of the British Medical Association. Invited to enter the room, Gillies spoke to him. But Guardsman Maggs did not recognise the French words that Gillies used and in his embarrassment flushed scarlet from neck to forehead. ‘Look, look,’ said a delighted Gillies as the blood travelled to all parts of the man’s face, even reaching the tip of the guardsman’s nose.
But some post-operative men did not have the self-confidence of Guardsman Maggs. Many continued to find it impossible to muster the courage to appear in daylight, seeking refuge in work asprojectionists in the screened-off booths of cinemas. Others were beginning to risk public reaction. Stanley Cohen had been injured two months before the end of the war, his face seared in a tank fire. Having survived the gruelling post-operative recovery period, Stanley Cohen remained fearful of testing public reaction to the still shocking sight of his face. With Gillies’s help he had become the Sidcup nightwatchman, reassured that the cover of darkness would give him the protection he craved. And yet his friends were perplexed when Cohen started teaching at the local Sunday school. Where had he found the courage to expose his face to the judgment of other human beings? The explanation was simple. While adults showed revulsion, children merely greeted Cohen with curiosity. With children he was safe.
Devastating as the physical scarring could be, damage to the mind was sometimes even more catastrophic and those outwardly blemish-free suffered just as deeply. The wounded and limbless were obvious to those who came across them in almost every town and village in the country. Those scarred in mind were not. Men collapsed under the strain of an inability to tolerate or escape the memory of their war experience - Freud’s ‘unendurable realities’ of the physical world. In the trenches the men had whispered to one another, ‘He’s a bit rocky upstairs’, or ‘He’s gone a bit barmy’ - a misleadingly anodyne term, from a pre-war abbreviation for the Barming Hospital at Maid-stone. Flesh on shell-shocked faces shook with fear, and teeth continually chattered. ‘A thousand-yard stare’ was often used to describe the dazed vacancy in the eyes of a severely damaged soldier. Some doctors thought the condition was a result of extreme disturbance of the fluid around the brain caused by long-term exposure to gunfire.
Robert Graves had heard the lasting mental trauma of war explained as ‘a morbid condition of the blood due to the stimulation of the thyroid gland by noise and fear’. But a correspondent in November 1919 in the
Illustrated London News
went deeper, attributing the signs of hysteria to ‘aboulie or will-less-ness. The patient, worn out by the struggle against external circumstances, abandons the exercise of his own will and drifts with the stream of things, unaware of where he is going.’
The chief outward signs, easily recognisable, included the dropping of the corners of the mouth, a lolling tongue and a lack of movement in the eyes, with the lids partially closed. In addition an irritation to the sole of the foot made many of those who suffered from shell shock spread their toes apart. Some could barely stand upright, and walked with a jerky movement that was termed ‘the hysterical gait’. Many adopted a stoop and a shuffle that resembled the tentative steps of a nervous skater. Seizures and shuddering fits were frequent. Many lived in a silent world. The effect of the guns had made them completely deaf. Sometimes the behaviour of a shell-shocked victim was fitful, unpredictable, miserable, embittered, sometimes physically violent, and sometimes – and for the wives, fiancees, daughters, lovers, aunts and grandmothers, perhaps worst of all – these men were simply silent. The Italian term for the apathy induced by shell shock was ‘depressive-soporose amentia’ – the last word denoting ‘absence of mind’.
Dr W. R. Houston, a professor of
But some post-operative men did not have the self-confidence of Guardsman Maggs. Many continued to find it impossible to muster the courage to appear in daylight, seeking refuge in work asprojectionists in the screened-off booths of cinemas. Others were beginning to risk public reaction. Stanley Cohen had been injured two months before the end of the war, his face seared in a tank fire. Having survived the gruelling post-operative recovery period, Stanley Cohen remained fearful of testing public reaction to the still shocking sight of his face. With Gillies’s help he had become the Sidcup nightwatchman, reassured that the cover of darkness would give him the protection he craved. And yet his friends were perplexed when Cohen started teaching at the local Sunday school. Where had he found the courage to expose his face to the judgment of other human beings? The explanation was simple. While adults showed revulsion, children merely greeted Cohen with curiosity. With children he was safe.
Devastating as the physical scarring could be, damage to the mind was sometimes even more catastrophic and those outwardly blemish-free suffered just as deeply. The wounded and limbless were obvious to those who came across them in almost every town and village in the country. Those scarred in mind were not. Men collapsed under the strain of an inability to tolerate or escape the memory of their war experience - Freud’s ‘unendurable realities’ of the physical world. In the trenches the men had whispered to one another, ‘He’s a bit rocky upstairs’, or ‘He’s gone a bit barmy’ - a misleadingly anodyne term, from a pre-war abbreviation for the Barming Hospital at Maid-stone. Flesh on shell-shocked faces shook with fear, and teeth continually chattered. ‘A thousand-yard stare’ was often used to describe the dazed vacancy in the eyes of a severely damaged soldier. Some doctors thought the condition was a result of extreme disturbance of the fluid around the brain caused by long-term exposure to gunfire.
Robert Graves had heard the lasting mental trauma of war explained as ‘a morbid condition of the blood due to the stimulation of the thyroid gland by noise and fear’. But a correspondent in November 1919 in the
Illustrated London News
went deeper, attributing the signs of hysteria to ‘aboulie or will-less-ness. The patient, worn out by the struggle against external circumstances, abandons the exercise of his own will and drifts with the stream of things, unaware of where he is going.’
The chief outward signs, easily recognisable, included the dropping of the corners of the mouth, a lolling tongue and a lack of movement in the eyes, with the lids partially closed. In addition an irritation to the sole of the foot made many of those who suffered from shell shock spread their toes apart. Some could barely stand upright, and walked with a jerky movement that was termed ‘the hysterical gait’. Many adopted a stoop and a shuffle that resembled the tentative steps of a nervous skater. Seizures and shuddering fits were frequent. Many lived in a silent world. The effect of the guns had made them completely deaf. Sometimes the behaviour of a shell-shocked victim was fitful, unpredictable, miserable, embittered, sometimes physically violent, and sometimes – and for the wives, fiancees, daughters, lovers, aunts and grandmothers, perhaps worst of all – these men were simply silent. The Italian term for the apathy induced by shell shock was ‘depressive-soporose amentia’ – the last word denoting ‘absence of mind’.
Dr W. R. Houston, a professor of
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