Shell-shock was the worst thing to see. There were generals who said:
“There is no such thing as shell-shock. It is cowardice. I would
court-martial in every case.” Doctors said: “It is difficult to draw
the line between shell-shock and blue funk. Both are physical as well as
mental. Often it is the destruction of the nerve tissues by concussion,
or actual physical damage to the brain; sometimes it is a shock of
horror unbalancing the mind, but that is more rare. It is not generally
the slight, nervous men who suffer worst from shell-shock. It is often
the stolid fellow, one of those we describe as being utterly without
nerves, who goes down badly. Something snaps in him. He has no
resilience in his nervous system. He has never trained himself in
nerve-control, being so stolid and self-reliant. Now, the nervous man,
the cockney, for example, is always training himself in the control of
his nerves, on 'buses which lurch round corners, in the traffic that
bears down on him, in a thousand and one situations which demand
self-control in a 'nervy' man. That helps him in war; whereas the yokel,
or the sergeant--major type, is splendid until the shock comes. Then
he may crack. But there is no law. Imagination--apprehension--are the
devil, too, and they go with 'nerves.'”
It was a sergeant-major whom I saw stricken badly with shell-shock in
Aveluy Wood near Thiepval. He was convulsed with a dreadful rigor like
a man in epilepsy, and clawed at his mouth, moaning horribly, with livid
terror in his eyes. He had to be strapped to a stretcher before he
could be carried away. He had been a tall and splendid man, this poor,
terror-stricken lunatic.
Nearer to Thiepval, during the fighting there, other men were brought
down with shell-shock. I remember one of them now, though I saw many
others. He was a Wiltshire lad, very young, with an apple-cheeked face
and blue-gray eyes. He stood outside a dugout, shaking in every limb, in
a palsied way. His steel hat was at the back of his head and his mouth
slobbered, and two comrades could not hold him still.
These badly shell-shocked boys clawed their mouths ceaselessly. It was a
common, dreadful action. Others sat in the field hospitals in a state
of coma, dazed, as though deaf, and actually dumb. I hated to see them,
turned my eyes away from them, and yet wished that they might be seen
by bloody-minded men and women who, far behind the lines, still spoke of
war lightly, as a kind of sport, or heroic game, which brave boys liked
or ought to like, and said, “We'll fight on to the last man rather than
accept anything less than absolute victory,” and when victory came
said: “We stopped too soon. We ought to have gone on for another three
months.” It was for fighting-men to say those things, because they knew
the things they suffered and risked. That word “we” was not to be used
by gentlemen in government offices scared of air raids, nor by women
dancing in scanty frocks at war-bazaars for the “poor dear wounded,”
nor even by generals at G. H. Q., enjoying the thrill of war without its
dirt and danger.
Seeing these shell-shock cases month after month, during years of
fighting, I, as an onlooker, hated the people who had not seen, and were
callous of this misery; the laughing girls in the Strand greeting the
boys on seven days' leave; the newspaper editors and leader-writers
whose articles on war were always “cheery”; the bishops and clergy who
praised God as the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies, and had
never said a word before the war to make it less inevitable; the
schoolmasters who gloried in the lengthening “Roll of Honor” and said,
“We're doing very well,” when more boys died; the pretty woman-faces
ogling in the picture-papers, as “well--known war-workers”; the
munition-workers who were getting good wages out of the war; the
working-women who were buying gramophones and furs while their men were
in the stinking trenches; the dreadful, callous, cheerful spirit of
England at war.
Often I was unfair, bitter, unbalanced, wrong. The spirit of England,
taking it broad and large--with dreadful exceptions--was wonderful in
its courage and patience, and ached with sympathy for its fighting sons,
and was stricken with the tragedy of all this slaughter. There were many
tears in English homes; many sad and lonely women. But, as an onlooker,
I could not be just or fair, and hated the non-combatants who did not
reveal its wound in their souls, but were placid in their belief that we
should win, and pleased with themselves because of their easy optimism.
So easy for those who did not see!