Soldiers Don't Go Mad

 Soldiers Don't Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry, and Mental Illness During the First World War (2023) by Charles Glass

Glass uses the history of the friendship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two British officers who became two of the greatest poets from World War, to frame a study of the treatment of "shell shock" and the role of literary response to trauma. Both Sassoon and Owen, like many young men, volunteered early for a war they thought would be fought in the old style and would be over by Christmas. But they and their fellow soldiers faced unparalleled dangers--from machine gun barrages to relentless artillery attacks, from flame throwers to chemical warfare. Dangers that not only caused physical damage and fatalities in huge numbers, but also brought about the nervous collapse of ten percent of its officers (in addition to a similar percentage of enlisted men)--a leadership loss the Allies could ill afford.

New war hospitals devoted to mental health were established--with the best and most successful stationed at Craiglockhart in Scotland. The new hospital took ove the health spa which previously served the upper classes who needed a rest cure. Its two prominent physicians, Dr. Rivers and Dr. Brock followed a number of Sigmund Freud's therapy methods--using dream analysis and "talk therapy" as primary responses to the nervous tremors, intense nightmares, and psychosomatic conditions brought on by the men's experiences.  Rivers and Brock varied in their additional therapies, however. Brock favored activity and work for rehabilitation--assigning patients to schedules full of athletic activities, gardening, tending to the chickens which provided eggs, etc. Rivers favored intellectual and artistic activities and encouraged the patients in the establishment of a hospital newsletter which featured poetry, stories, jokes, and the like written by the patients themselves as well as musical evenings, theatricals, and debates. 

When Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon arrived at Craiglockhart, they each were assigned to precisely the right doctor. Sassoon benefited from intellectual talks with Rivers while Owen found help in the physical activities assigned by Brock. But each man found solace in the rejuvenating power of poetry. They also benefited from the friendship which grew between them during their stay at the hospital. Sassoon initially served as mentor to the younger man, but he soon realized that Owen was a powerful poet in his own right and the two men encouraged each other and served as critics. Their stories make a persuasive case for the power of literary/artistic pursuits for therapeutic purposes.

The narrative includes the differences between how officers and enlisted men were treated. Officers suffering from mental fatigue were sent to hospitals such as Craiglockhart. Enlisted men were lucky if they received any therapy at all for their shell shock. Most were promptly sent back to the front...or if their nervousness and inability to fight were too severe, they might be shot for cowardice or disobeying orders. Glass also highlights the unsettling story of doctors whose goal is to heal the broken--whether in body, spirit, or mind--only to certify them fit to return to bloody battlefield where they may be broken again...or worse. Doctors who may well agree with the men they work with that the war is unjust or being fought for the wrong reasons, but who nevertheless must send them back to fight again. 

An insightful work, that taught me a great deal about the treatment of shell shock victims in WWI. This was particularly interesting to me because of my love for the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries written by Dorothy L. Sayers. Not that I doubted Sayers' representation of Lord Peter's experiences with the after-effects of war, but it was good to see how well she did represent shell shock. One wonders if she knew of Craiglockhart and if she did why she didn't use it as part of Lord Peter's story. As Major Wimsey, he most definitely would have been eligible to be sent there. Of course, then his nervous reactions in several of the stories might not have been the same--if treatment had been successful. ★★★★

First line: Historian surmise that Craiglockhart took its name from the Scots Gaelic Creag Loch Ard--"crag of hill [on] the high lake," although the hill boasts neither lake nor great height.

Last line: Dr. Brock would have seen the healthy outdoor activity as useful therapy. It was the only therapy such enlisted men were likely to get.