Breakdown

by Taylor Downing

  Gerry Harrison (ed.), To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May. London: William Collins, 2014

  Aubrey Herbert, Mons, Anzac and Kut by an M.P. London: E. Arnold, 1919; new edn ed. Edward Melotte, Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2009

  Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferté, The Fated Sky: An Autobiography. London: Hutchinson, 1952

  Rudyard Kipling, The New Army in Training. London: Macmillan, 1914

  David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (6 vols). London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933–6

  Harold Macmillan, Winds of Change, 1914–39. London: Macmillan, 1966

  Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune (2 vols). London: Piazza Press, 1929. Republished in a censored form as Her Privates We. London: Peter Davies, 1930 (republished as a Penguin Modern Classic, 2014)

  Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice (ed.), The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent: From his Journals and Letters. London: Cassell & Co, 1928

  Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment. London: Chatto & Windus, 1922

  Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. London: Faber & Faber, 1930 (republished as a Faber Classic, 2000)

  ——, Sherston’s Progress. London: Faber & Faber, 1936 (republished as a Penguin Classic, 2013)

  Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (eds), Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005

  T. Howard Somervell, After Everest: The Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936

  A.F. Wedd, German Students’ War Letters: Translated and Arranged from the Original Edition of Dr Philipp Witkop. London: Methuen, 1929 (republished by First Pine Street Books, Pennsylvania, 2002)

  H.G. Wells, Anticipations: Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought. London: Chapman & Hall, 1902

  Stephan Kurt Westman, Surgeon with the Kaiser’s Army. London: William Kimber, 1968 (republished by Pen and Sword, Barnsley, 2014)

  Literary sources

  Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero. London: Chatto & Windus, 1929 (republished as a Penguin Classic, 2013)

  ——, Roads to Glory. London: Chatto & Windus, 1930

  Humphrey Cobb, Paths of Glory. London: Viking, 1935 (republished as a Penguin Classic, 2011)

  A.P. Herbert, The Secret Battle. London: Methuen, 1919

  Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues). New York: Little, Brown, 1929 (republished in English many times and now available as a Vintage paperback)

  Dorothy Sayers, Whose Body? London: Fisher Unwin, 1923 (plus ten other Lord Peter Wimsey books, the last of which was Busman’s Honeymoon in 1937 – all are available in paperback through a variety of publishers)

  Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier. London: Nisbet, 1918 (republished by Virago Press, 2010)

  Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway. London: Hogarth, 1925 (republished as a Penguin Classic, 2000)

  SECONDARY SOURCES

  Anthony Babington, For the Sake of Example. London: Leo Cooper, 1983

  ——, Shell Shock: A History of the Changing Attitudes to War Neurosis. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 1997

  Peter Barham, Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004

  John S.G. Blair, In Arduis Fidelis: Centenary History of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1998

  Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of the Somme. London: Macmillan-Pan Books in association with the IWM, 1997

  ——, Christy Campbell, Band of Brigands: The First Men in Tanks. London: Harper, 2007

  David Cannadine, Class in Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998

  Alan Clark, The Donkeys. London: Hutchinson, 1961

  Rose Coombs, Before Endeavours Fade. London: After the Battle, 1976

  David Crane, Empires of the Dead: How One Man’s Vision led to the Creation of WW1’s War Graves. London: William Collins, 2013

  Taylor Downing, Secret Warriors: Key Scientists, Code-breakers and Propagandists of the Great War. London: Little, Brown, 2014

  David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991

  Graham Farmelo, Churchill’s Bomb: A Hidden History of Science, War and Politics. London: Faber & Faber, 2013

  Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War. London: Allen Lane, 1998

  Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Millennium. London: Bantam, 1995

  David Fletcher, The British Tanks 1915–19. Marlborough: Crowood Press, 2001

  Robert Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005

  J.G. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

  Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

  Mark Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010

  Peter Hart, The Somme. London: Cassell, 2006

  Guy Hartcup, The War of Invention: Scientific Developments 1914–18. London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1988

  Wendy Holden, Shell Shock: The Psychological Impact of War. London: Channel 4 Books, 1998

  Richard Holmes, Firing Line. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985

  ——, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front. London: HarperCollins, 2004

  Edgar Jones and Simon Wessely, Shell Shock to PTSD: Military Psychiatry from 1900 to the Gulf War. Hove: Psychology Press, 2005

  John Keegan, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. London: Jonathan Cape, 1976

  Peter Leese, Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

  Basil Liddell Hart, The Real War, 1914–1918. London: Faber & Faber, 1930 (republished as History of the First World War. London: Cassell & Co, 1970)

  Lyn Macdonald, Somme. London: Macmillan, 1983

  Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War. London: Macmillan, 1965

  Emily Mayhew, Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty, 1914–1918. London: The Bodley Head, 2013

  Dudley McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme: The Story of C.E.W. Bean. London: Secker & Warburg, 1983

  Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme: 1 July 1916. London: Allen Lane, 1971

  Gerard Oram, Death Sentences Passed by Military Courts of the British Army 1914–1924. London: Francis Boutle, 1998

  David Owen, The Hidden Perspective: The Military Conversations 1906–1914. London: Haus, 2014

  George A. Panichas (ed.), Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914–1918. London: Cassell, 1968

  David Parker, The People of Devon in the First World War. Stroud: The History Press, 2013

  William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme. London: Little, Brown, 2009

  Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes, Shot at Dawn. Barnsley: Wharncliffe, 1989

  Fiona Reid, Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain 1914–1930. London: Continuum, 2010

  David Reynolds, The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century. London: Simon & Schuster, 2013

  Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005

  ——, British Generalship during the Great War: The Military Career of Sir Henry Horne (1861–1929). Farnham: Ashgate, 2010

  Michael Roper, The Secret Battle: Emotional Survival in the Great War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009

  Gary Sheffield, Leadership in the Trenches: Officer-Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of the First World War. London: Macmillan, 2000

  ——, Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities. London: Hodder, 2002

  ——, The Somme. Lo
ndon: Cassell, 2003

  ——, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army. London; Aurum, 2011

  Gary Sheffield and Dan Todman (eds), Command and Control on the Western Front: The British Army’s Experience 1914–1918. Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2004

  Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914–1994. London: Pimlico, 2002

  ——, Headhunters: The Search for a Science of the Mind. London: The Bodley Head, 2014

  Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830–1980. London, Virago, 1987

  Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies 1914–1916. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2007 (reprint of original 1988 edition)

  Edward Spiers, Haldane: An Army Reformer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980

  David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918. London: Penguin, 2011

  John Stevenson, British Society 1914–45. London: Penguin, 1984

  A.T.Q. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis: Resistance to Home Rule, 1912–14. London: Faber & Faber, 1967

  Hew Strachan, The First World War: Vol. 1 To Arms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001

  Julie Summers (compiler), Remembering Fromelles: A New Cemetery for a New Century. Maidenhead: CWGC Publishing, 2010

  A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945, The Oxford History of England Vol. 15. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965

  James Taylor, ‘Your Country Needs You’: The Secret History of the Propaganda Poster. Glasgow: Saraband, 2013

  John Terraine, Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier. London: Hutchinson, 1963

  ——, White Heat: The New Warfare 1914–18. London, Leo Cooper, 1992

  Dan Todman, The Great War: Myth and Memory. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2005

  Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern War 1900–1918. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2009 (reprint of original 1987 edition)

  Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

  Ian R. Whitehead, Doctors in the Great War. Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1999

  Denis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War. London: Penguin, 1979

  ——, The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War. London: Allen Lane, 1982

  Index

  Accrington Pals (11th East Lancashires), 40, 136, 200, 346

  Adie, Major, 243

  aerial reconnaissance, 121, 141–2

  aerial warfare, 50, 54, 56–7, 58

  Afghanistan conflict (2001-15), 319, 321–2

  Aldershot, School of Hygiene, 60

  Aldington, Richard, 310

  Alexandra, Queen, 258

  Allan, Lance Corporal F., 165

  Allenby, General Sir Edmund, 120–1

  ambulance trains, 100, 101, 146, 148, 149

  American Civil War (1861-65), 76, 335

  American Psychiatric Association, 315–17

  the Ancre Heights, Battle of (November 1916), 230–1, 232–3

  anthropology, 80, 266

  Anzac Corps, 109, 208–9, 221, 222–4, 232–3

  archaeological work, 348

  armaments and munitions industries, 22, 42–3, 62–3, 107–8, 133–4, 141

  Armstrong Whitworth, 63

  army medical services: during Boer War (1899-1902), 58–9, 61; early discussion over shell shock, 14, 17, 83; as entitlement/right, 95; ‘forward psychiatry, 98; Keogh’s reforms, 59–60; PIE (‘Proximity, Immediacy, Expectation’), 262; and psychiatry, 14, 61, 98, 262, 324–5; ‘Special Hospitals’ in Britain, 257–9, 261, 265–75, 276–80; specialist centres for shell shock, 16, 97–8, 99, 105, 202–3, 259, 261, 281, 283; training of doctors, 60–1; see also medical aid positions; medical officers (MOs); Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC)

  Arnim, General von, 215

  Arras, Battle of (April 1917), 274

  artillery: Allied at the Somme, 11–12, 115, 117, 118–19, 160, 162, 195–6, 213–14, 225, 226; Allied preliminary bombardment at the Somme, 126–7, 131, 132–5, 140, 141, 156, 157, 160, 170; concentration of fire, 116, 132, 140, 193, 194, 225; creeping barrage, 229; effective range of, 119; extreme stresses of bombardments, 3–4, 17, 82–3, 189–90; eye-witness descriptions of shelling, 2, 6–7, 82, 95, 127, 213–14; and Foch, 115–16; at Fromelles, 210–11; German at the Somme, 3–4, 5, 6–7, 132, 143, 144, 157, 286–7; Great War as ‘artillery war’, 189; Haig’s view of, 57; high explosive (HE) shells, 133, 140; noise of, 2–4, 82, 186–7, 195; Pozières bombardments, 215–16, 217–18, 219, 221, 223, 224; shrapnel shells, 127, 133; spread too thinly, 132, 140, 214; technological development of, 50; at Verdun, 112

  Artists’ Rifles, 48

  Artois region, 107

  Ashcroft, Lord, 319–20

  Asquith, Herbert, 22, 28–9, 108

  Australia, 23, 109, 207, 208–10, 223, 317

  Australian Divisions, 1, 207–11, 212–21, 222–3, 232–3, 329; at Gallipoli, 109, 208–9, 210, 221, 223, 224; memorials, 233, 348; and military executions, 255; view of British commanders, 209, 223–4

  Austro-Hungarian armies, 109, 122, 342

  Authuille Wood, 161, 162–7, 347

  Babington, Judge Anthony, 253

  Babinski, Joseph, 86, 339

  Baker, Sir Herbert, 345

  Balgonie, Lord, 335

  Bapaume, 113–14, 117, 122

  Barker, Pat, Regeneration trilogy, 277

  Barnsley Pals, 40, 136, 200

  Barter, Major-General, 228

  base hospitals, 60, 87, 93, 105, 259, 260, 263, 264; evacuations from front line to, 73, 149, 261, 282; Hospital 117 (US Army), 284, 341; medical officers at, 16, 88, 92, 180, 205, 238

  Bazentin-le-Petit, 192, 212, 213

  Bean, Charles, 224, 232, 233

  Beaumont-Hamel village, 114, 127, 134, 137, 225, 230, 346

  Belgium, 21, 33, 34, 45

  Below, General Fritz von, 216–17

  Bennet, Sergeant J.A., 301–2

  Bennett, Private John, 247

  Bethlem lunatic asylum, London, 266

  Bigwood, Private Edwin, 302

  Bill, Captain, 197–8

  Birdwood, Sir William, 233

  Birmingham, 27, 28, 319; Pals battalions, 31, 34, 197–8

  Black Watch, 15–16, 97, 191, 243

  Blériot, Louis, 55

  Blomfield, Sir Reginald, 345

  Blunden, Edmund, Undertones of War (1928), 310

  Boehn, General Max von, 215

  Boer War (1899-1902), 1, 10, 11, 23, 41, 49, 57, 69, 336–7; medical services during, 58–9, 61

  Border Regiment, 157–8; see also the Lonsdales (11th Battalion The Border Regiment)

  Bosnian conflict (late 1990s), 319

  Boys’ Brigade, 30, 37, 154

  Brenan, Gerald, 82, 131–2, 172, 194

  British army: 1914 size and structure, 25, 61–2; attitudes to change, 50–2, 53, 55–8, 61; Haldane’s reforms, 49–50, 59; huge public support for, 47; lack of planning for major war, 22, 62; letters home, 127–8; ‘lions led by donkeys’ thesis, 13, 14; modernity vs tradition, 50–8, 59–60, 61; in nineteenth century, 40–1, 49; physical fitness issues, 69; procurement system, 62; recruits’ fear of missing war, 47–8; shell shock as threat to, 12, 15, 17–18, 19, 151, 206, 313, 331, 332; and social class, 40–1, 46, 47, 51–2, 64–70; soldiers’ use of humour/irony, 186–8; Staff College at Camberley, 11, 55; as unprepared for scale of losses, 73–4; see also British Expeditionary Force (BEF); New Army, Kitchener’s; officers; recruitment

  British army units: First Army, 110, 244–5, 246; Third Army, 120–1; Fourth Army, 10–12, 116–17, 125, 136, 144, 146, 210, 221–2, 228, 238; Reserve Army (Fifth Army), 118, 171, 178, 211–12, 230, 281; III Corps, 124, 137, 138, 205; V Corps, 344; VIII Corps, 137, 138; X Corps, 158–69, 171–81; XI Corps, 210–11; XIII Corps, 140, 142–3, 192; XV Corps, 141, 193; 2nd Division, 221, 328–9; 8th Divisio
n, 137–8; 18th (Eastern) Division, 64, 140, 228–9; 29th Division, 127, 134, 137; 31st Division, 136, 156, 346; 32nd Division, 153, 158, 160, 168, 169, 171–81; 34th Division, 138; 38th (Welsh) Division, 194–5; 41st Division, 227; 46th (Midland) Division, 133, 170; 47th (London) Division, 228; 48th Division, 240–2; 56th (London) Division, 147, 170, 182, 345; 61st Division, 210–11; 63rd (Royal Naval) Division, 230; 76th Brigade, 12; 97th Brigade, 153, 159, 230–1; see also entries for individual battalions and regiments

  British Empire, 1, 23, 50, 67, 207–21, 222–4, 232–3, 344–5; Canadian troops, 108, 207, 210, 223, 228, 346; executions of imperial soldiers, 255; Indian Army, 1, 11, 23, 25, 57, 64, 142–3, 152, 193, 207; South African Brigade, 1–6, 195–7, 207, 210, 349; total wartime losses, 311; see also Australian Divisions; New Zealand troops

  British Expeditionary Force (BEF), 24–5, 50, 70, 72, 75, 110, 123; first battles (August 1914), 11, 27–8, 32–3, 70–1; ‘Retreat from Mons’ (August 1914), 71, 73–4, 239

  British Legion, 300

  British Medical Association, 58, 60, 206

  British political crisis (1915), 107–8

  Brittain, Vera, 43

  Brock, Captain Arthur, 278

  Brooke, Rupert, 36

  Brown, Dr William, 203, 238

  Browne, Des, 254

  Brusilov, General Alexei, 122

  Burgoyne, Archibald McAllister, 1–6, 16, 195–6, 349

  Bussitil, Dr Walter, 321

  Butlin, Lieutenant James, 273–4, 296

  Cambrai, Battle of (November 1917), 252

  Cambridge University, 79–80, 85, 266

  Canadian troops, 108, 207, 210, 223, 228, 346

  Carlisle, 40, 48–9, 152, 153

  Carson, Sir Edward, 37

  Cassel, Lieutenant Fritz, 135

  Casualty Clearing Stations (CCSs), 6, 16, 78, 87, 147, 202, 263, 344; equipment and facilities at, 97, 146, 148–9; medical officers at, 146, 148–9; patients sent ‘back down the line’ to, 197, 199, 200, 259, 261; at the Somme, 146, 148–9, 221, 291

  casualty figures: Australian, 208, 211, 217, 222, 223; British army, 10, 75, 108–9, 130, 136, 137, 138, 146–7, 150, 169, 221, 225, 230; Canadian, 137; French army, 74, 108–9, 122; German army, 74, 109, 122, 170, 225, 232; German shell shock, 331, 340; for shell shock during the Somme, 327–31; Somme offensive, 10, 130, 136–8, 146–7, 150, 169, 170, 221–3, 225, 230, 232; total British/Empire losses, 311; total wartime shell shock, 331