War Service Research Articles

Mapping lesion-related human aggression to a common brain network

BackgroundAggression exacts a significant toll on human societies and is highly prevalent among neuropsychiatric patients for which neural mechanisms are unclear and treatment options are limited. MethodsUsing recently validated lesion network mapping technique, we derived an aggression associated network by analyzing 182 patients who had suffered penetrating head injuries during their service in the Vietnam War. To test whether damage to this lesion-derived network would increase the risk of aggression related neuropsychiatric symptoms, we used the Harvard Lesion Repository (N = 928). To explore potential therapeutic relevance of this network, we used an independent Deep brain stimulation dataset of 25 patients with epilepsy, in which irritability and aggression are known potential side effects. ResultsWe found that lesions associated with aggression occurred in many different brain locations but were characterized by a specific brain network defined by functional connectivity to a hub region in the right prefrontal cortex (PFC). This network involves positive connectivity to the ventromedial PFC, dorsolateral PFC, frontal pole, posterior cingulate cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, temporal-parietal junction, and lateral temporal lobe and negative connectivity to the amygdala, hippocampus, insula, and visual cortex. Among all 25 neuropsychiatric symptoms included in the Harvard Lesion Repository, criminality demonstrated the most alignment with our aggression associated network. DBS site connectivity to this same network was associated with increased irritability. ConclusionsWe conclude that brain lesions associated with aggression map to a specific human brain circuit, and the functionally connected regions in this circuit provide testable targets for therapeutic neuromodulation.

The military–industrial complex as a variety of capitalism and threat to democracy: rethinking the political economy of guns versus butter

This paper examines the military–industrial complex (MIC), which is a prototype widely imitated by other business sectors. Collectively, they constitute a variety of capitalism which can be termed the poly-industrial complex (PIC). Understanding the MIC is critical to understanding contemporary US capitalism, US international policy, and the drift toward Cold War II. The MIC exerts a massive societal impact. It twists economic activity toward military spending; twists the character of technical progress; is socially corrosive via its capture of politics and government; twists societal understanding of geopolitics to increase demand for war services; promotes militarism and increases the likelihood of war; and promotes proto-fascist drift because militarism drips back into national politics. Given these features, the MIC is of first-order significance and the consequences of failure to understand it are likely to be grim. Politics is at the center of possibilities for change. This raises questions whether the demand for change can be mustered, and whether the political system will permit it.

Captain George Blair RAMC: A doctor prisoner of the Japanese in Singapore and Taiwan in the Second World War.

The papers from George Blair's war service as a prisoner of the Japanese in the Second World War are unusually complete. It is a valuable record because it is representative of those young doctors who provided most of the medical care in the camps, and also because the Taiwan camps are not well documented in the literature.

‘White only to the depths of his outer skin’: newspapers, whiteness, and Indigenous Australian enlistment in the First World War

This article uses contemporary newspaper reports on Indigenous enlistment in the AIF during the First World War to highlight how media narratives of war service were racialised during the conflict. Newspapers used and sensationalised examples of Indigenous Australian enlistment to temporarily bestow a degree of whiteness on non-white individuals, while threatening the removal of whiteness from un-enlisted Anglo-Australian men. In doing so, these reports reinforced the idealised racial boundaries of the AIF and the Australian nation, even as they reported on cases that crossed them.

The Workload of the Italian Military Health Service During the First World War: A Quantitative Assessment

The article proposes a quantitative evaluation of the workload of the Italian military health service during the First World War. In the Great War, there were unprecedented medical and health care issues. This was a result of the size of armies; the poor living conditions of the soldiers; and the introduction of new weapons. This article reconstructs some quantitative aspects of the Italian military health service in the Great War in terms of both supply (e.g. the number of health structures and medical personnel) and demand (e.g. the soldiers who were injured and who became ill during the conflict).

David Henry Cushing. 14 March 1920 — 14 March 2008

David Cushing was Britain's foremost twentieth-century marine fisheries ecologist, who did more than anyone else to develop the subject into a distinctive science over a career of more than 50 years. He was born and raised in Northumberland, and took both his first degree and a DPhil at Oxford, separated by war service in the Royal Artillery. He married Diana Antona-Traversi in 1943, and they had one daughter, Camilla. He worked for the whole of his career at the Fisheries Laboratory, Lowestoft, where he started in 1946 as a scientific officer, studying plankton off the northeast coast of England, and eventually becoming deputy director and head of the Fish Population Dynamics Divi­sion until his retirement in 1980. He published around 200 papers and reports, and wrote 11 books on marine ecology and fisheries, with four principal areas of interest: fisheries acoustics; planktonic biological production in the sea; the causes of the collapse of the North Sea herring; and the factors controlling recruitment of young fish, notably the influences of stock size and of climate. He famously proposed the match/mismatch hypothesis to explain how the great variability of fish recruitment arises from minor variations in climate from year to year. He died on 14 March 2008, on his eighty-eighth birthday.

ANALYSIS OF THE LABOR COMPENSATION OF PRISONERS OF WAR IN UKRAINE

The article examines the issue of compensation of prisoners of war currently held in Ukraine. It is noted that 75 years have passed since the adoption of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, and some of its provisions are now outdated or irrelevant. One of these norms is the amount of compensation for the labour of prisoners of war. Since there is some debate about the criterion of fairness today, the authors analyse the purchasing power of the Swiss franc in 1949 versus 2024 and provide a conclusion on this issue. Key words: prisoners of war, labour, labour compensation, labour relations, employment, State Criminal and Executive Service of Ukraine, International Committee of the Red Cross, international humanitarian law, Geneva Convention, legal status, prisoner of war camps, prisoner of war detention centres.

Working Backwards, Moving Forwards: Ephemera and Diversity in Australian Stories of Indigenous Second World War Service

Over recent decades, historians, communities, and museum professionals have worked to share and understand stories of Indigenous Australian military service. This article posits that ephemera from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection offer a tangible way to engage with personal stories and enrich the narrative(s) of Indigenous service in the Second World War. While many experiences were shared by the thousands of men and women who enlisted and served during the war, surviving ephemera and the related personal stories reveal the cultural, linguistic, and experiential diversity of the individuals who served. Using five case studies from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection, this article explores the link between ephemera and stories of service and suggests that sharing these links with a wider audience can serve to broaden understandings of Indigenous service and sacrifice.

Fighting for Citizenship: Black Northerners and the Debate over Military Service in the Civil War

Fighting for Citizenship: Black Northerners and the Debate over Military Service in the Civil War

World War 1 and Colonialism in Kenya: Perspectives through Historiography and Literary Imaginaries

ABSTRACT During World War I, what is today Kenya was part of the British East African Protectorate. Direct fighting took place within the region as the neighbouring Tanzania was a German colony. The cultural and economic repercussions of the war transformed the social landscape and colonial approach to the administration of the region. Historically, the war period between 1914 and 1918 coincided with the acceleration of British colonial intrusion into Kenya and a close control of the different aspects of the local communities’ political, social, and economic day-to-day operations. It was also marked by the transformation of large parts of present-day Kenya into white settlements. Moreover, during the war, mostly male members of the various Kenyan communities were conscripted into military service and forcefully pressed into the British war service. The war memories in works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, M. G. Vassanji and Margaret Ogola revolve around the sense of being caught in unknown crossfire, the inhumanity of conscription, causalities and other horrors of the war, and the irreplaceable loss of the most productive community members in the war.

Suicide Risk Among US Veterans With Military Service During the Vietnam War

There are persistent questions about suicide deaths among US veterans who served in the Vietnam War. It has been believed that Vietnam War veterans may be at an increased risk for suicide. To determine whether military service in the Vietnam War was associated with an increased risk of suicide, and to enumerate the number of suicides and analyze patterns in suicides among Vietnam War theater veterans compared with the US population. This cohort study compiled a roster of all Vietnam War-era veterans and Vietnam War theater veterans who served between February 28, 1961, and May 7, 1975. The 2 cohorts included theater veterans, defined as those who were deployed to the Vietnam War, and nontheater veterans, defined as those who served during the Vietnam War era but were not deployed to the Vietnam War. Mortality in these 2 cohorts was monitored from 1979 (beginning of follow-up) through 2019 (end of follow-up). Data analysis was performed between January 2022 and July 2023. The outcome of interest was death by suicide occurring between January 1, 1979, and December 31, 2019. Suicide mortality was ascertained from the National Death Index. Hazard ratios (HRs) that reflected adjusted associations between suicide risk and theater status were estimated with Cox proportional hazards regression models. Standardized mortality rates (SMRs) were calculated to compare the number of suicides among theater and nontheater veterans with the expected number of suicides among the US population. This study identified 2 465 343 theater veterans (2 450 025 males [99.4%]; mean [SD] age at year of entry, 33.8 [6.7] years) and 7 122 976 nontheater veterans (6 874 606 males [96.5%]; mean [SD] age at year of entry, 33.3 [8.2] years). There were 22 736 suicides (24.1%) among theater veterans and 71 761 (75.9%) among nontheater veterans. After adjustments for covariates, Vietnam War deployment was not associated with an increased risk of suicide (HR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.93-0.96). There was no increased risk of suicide among either theater (SMR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.96-0.99) or nontheater (SMR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.97-0.98) veterans compared with the US population. This cohort study found no association between Vietnam War-era military service and increased risk of suicide between 1979 and 2019. Nonetheless, the 94 497 suicides among all Vietnam War-era veterans during this period are noteworthy and merit the ongoing attention of health policymakers and mental health professionals.

George Kalantzis, Caesar and the Lamb. Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service

George Kalantzis, Caesar and the Lamb. Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service

Shifting from Post-Truth to Truth in Jonathan Lichtenstein’s The Pull of Negative Gravity

The concept of post-truth, popularised especially in 2016, exerts its influence across various areas from everyday life to diplomatic relations. Although its use and examination have notably increased in the last decade, the concept was used in the early years of the twenty-first century. For instance, during the 2003 Iraq War, both politicians and the ordinary public as well used this concept and produced both pro-war and anti-war post-truth discourses. Additionally, playwrights have represented post-truth discourses in their plays, both challenging prevailing political discourses and conveying their own messages through theatrical productions. One of these works, which scrutinise the post-truth discourses regarding the Iraq War, is Jonathan Lichtenstein’s play The Pull of Negative Gravity staged at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 2004 and published by Nick Hern Books in the same year. The play deals with the financial, familial and psychological difficulties of a Welsh farming family who sends one of their members to the Iraq War. The soldier’s experience of war and military service is glorified through post-truth narratives prior to his return from Iraq. However, upon his paralysed return from the war, the family members are compelled to face the undeniable realities, and all those positive discourses are replaced by factual truths. Thus, the play conveys to its audience/reader the message that emotionally-charged post- truth imaginations can be challenged through visible and objective realities. Considering such. Considering such viewpoints, the objective of this article is to examine both how Lichtenstein’s play unveils the post-truth discourses in the society concerning the Iraq War, and the strategy it follows to contend with such discourses.

‘Work in the Housewives’ Service, like that of a household, seems never to be done’: the ‘practical politics’ of the Women’s Voluntary Service in the Second World War

ABSTRACT The Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) was established in 1938, to encourage women into civil defence ahead of the anticipated conflict. Once war began, it quickly expanded, with members engaging in a wide range of duties. Historians have characterised the WVS as an organisation dominated by middle-class women, but, while leadership was typically middle-class, at local level, membership was often more diverse. This article draws on the internal records of thirteen WVS Centres in the Black Country to suggest that the organisation was arguably more inclusive of a wider range of social classes than has previously been considered. It argues that working-class women were able to take on roles within the local public sphere through the very specific, localised and practical nature of the work the WVS undertook in this area. As such, it argues that the organisation played an important role in allowing women’s activism to flourish in the mid-twentieth century.

Under Five Flags: Miguirditch Gumuchdjian, an Armenian shipowner of Constantinople and London 1900–1932

The shipping interests of Miguirditch Gumuchdjian stemmed from a coal enterprise established in Constantinople in the mid-1890s. A local business partnership operating as coal-mine proprietors and ship owners acquired its first vessel around 1900. From 1902 Gumuchdjian focused on coal importing and shipping, further vessels being acquired or managed under different flags between 1910 and 1914. In the early twentieth century the Turkish coal industry and the prevailing geopolitical situations presented both opportunities and risks. These factors were shaped by external conflicts, demands for independence within the widespread territories of the Ottoman empire, rising Turkish nationalism and the empire’s decline, resulting in the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The First World War proved eventful, with vessels requisitioned for war service and sunk by Allied naval actions. As an Armenian Christian, Gumuchdjian’s personal situation became difficult, necessitating a temporary relocation to London between 1915 and 1919 and a permanent move in 1923. His London-based shipping and trading business continued until 1932, when financial and management problems led to its closure. These events are examined in relation to the external contexts and the changing fortunes of a small shipping enterprise over more than three decades.

War and Health Care Services Utilization for Chronic Diseases in Rural and Semiurban Areas of Tigray, Ethiopia

The war in Tigray, Ethiopia, has disrupted the health care system of the region. However, its association with health care services disruption for chronic diseases has not been well documented. To assess the association of the war with the utilization of health care services for patients with chronic diseases. Of 135 primary health care facilities, a registry-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 44 rural and semiurban facilities of Tigray. Data on health services utilization were extracted for patients with tuberculosis, HIV, diabetes, hypertension, and psychiatric disorders in the prewar period (September 1, to October 31, 2020) and during the first phase of the war period (November 4, 2020, to June 30, 2021). Records on the number of follow-up, laboratory tests, and patients undergoing treatment of the aforementioned chronic diseases were counted during the prewar and war periods. Of 4645 records of patients with chronic diseases undergoing treatment during the prewar period, 998 records (21%) indicated having treatment during the war period. Compared with the prewar period, 59 of 180 individuals (33%; 95% CI, 26%-40%) had tuberculosis, 522 of 2211 (24%; 95% CI, 22%-26%) had HIV, 228 of 1195 (19%; 95% CI, 17%-21%) had hypertension, 123 of 632 (20%; 95% CI, 16%-22%) had psychiatric disorders, and 66 of 427 (15%; 95% CI, 12%-18%) had type 2 diabetes records, which revealed continued treatment during the war period. Of 174 records of patients with type 1 diabetes in the prewar period, at 2 to 3 months into the war, the numbers dropped to 10 with 94% decline compared with prewar observations. This study found that the war in Tigray has resulted in critical health care service disruption and high loss to follow-up for patients with chronic disease, likely leading to increased morbidity and mortality. Local, national, and global policymakers must understand the extent and impact of the service disruption and urge their efforts toward restoration of those services.

The Plasticity of Social Knowledge

This article describes how the Austrian-American sociologist Paul F. Lazarsfeld and his Bureau of Social Research applied a consistent bundle of findings—about the interplay of mass media and personal influence—to sharply different contexts. From the late 1930s through to the early 1950s, Lazarsfeld stressed a stable set of socialpsychological conditions that complicate media persuasion, which, however, could still be effective if paired with faceto- face campaigns. He developed the claim, first, with the aim of promoting educational radio. At the outbreak of war in Europe, Lazarsfeld and the Bureau moved to apply the findings to domestic morale and propaganda. In the immediate postwar years, Lazarsfeld redirected the Bureau’s energies towards domestic-facing social problems, retrofitting his personal-influence framework to the promotion of peace and tolerance. With the Cold War, finally, Lazarsfeld reverted to a martial posture, as social progress gave sudden way to psychological warfare. Thus, the paper describes a four-stage seesaw pattern: persuasion for social ends in the first and third periods, succeeded in both cases by war service. The Bureau’s communication research in the century’s middle-third is, the paper argues, a case study in the plasticity of social knowledge—variation around a stable theme. What was pliable was the topical enclosure, dictated in the main by the sponsorship on offer.

Doing the Work of God: HBCU’s and Black America’s Response to the Influenza Pandemic of 1918

This study illuminates African American responses to the Influenza pandemic of 1918, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in particular. We chose a decolonized approach to historical inquiry, centering Black narratives, periodicals, and historical documents to better understand the African American experience and thereby the world. Our investigation revealed institutions that readily and dutifully responded to the pandemic as a function of their expertise and as a strategy to advance the freedom cause of African Americans. Places like Howard University, Knoxville College, and Meharry Medical College were resources for Black folks, their communities, and for the first time, White Americans. HBCU giants, W. E. B. Du Bois and C.V. Roman emerged in new ways to help Black America balance its duties to society, democracy, and to the race. Despite valor in war and medical service to the country, Black America would continue to struggle for full citizenship.

Peter Hore, Bletchley Park’s Secret Source: Churchill’s Wrens and the Y Service in World War II by Brian Bertosa

Peter Hore, Bletchley Park’s Secret Source: Churchill’s Wrens and the Y Service in World War II by Brian Bertosa

THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF THE LIBRARY IN WARTIME: PAST AND PRESENT

As instruments of guaranteed knowledge, safeguarding memory, diversity and cultural identity of people, libraries during all its existence have been severely attacked during military confrontations. With the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the issue of preserving cultural values, including libraries, in the territories suffering from hostilities becomes very urgent, because russians are trying to destroy Ukrainian people, culture and values. The purpose of our research was to find possible ways of library activity and the reservation of their collections during military operations, based on a review of history of the struggle of libraries for the reservation of their collections during wars and on consideration of the activity of the American Library Association and its Library War Service, as one of the most important institution, focused on helping libraries and soldiers during wartime. Having considered the history of the activities of libraries during the war, it can be noted that the main role in the reservation of the funds was played by the library employees, because they understood the significance of the collections and, in some cases, saved cultural values with their own hands. A consideration of the activities of the American Library Service’s War Library makes it clear how important it is to help soldiers and people during wartime by distributing books and knowledge that prove beneficial to support morale. We also noted the role of the Ukrainian Library Association, which, together with the American Library Association, currently helps librarians and library workers by collecting donations for the Ukrainian library community, which is facing the challenges of war. In addition, in our opinion, one of the most important opportunities for the reservation of library funds during the war may be an attempt to create an organization in Ukraine like the Hill Museum and the Manuscript Library, which will photograph and catalog the collections of manuscripts and rare publications from the libraries of throughout Ukraine, especially in small towns or villages, where there are publications that characterize the history of their specific district or region and which are impossible to found elsewhere. Due to the fact that Russia is trying to destroy the Ukrainian nation, the reservation of such key values of each region becomes very important for the consolidation of Ukrainian society and the further cultural development of the Ukrainian nation throughout the territory of Ukraine.