Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain 1914-30

by Fiona A. Reid

Shell shock achieved a very high political profile in the years 1919-1922. Publications ranging from John Bull to the Morning Post insisted that shell-shocked men should be treated with respect, and the Minister for Health announced that the government was committed to protecting shell-shocked men from the stigma of lunacy. Yet at the same time, many mentally-wounded veterans were struggling with a pension system which was failing to give them security. It is this conflict between the political rhetoric and the lived experience of many wounded veterans that explains why the government was unable to dispel the negative wartime assessment of official shell-shock treatment. There was also a real conflict between the government's wish to forget shell shock whilst memorialising the war and remembering the war dead. As a result of these contradictions, shell shock was not forgotten, on the contrary, the shell-shocked soldier quickly grew to symbolise the confusions and inconsistencies of the Great War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War I, War

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Fiona Reid spent many years capturing small mammals and drawing them from life. She studied biology at Cambridge University in England, and went to graduate school at Stony Brook, Long Island. After illustrating several children’s books and a series of Neotropical mammal books, she decided to embark on writing and illustrating her own book on Central American mammals. She has written and/or illustrated numerous guides, including A Field Guide to the Mammals of Central America and Southeast Mexico, The Golden Guide to Bats of the World, Bats of Papua New Guinea, and Mammals of the Neotropics (volumes 1-3).

She is currently a Departmental Associate in Mammalogy at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, Canada. She has also been leading nature tours since 1987, showing ecotourists the mammals and other wildlife of diverse lands from Brazil to Indonesia, and Alaska to Venezuela. She currently lives on the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario with her two children and an assortment of pets.

Reviews

[Michael Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years 1919-1922.
That shell shock could affect so many soldiers was still unimaginable. But those who studied the long-term psychological effects of combat could no longer ignore it. However, the psychological effects were often underestimated or were the subject of misconception. A kind of soldier's complaint.
This was not the case; the suffering of soldiers was real.
The issue led to a real clash between political rhetoric and lived experience. A clash we know very well today.
But there was also a desire to forget what happened, to erase the suffering. But suffering is not erased, it is dealt with. Today, the shell-shocked soldier is one of the symbols of the confusion and contradictions of the Great War.
This is a good book on the subject, with well-reported sources and a history of how the problem came to be recognized.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a literature review on masculinity. This book mainly focuses on the medical aspect of shell shock, especially charity efforts and work from ESWS. However, it does give insights into the effect of shell shock on masculinity and the differing treatments for different classes.

[Sara Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Broken Men while researching what happened to the Lost Boys who actually came home.

The First World War created enormous numbers of men suffering from what contemporaries called shell shock, but surviving the battlefield did not mean that the war had released them. Understanding how Britain recognized, treated, categorized, and sometimes failed these veterans became essential to Wendy's Home for Lost Boys.

My novel became increasingly concerned not only with the boys who died, but with those who returned carrying the war inside them.

That changed Wendy's role as well. Keeping the window open could not simply mean waiting for someone to come home. Sometimes the person who returned through that window needed an entirely different kind of rescue.

This book helped me understand the difficult space between survival and recovery.

Read in research for: Wendy's Home for Lost Boys

[Simon Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book both as background research for my own writing, and also to getter a better understanding of the impact that shell shock had on the mental health of soldiers, for the purposes of cpd for my counselling practice. It's well-written and thoroughly researched, though personally I would have preferred less political history and more anecdotal accounts and insights into shell shock itself. Still a very informative and useful book.

[wendy elizabeth jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good, interesting read, especially for those interested in PTSD.