Vintage Military - Part 53

 U.S Military Training Films

Last time, we saw some World War II U.S. Army training films about treating lice in the field.  Soldiers were shown naked in some scenes, because there was no need for modesty in films made for an all-male audience.  Today we look at some more military training films.  Above, an extract from a 1942 Army training film on mustard gas decontamination.  The procedure included stripping and washing naked in a stream.

Chemical warfare with poison gas had been widely used in the trench warfare of World War I, where troops were immobilized in trenches and thus easy targets.  In 1942, as usual, the military was ready to fight the last war.  In actual fact, poison gas was never used in World War II, perhaps because troops were much more mobile.

Above is an extract from a 1954 Army training film.  Again, it's about chemical decontamination.  The Army, having failed to notice that chemical warfare was no longer being used, was still ready to re-fight World War I.  At least we got this sequence of naked soldiers showering.

In World War II, the CIA did not exist.  U.S. spying was handled by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), a military agency.  The clip above is from a 1944 OSS training film.  First, the film cautions trainees not to blab secrets.  This clip warns that agents might be strip-searched by the enemy and says "the private parts are carefully inspected."  The unspoken but obvious conclusion: don't try to hide things up your ass.

We end with an extract from a 1944 U.S. Navy training film called "The N.P. Patient."  N.P. stood for neuro-psychiatric.  In this clip, the patient seems to be suffering from clinical depression, and almost unbelievably, the doctor prescribes a needle shower and being blasted by jets of water.  Apparently that was psychiatric therapy in 1944, at least in the Navy.

That was 80 years ago.  It makes me think that, 80 years from now, people will look back on our methods of treating physical and mental ailments and say "those guys had no idea what they were doing."