Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War

236 Pages·2002·13.151 MB·English

by  Peter Leese (auth.)

Shell Shock
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Shell Shock
Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers
of the First World War
Peter Leese
Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural History,
/agiellonian University
Krakow, Poland
* © Peter Leese 2002
softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002978-0-333-96926-7
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First published 2002 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-42909-7 ISBN 978-0-230-28792-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230287921
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leese, Peter.
Shell shock: traumatic neurosis and the British soldiers of the First
World Warlby Peter Leese.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-42909-7 (cloth)
1. War neuroses-Great Britain-History-20th century. 2. World
War, 1914-1918-Psychological aspects. 3. World War, 1914-1918-
Medical care-Great Britain. I. Title
RC550
616.85'212'0094109041-dc21
2002022412
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
for Lydia Ellen Fletcher (1908-1999)
and
Gordon William Leese (1931-2000)
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
PART I DISCOVERIES 13
2 Shocking Modernity: Hysteria, Technology and Warfare 15
Technology and traumatic neurosis 15
The new warfare 21
Surviving trauma 27
3 Casualties: On the Western Front 32
Army medical practice 32
Tales from the front line 36
Discipline and the medical officer 39
War's end 45
PART II WARTIME 49
4 Enlistment: Army Policy, Politics and the Press 51
The enlistment of shell shock 51
Army medical policy 53
Press and political campaigns 57
Disputed definitions in wartime 65
5 Treatment: On the Home Front 68
The British treatment network 68
Cultures of treatment: Britain, France and Germany 69
Queen Square: disciplinary practice 73
Maghull: analytic practice 81
6 Patients: The Other Ranks 85
The other ranks and the Army Medical Service 85
Maghull: a mental hospital at war 88
Non-specialist treatment 90
Writing shell shock 99
7 Patients: The Officer Ranks 103
The officers and the Army Medical Services 103
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viii Contents
Craiglockhart: an officers' hospital at war 104
Officers' treatment 107
Writing shell shock 116
PART III LEGACIES 121
8 Demobilization: On Returning Home 123
The demobilization of 'shell shock' 123
The War Office Report into 'Shell Shock' 124
Ministry of Pensions practice 127
The trauma of return 133
Disputed definitions after war 139
9 Veterans: War Neurotic Ex-Servicemen 141
Pensions in postwar society 141
The Special Medical Board system 144
Post-combat lives 146
Post-combat life patterns 155
10 Recall: The Great War in the Twentieth Century 159
The meaning of 'shell shock' (I) 159
After 1918 161
After 1945 168
After 1989 172
The meaning of 'shell shock' (II) 176
11 Conclusion 177
Bibliographical Note 182
Notes 186
Bibliography 211
Index 225
Preface and Acknowledgements
I first thought of an inquiry into the lives of the war-traumatized sol
diers of 1914-18 as an MA student at the University of Warwick in 1983
studying the cultural history of Western Europe. The notion struck me
then, and I still hold by the idea, that to speak about a modern age it is
necessary to investigate not only changes in artistic expression or artil
lery tactics, but also shifts in thinking and feeling that were poorly
articulated or never consciously formulated, expressed in changing
bodily gestures and patterns of behaviour and distributed among a
mass population. From the beginning then, the idea of a study of the
war-traumatized soldiers of the Great War seemed an ideal vehicle for a
study of what it meant to live a life in the modern age, of how historical
changes registered in mental states, which had personal, bodily and
cultural implications. My intention has been, therefore, to scrutinize
some aspects of the lives of ordinary men who were altered by their
extraordinary labours during the war: their healers, supporters and
chastisers; their feelings, thoughts and bodies, all changed drastically
by combat; their stories of illness, treatment and, sometimes, renewal.
Looking back to 1983, I am now able, as well, to discern some of the
sources of my attraction to the 1914-18 generation and to recognize
that the impetus for this study has its roots not only in intellectual
curiosity, but also in family history.
My family, like most British families of the twentieth century, has
been touched by the events of 1914-18. My maternal great-grand
father, Frank Fletcher Sr, born in 1880, worked as a stevedore at the
Surrey Docks in East London, and after joining the 51st Argyle and
Sutherland Highlanders he participated, as a corporal, in the Great
War. What precisely happened to him remains unclear. The only letter
we have related to his war service, presumably written in March 1915,
though it is dated '5.3.14', is headed '7897 Corp F. Fletcher, Arg and
Suth Highlanders, No 5 Group British Interned Prisoners, Schevenin
gen, Holland'. One of Frank's sons-in-law, who still survives, aged
81, became a conscientious objector during the Second World War
not, as I might have expected from my nonconformist upbringing, on
religious grounds, but simply because he had seen the damage in
flicted by the Great War on his parents' generation, and he refused
to kill.
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