BBC men Nor did most Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS officers Psychiatry was deeply distrusted in the Red Army and in the Soviet Union more generally: the treatment an average frontovik could expect for any truly severe battle stress was relief by firing squad It is hard to know how many Soviet deaths recorded as suicides resulted from untreated battle stress or what percentage of “accidental” injuries in the ranks were actually self-inflicted wounds Given the huge numbers of men conscripted and the appalling conditions of the Eastern Front, it must have been a very great number Red Army units did not have psychiatric medical staff below the level of Front Later in the war, soldiers who exhibited debilitating battle stress were still kept near the front lines, but might be treated with extra rest and perhaps sedatives Even so, only mental infirmity clearly resulting from physical trauma such as a head wound or from obvious prerecruitment mental illness was recognized as legitimate by the Red Army In all other cases, men suffered in silence, self-medicated with alcohol, or broke under the strain and were shot or assigned to penal battalions BAYONETS See banzai charge; Bataan death march; Imperial Japanese Army; prisoners of war; Red Army BAZOOKA American, shoulder-launched, rocket warhead anti-tank weapon First used in the ETO in Tunisia (M1A1 model), it made a real impression on German observers despite the fact that the first U.S Army divisions to use them had been deployed so fast they had no training on the weapon It took just weeks for German weapons designers to create a more powerful mimic, which later evolved into the Panzerschreck In turn, that led the Americans to develop a larger bazooka that fired a 3.5-inch rocket warhead Each U.S infantry division was allotted 557 bazookas starting in 1943 See also PIAT BAZOOKA PANTS American slang for armored skirts hanging below the main armor of a tank, emplaced to deflect enemy rockets such as those fired from a bazooka or a Panzerschreck BBC British Broadcasting Corporation The critical radio instrument for maintaining civilian morale in Britain after the fall of France in 1940 It was also vital in maintaining communications with resistance movements inside German-occupied Europe Later in the war, it helped undermine German morale through effective targeted propaganda BBC reporters sent riveting though highly censored dispatches to the home front from frontlines in Africa, Europe, and the Pacific Soldiers in the field listened more to BBC music and entertainment broadcasts and to comparable broadcasts by the enemy BBC French-language broadcasts into occupied France were critical to building political support for General Charles de Gaulle, who was little known to the French public before that See also Force Franỗaise de l’Intérieur (FFI); Political Warfare Executive; radio 147