Broken men [electronic resource] : shell shock, treatment and recovery in Britain, 1914-1930 / Fiona Reid.
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| Published: |
London ; New York :
Continuum,
2010.
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| Online Access: | |
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Summary: | This book offers a genuinely new insight into the lives of shell-shocked soldiers both during and after the Great War. Shell shock achieved a very high political profile in the years 1919-1922. Publications ranging from "John Bull" to the "Morning Post" insisted that shell-shocked men should be treated with respect, and the Minister for Health, announced in 1921 that the government was committed to protecting shell-shocked men from the stigma of lunacy. Yet at the same time, many mentally-wounded veterans were struggling with a pension system which was failing to give them the security that they thought they deserved. The narrative of the First World War has now become dominated by shell shock, and also by the associated myths surrounding the men who were 'shot at dawn'. Yet remembering the First World War as an unrelenting narrative of soldiers driven to madness provides us with a very partial picture: the Great War has become reduced to the shell shock war. This obscures a valid part of the history of shell shock itself that Broken Men addresses. The tales of those men who survived, and survived well, do not diminish the obvious horrors of the conflict of 1914-18, but they do provide a more complete and complex understanding of the Great War and of men's reactions to it. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (214 p.) |
| Other format: | Print version: Reid, Fiona, 1933- Broken men. 9781847252418 |
| Notes: | Bib#: 1325490 |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Language: | English |
| ISBN: | 9780826421036 (electronic bk.) 0826421032 (electronic bk.) |
| Bib#: | 1325490 |
