stood in the way of his family life. “It ruined my first marriage,” he says.
Though researchers have not identified a PTSD gene per se they have found some genetic predisposition to trauma, depression and anxiety in general. “We have seen multi-generational effects of trauma, whether that is nature or nurture, we can’t say,” Dr. Norman explains. “We know that there are higher rates of depression, anxiety and stress among children who are raised with PTSD. The experiences of that child could predispose them to be more likely to have those conditions later on in life.”
Looking back, Nicholls regards his father’s stoicism with pride. “I am amazed he was able to hold that in for four decades,” he says. Though he says he did not inherit any trauma, he says he gets his strength from his dad. “I learned how to cope,” he beams.
Despite the resilience his father passed down to him, Nicholls says he would have liked to have had more “good years” with his father. “I had 25. I would have liked 45,” he says gently, tears forming in his eyes.
As the experts are ushered back into the coach to visit the next D-Day site, Borbon looks back at the shores of Utah Beach fondly. With a sparkle in her eye, she underscores the positive effects of the transmission of resilience that can come with growing up with a war-traumatised parent.
“At the end of the day, society needs bravery. And thank goodness there are people in the world who step forward,” she says.
