The Shame of Shellshock in the First World War
Mistreatment of Mentally Unstable Soldiers in the British Army
Mental Breakdown During Warfare
In November 1996, almost 90 years after the end of the First World War (1914-18), the British government finally pardoned the hundreds of soldiers shot for ‘cowardice’. The truth is that many of these young men were far from cowards. They were executed for being mentally unstable.
‘Even the ancient Greeks knew about what they called war exhaustion, whether it was physical or mental’, according to Dr Boynton of the Royal Free and University Medical School.
Stress Faced by Troops
In enlightened times the correlation between the extremes of stress experienced by front-line soldiers and mental breakdown seem obvious. But even during the First World War, when the slaughter was unprecedented and 56% of the combatants became casualties, there were ambivalent attitudes towards soldiers experiencing trauma.
Shellshock during the First World War
As early on the winter of 1914 there were indications of a high level of soldiers with psychiatric issues. By the end of the war some 80,000 cases had passed through the British Army’s medical facilities. Officers were particularly prone: while the front-line ratio of officers to men was 1 to 30; for those receiving treatment for battlefield neuroses the figure was 1 to 16.
Shellshock was first recognised in print by Dr Charles Myers of the British Psychological Society in 1915. Initially it was seen as a physical reaction to the constant bombardment endured on the front. However it was soon apparent soldiers were breaking down regardless of whether they had actually come under shell fire. ‘Shock’ was equally misleading as the condition could take months to manifest.
Symptoms of Shellshock
The symptoms were extraordinarily varied. Hysteria. Blindness. Deafness. Mutism. Insomnia. Palpitations. Nightmares. Dizziness. Depression. Catatonia. Treatment was equally varied. Because the optimum result was to get the soldier returned to duty as quickly as possible, instant solutions were sought. Electric shock treatment was popular.
Attitudes Towards Shellshock Victims
The British Army followed strict rules concerning treatment. Shellshock cases had the letter ‘W’ prefixed to the casualty report if their condition was due to enemy action: they were officially wounded. If the breakdown had not resulted from an explosion, then the label was ‘S’ for 'Sick'. This meant a forfeiture of pension rights.
Amongst senior ranks and the white feather brandishing public there was little sympathy for the victims. They were seen as malingerers. Shellshocked soldiers arriving at Royal Victoria Military Hospital, in Netely, Hampshire, were greeted with silence. The burden of guilt added to the patients’ stress.
Conclusions Concerning Treatment of Shellshock Victims
By 1917, Ernest Jones, president of the British Psycho-Analytic Association, explained that war constituted “an official abrogation of civilised standards in which men were not only allowed, but encouraged to indulge in behaviour of a kind that is throughout abhorrent to the civilised mind....”
The First World War gained the ludicrous epithet ‘the war to end all wars’. While the carnage has continued unabated throughout the 20th century and beyond, at least there is a consensus that placing humans in conditions of acute, life-threatening stress is bound to have some effect on their mental well-being.
Dr Petra Boynton, a lecturer in psychology at University College, London, concluded: ‘Letters home from the front line show soldiers in stages of mental collapse. Men were obviously breaking down as they wrote about the horrors they'd seen. Those who did survive were changed forever’.
It is naïve to think that a military machine, immersed in a war of attrition, attempting to break the stalemate by sacrificing wave after wave of young men against machine-guns, would show compassion to anyone deviating from the task of out-killing the enemy. Nevertheless, the vision of hysterical patients undergoing mental breakdowns, being tied to posts and shot by their comrades, seems particularly inexcusable.
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