Introduction

Abstract

At the Battle of the Marne in September 1914, soldiers began to circulate strange tales: a group of men had been discovered in the front line, standing on duty, alert, ready for action, but no longer alive. ‘Every normal attitude of life was imitated by these men,’reported The Times History of the War (1916), elaborating on the story two years later, ‘their bodies were found posing in all manner of positions, and the illusion was so complete that often the living would speak to the dead before realising the true state of affairs.’¹ From such rumours came the impression that the huge firepower of the newly mechanized artillery could lead to virtually undetectable brain damage from the impact of microscopic mortar fragments. Taken up by both military leaders and civilian observers, this persistent idea led in turn to a new term used by soldiers in the trenches as early as November and December 1914 and by many doctors in France and Britain throughout the war when referring to brain injury. It was no coincidence that a splintering ‘shell’was now connected to an obliterating ‘shock’. ‘Shock’was associated with both individual and collective military action as far back as the sixteenth century, particularly with the collision between warring opponents; by the nineteenth century its meaning was connected too with the technology of war and the medical disorders of peace, nervousness and emotional strain as well as the collapse of the circulatory system.²