World War One Centenary: examining shellshock and the impact of war
Professor Joanna Bourke spoke about shellshock as part of a global series of events about World War One
Birkbeck historian Professor Joanna Bourke spoke about the harrowing effects of shellshock at the Imperial War Museum in London as part of a major global series of events about World War One. Her powerful essay, entitled Shellshock and the shock of shells, was the centrepiece of an event organised by the BBC World Service and British Council on 30 July.
Professor Bourke was the special guest at the discussion, called The psychology of war. Listen to the recording of the event broadcast by the BBC World Service on Saturday 2 August.
Topics raised by panellists and the audience included the psychological scars of the war, the content of letters to sweethearts, class and ethnic tensions at the frontline, and war poetry.
Linked by war: the frontline and the home front
Amanda Vickery, Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London, presented the debate at the newly refurbished Imperial War Museum, which was the Royal Bethlehem Hospital for the mentally ill during World War One. She began by highlighting that 80,000 British soldiers were diagnosed with shellshock caused by the conflict.
Dr Dan Todman, Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London, emphasised the intersecting nature of the frontline and home front as soldiers returned home on leave or injured, and as it was possible to hear the guns on the Western Front from the south of England.
Michael Roper, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, focussed on the conflicting emotions and concerns relayed in letters between the frontline and home front. Every week eight million letters were sent from the Western Front, often including lists of requested items and details about mud and horror in the trenches.
Traumatised by war
Professor Bourke – a cultural historian best known for An intimate history of killing (1999) and her research interests in fear, rape, pain and military conflicts – continued by focusing on shellshock, a term first used in 1915.
She referred to soldiers’ contemporary accounts about the psychological distress caused by the conflict. For example, in a letter to his mother in November 1914, Private Ridley wrote of being in a “rotten state… pestered by the most infernal dreams. Every time I drop off I dream I am being rushed by Germans and I am alone in the trench, and my revolver will not go off.”
Professor Bourke explained how a diagnosis of shellshock was pivotal as it would determine whether sufferers were given a pension or rebuked, whether they were “asked to lie on the psychoanalytic couch or shot at dawn.”
As well as soldiers as victims, her exploration of shellshock covered the trauma caused by perpetrating violence, and the effects of shellshock upon loved ones and carers. Professor Bourke added: “Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives, lovers, friends, and neighbours also had a grenade lobbed into their lives as a direct effect of being witnesses to the suffering of their loved ones.”
Finally, Professor Bourke lamented the technological co-operation and global production of weaponry, which was necessary to create the destructive power of munitions during World War One and still exists today.
She said: “We need to be shocked by the shells that our factories continue to produce…We have a responsibility to pay attention – to pay attention to the shells that one day might harm not only our loved ones today and also those strangers in the future who we might learn from, laugh with and love.”
The event was part of The war that changed the world – a series of events organised by the BBC World Service and the British Council in 10 countries, including Bosnia, Germany, the UK, Turkey and India.