Not only did World War I bring death and suffering, but also for many soldiers it brought psychosomatic ailments. These ailments are often persistent injuries or symptoms brought on by mental injury. Created by the mind, the affects of these illnesses are just as real and unbearable.

In the historic novel Regeneration by Pat Barker, Barker describes various mental patients with psychosomatic ailments. These patients, scarred mentally by the war, now must live with the lifelong affects of the war.

“What had happened to him was so vile, so disgusting, that Rivers could find no redeeming feature. He’d been thrown into the air by the explosion of a shell and had landed, head-first, on a German corpse, whose gas-filled belly had ruptured on impact. Before Burns lost consciousness, he’d had time to realize that what filled his nose and mouth was decomposing human flash. Now, whenever he tried to eat, that taste and small recurred. Nightly, he relived the experience, and from every nightmare he awoke vomiting” (Barker, 19).

Burns is clearly a victim of psychosomatic ailments, as described in Regeneration. Burns’ life has now been permanently altered because of the traumatizing experiences from combat. He can no long eat, and has become extremely malnourished. Reoccurring dreams haunt him each night, making reality a hard object to grasp.

Prior, another character from Regeneration, also suffers from psychosomatic ailments. Due to his disturbing experiences from the war, Prior’s ability to speak comes and goes. He too also suffers from nightly reoccurring nightmares. “ Prior was a new patient, whose nightmares were so bad that his room-mate was getting no sleep.” (Barker, 41). For Prior, the war had altered the way in which he communicates, and also the way in which he lives. “Prior reached for the notepad and pencil he kept beside his bed and scrawled in block capitals, ‘I DON’T REMEMBER’” (Barker, 41).

As we have seen, psychosomatic ailments produce severe symptoms. These symptoms alter the patients way of life just as any ailment or disorder would. Although these symptoms are created mentally, the affects are just as brutal nevertheless. Not only had the war created mass amounts of destruction and death, but it also scarred many survivors with real lifelong ailments.