Breakdown

by Taylor Downing

  However, Steadman understood what his duty was. As an army medical officer he had to return as many men as possible to their battalions as quickly as possible. This applied in equal measure to the dreadfully sad cases of shell shock he struggled to deal with. He wrote: ‘Then the beastly time comes when you have to order them back to all the misery of it again; that is the rotten part. You cannot help them long, just a few days, and then back they must go. If they were kept long the hospital would be absolutely crowded out. There would be no men to fight’ (author’s italics). Steadman, at the front end of the terrible chain of casualties pouring back from the Somme, had realised instinctively that if he was too sympathetic to the large number of shell shock victims that came his way then the army, as he said, would simply have ‘no men to fight’.

  By the beginning of August, Fourth Army under General Sir Henry Rawlinson calculated it had lost more than 125,000 officers and men killed, wounded or posted missing since the opening of the Battle of the Somme.4 These losses were on a scale never experienced within the British army before. The numbers lost by the British–Dutch forces at the Battle of Waterloo have been estimated at about 17,000, while the number of British dead during the three years of the Boer War had totalled about 22,000. The worst fighting so far in the Great War, during the Battle of Loos in September 1915, had seen total losses of 59,000, less than half of those incurred in the first month on the Somme.

  Rawlinson’s most loyal supporter through this terrible month was his chief of staff at Fourth Army, Major-General Sir Archibald Armar Montgomery.5 Montgomery came from an army family in County Tyrone, in the north of Ireland. He joined the Royal Artillery at Woolwich aged twenty and served for many years in India and in South Africa during the Boer War. In 1906 he attended the Staff College at Camberley, where officers were trained for senior leadership in the British army. Here Montgomery met General Sir Henry Rawlinson. Montgomery was a typical soldier from the country gentry who set great store by tradition and believed unquestioningly in the British way of doing things. But he was tall, charming and diplomatic in dealing with his superior officers, a skill that helped him progress quickly up through the ranks.

  In August 1914, Montgomery was a staff officer in the 4th Division and soon crossed to France, where he took part in one of the earliest engagements between the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the German army at the Battle of Le Cateau. When Rawlinson took over the 4th Division, Montgomery became his principal staff officer and a close working relationship developed between the two men. Rawlinson was promoted to command IV Corps later in the year and Montgomery moved across as his chief of staff. When, in early 1916, Rawlinson was appointed commander of the newly created Fourth Army, Montgomery once more went him. He had been promoted from major to major-general in just twenty months, an astonishing rise that in peacetime would have taken at least ten years.

  It will be seen that there were substantial disagreements between Haig and Rawlinson as to the strategy and tactics to follow in the offensive on the Somme in July 1916. It is pretty clear from his unpublished memoirs that Montgomery was in close agreement with his own direct superior, Rawlinson, in the dispute and thought that Haig was to blame for his insistence on trying to reach objectives that were beyond the range of the artillery. ‘We were in fact short of artillery for the task we were asked to achieve,’ he later wrote.6 But as the heavy losses continued throughout the month, Montgomery like Rawlinson grew concerned. Of particular worry for them was the large number of losses from shell shock cases and the impact this was having on the ability of certain units to sustain their fighting spirit. In early August, Montgomery sent out a set of questionnaires to the most senior commanders within Fourth Army asking what lessons should be learned from the last few weeks of battle. They went to every corps commander and most divisional commanders, as well as to some brigade commanders.

  The replies make for fascinating reading. Many of the officers in command of units that had suffered the highest casualty rates ever endured in the British army were very clear about what had gone wrong. There was considerable agreement that attacks resulted in heavy losses if they were carried out too hastily, without giving enough time for local commanders to properly reconnoitre and prepare. There was a consensus that attacks carried out with great determination by fresh, motivated troops after only a short bombardment often enjoyed the advantage of surprise, increasing the likelihood of success. There were many other sensible suggestions about the use of artillery, the best way to cross No Man’s Land, and the need to improve communications between front lines and headquarters in the rear.

  One or two of the officers consulted went further. Brigadier Reginald John Kentish had been in charge of the 76th Brigade during the bitter struggle for Delville Wood. He had seen some of the worst of the fighting in July and was prepared to stick his neck out more than most. His submission, sent in on 3 August, contained a section titled ‘The Limits of Endurance of the Infantry Soldier’. In it, Kentish wrote, ‘The present intense fighting calls for the greatest test of pluck and endurance for the British Infantry man. There is no doubt that he will respond to every call made on him. But he will respond in varying degrees.’ Kentish continued his line of thought in a long and convoluted sentence: ‘If he is tried too highly, he may become a danger to his side, and especially is this likely to be the case if Divisions which have already been through a very intense period of fighting, and which have lost a big proportion of NCOs and men, and which have also so to speak been living in a very heavily shelled zone where the fire is both frontal and enfilade, are without sufficient time for recuperation, filled up with men of every unit except their own, and sent back to the same ground, and to submit to the same intense situation they have already experienced. Further if they have taken part in any of the minor, but very costly piecemeal attacks, which have been a feature of the operation since the big offensive on 14 July, their moral [sic] will undoubtedly … be very much weaker than when they first entered the sphere of operations.’7

  Kentish had recognised two important features of shell shock. Prolonged exposure to intense fire was a major contributory factor. And although it affected individuals one by one, it was also contagious and could spread among an entire unit. If not properly and fairly treated, then shell shock could undermine the fighting spirit of whole groups of men.

  The centenary commemorations of the Great War from 2014 have revealed a widespread fascination with the events of the years 1914–1918. They have also unleashed a tremendous outpouring of writing about the war, and of television documentaries and radio programmes. However, many of the attitudes expressed in this popular revival of interest in the war have reinforced traditional and outdated interpretations. For instance, the generals are nearly always presented as obstinate and incompetent commanders leading courageous men, the view made famous more than fifty years ago by the phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’;8 and the war is usually presented as being entirely unnecessary and futile. These views, however, do not reflect the latest research on the war. Scholarly thinking has moved on a great deal over recent decades. The First World War is often seen not as a futile but as a necessary war and one that was certainly popular for at least the first two years of conflict. The ‘lions led by donkeys’ thesis has been challenged by a reappraisal of the high command and a recognition that the generals were far more successful than has traditionally been realised in leading a citizen army to final victory in the autumn of 1918. But the popular myths of the war endure in the common view and in many of the television programmes.9

  Included among the many figures in the cast of stock characters that preoccupy public memory of the war is that of the shell-shocked soldier. He is usually portrayed as one of the key victims of the war, someone who could not cope with the ghastly pressures of the modern battlefield in an industrial war of barbed wire, artillery barrages, high explosives and poison gas; another victim of what is usually presented as a brutal, futile war. The shell-shocked soldier ha
s almost become a symbol of the war and even, it has been argued, a metaphor for the inhumanity of a modern, industrial war.10 However, a great deal has also been written over recent decades about shell shock in the war. Much of this has been concerned with the psychological factors behind shell shock, based on research into the medical debate about trauma. The research has shown how doctors, neurologists and physiologists struggled (or failed) to understand the process of psychological breakdown. The debate about shell shock is seen as the starting point of a steep learning curve that would culminate, much later in the century, with the classification of war trauma as post-traumatic stress disorder. Moreover, the First World War has been indelibly linked with ‘the birth of military psychiatry’.11

  This book does not attempt to explore in any detail the psychology behind war neuroses and the psychosomatic disorders of war. I am not a doctor or a psychologist. Breakdown is rather an exploration of the specific military reaction to what was perceived as an epidemic of shell shock that occurred during the Battle of the Somme from July to November 1916. Senior figures in the army regarded shell shock not so much as an individual trauma that needed to be understood, requiring sympathy and treatment, but as a collective threat to the army as a whole. Shell shock was believed to be contagious in that a nervy man showing signs of mental distress could easily make other men around him nervy. And there was the constant fear of malingering. If one man was treated sympathetically and taken out of the line for rest and recuperation, then maybe many others would claim to be suffering from shell shock in an attempt to escape from the horrors of the trenches. The possibility that whole companies or battalions might go down with shell shock was seen as a problem that could ultimately undermine the ability of the army to function as an effective fighting force. Breakdown focuses on the story of the attempt by the military authorities, often in the most cruel and uncaring way, to prevent this from happening.

  It seemed to contemporaries that there were two apparently new features of war for soldiers of the First World War to grapple with. One was poison gas; the second was shell shock. In the view of many they were parallel in effect. The impact of one was often compared with that of the other. Both amazed the senior command and could cause panic among the ranks that had to face them. Lieutenant-Colonel Rogers had been Medical Officer of the 4th Black Watch battalion for most of the war and he reported, ‘The very mention of gas would put the “wind up” the battalion at once, even if they had gas masks which, they were told, were perfectly safe.’ Rogers thought that gas ‘was a very powerful factor in causing anxiety neurosis’.12

  Following post-war prohibitions, poison gas was not used in combat in the Second World War, although in more recent conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq and Syria chemical warfare has been resorted to once again. However, shell shock or, in more recent terminology, post-traumatic stress disorder, is something that soldiers have experienced throughout the last one hundred years. It has remained a continuing facet of modern warfare.

  The conventional wisdom is that the only people to describe shell shock during the First World War were those who tried to treat it: medical officers in the field, military doctors at Casualty Clearing Stations and base hospitals, and psychologists back home in Britain and in the specialist centres that were finally set up in late 1916.13 However, research for this book has revealed that there are many very moving descriptions of shell shock, both by those who directly suffered from it and by fellow soldiers who witnessed it in the trenches and were thrown off balance by it. The three sets of extracts quoted in the preceding pages illustrate the range of original sources behind much of Breakdown. Archibald McAllister Burgoyne experienced the build-up of stress as his battalion prepared to go into action in Delville Wood in mid-July 1916 and he saw men around him going down with shell shock. Major Frederick St John Steadman was one of the doctors stunned by the scale of the problem as men presented with strange and peculiar mental neuroses, for the treatment of which he had received no training; he was amazed as they turned up in what seemed like ever-increasing numbers. And Brigadier Reginald John Kentish was a military leader who had to command several thousand men in battle but who was left reflecting on how much a soldier could endure before he reached his point of breakdown. Finding some of these new sources has been one of the great rewards of researching this book.

  However, the story of shell shock on the Somme has to be put in context. The preliminary chapters of Breakdown therefore look at the mass response to the war in late August and September 1914 when three-quarters of a million men, mostly without any personal or family links with the military, volunteered for the army. The networks they were part of, the Pals battalions they formed and Kitchener’s New Army, which they shaped, were all very much of their time. And it was this army that went over the top on 1 July 1916 and saw the lion’s share of the fighting on the Somme over the following months. War neurosis had been observed since the early months of the conflict, particularly since the onset of trench warfare with its new battlefield geography of front lines, barbed wire and No Man’s Land, and characterised by intense artillery barrages. Men had to hunker down in a trench or a dugout and passively accept being under enemy shellfire, sometimes for hours at a time, with all the risks of sudden death, mutilation or burial under a mountain of earth. Many could not take it and broke down.

  The army had not expected this reaction to modern warfare and had made no preparations to cope with it. It naturally turned to medical men for advice on how to respond, but the primitive state of the understanding of how men’s minds operated, particularly in Britain by comparison to France and Germany, meant there was no consensus. Doctors argued as to whether shell shock was a physical problem or an emotional one; whether it was a form of what was then called ‘lunacy’, with all the expectations that went with this, or whether it was a new mental phenomenon that anyone and everyone in a modern army on a contemporary battlefield might suffer from.

  Perplexed, the military authorities saw the problem as a threat that cut to the heart of the army’s ability to fight – and responded accordingly. An account of their reaction during the Battle of the Somme forms the central chapters of the book. After the experience of reacting to the epidemic of shell shock on the Somme, the army had to decide how to approach shell shock in the ensuing battles along the Western Front. Should men suffering the various forms of anxiety neurosis be categorised as battle casualties under the term ‘shell shock’? Was conventional military discipline appropriate? What treatments were available? And when the war came to an end, others had to decide how the state should look after those who had suffered mental distress and might still be enduring the consequences. It was clear that a man who had lost an arm or a leg in the war should be helped to settle back in to society and receive a pension. Did the same apply to those who had experienced a form of nervous breakdown? If so, what level of compensation was appropriate, how should it be defined, for how long should it be paid? And where should the line be drawn between those deserving of state support and those who should be left to look after themselves? Losing a limb was a form of permanent disablement. Was a psychiatric illness merely a temporary disability, and if so when could it be said that one had recovered?

  The history of shell shock in the First World War can be seen, as it were, through many different prisms. It can be understood as an important step in the development of psychology. It can be presented as a disease arising from the horrors of modern industrial warfare. It can be seen as the first step on the long journey of comprehending how men’s minds respond to combat and to what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. It can be seen as an issue of military discipline, as an illustration of the brutality of the high command towards the treatment of its soldiers. But the story of shell shock on the Somme, here, is that of how the military responded to what they perceived as a major manpower crisis.

  Never was the problem of shell shock more severe than in the months between July and November 1916. It peaked during the blo
ody battles of the Somme, when for the first time it became an issue of real concern to the military authorities; as a result they became obsessed with avoiding what they called ‘wastage’. It is this story of the military response to shell shock in 1916 that is at the core of Breakdown.

  1

  The Pals Battalions

  War came to Britain almost literally out of a bright blue summer sky in early August 1914. On that hot, sunny bank holiday weekend, if Britons feared war at all what they expected was civil war in Ireland between the armed factions of Protestant Unionists in the north and Catholic Nationalists in the south rather than a general European war. But, having been at peace on 28 July, by midnight on 4 August all the major nations of Europe except Italy and Spain were at war.

  The governing Liberal Party in Westminster and public opinion across the nation had been deeply divided over whether to rally to France’s aid when threatened by invasion from Germany. But when the powerful German army invaded neutral Belgium in a well-prepared operation known as the Schlieffen Plan, both the Liberals and British public opinion quickly swung in favour of war. The sense of outrage in the country at Germany’s dastardly invasion of ‘gallant little Belgium’ (as the contemporary phrase had it) was immense. Germany was sent an ultimatum to withdraw its troops. When the ultimatum expired at 11 p.m. London time, midnight in Berlin, on 4 August, His Majesty’s government formally declared war on the Imperial German Reich.