Saturday, July 7, 2018

Nietzsche was wrong-sometimes what doesn't kill you makes you weaker

From PBS "American Experience" "The Great War: 1918" documentary














Poor Fred Wadsworth relates his experience as a US Army ambulance driver during World War I:



















Narrator: More than 30% of all casualties were caused by poison gas. Both sides used it.  In the first week of the Meuse-Argonne attack the American lines were heavily saturated.   Though everyone had a gas mask, there had been little training in the identification and detection of types of gas.

Wadsworth: I went in down into where the gas was and the gas was about three feet all over the ground -- it was yellow, real yellow.  And I had my mask on, I knowed what it would do. So I drove in there but I had to turn around down in there so I could load my patients to go bring them back out. And there wasn't one of those fellows had a gas mask on down in there, not one.  And that mask was there and the lieutenant says, "Oh, it's mild, that won't hurt you! Get that...."  He swore. And made me take mine off. So I goes to work and I said...I took this mask off then I went back in three or four more times then I  landed in the hospital.


Shpancer, Noam. “What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 21 Aug. 2010, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201008/what-doesnt-kill-you-makes-you-weaker.

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