Demobilization: On Returning Home

Abstract

In medical language and Army policy’ shell shock’was always reluctantly tolerated. In 1917–18 the term was more fully replaced by the official therapeutic vocabulary of ‘neurasthenia’, ‘neurosis’and ‘psychosis’. This shift in terminology signified an attempt to downgrade wartime traumatic neurosis and its post-combat consequences; to enforce the demobilization of shell shock. Without the defence of active service and their role on the promotion of wartime medicine’s efficiency, the notion of genuinely neurotic ex-servicemen came under increasing suspicion as veterans reappeared in civilian life in the role of unproductive labourers claiming ‘ compensation neurosis’from the state. This sceptical outlook was built into the Ministry of Pensions’bureaucratic procedures for all war-damaged workers seeking compensation as claims were calculated according to a flexible percentage disability rating system. Thus the new techniques of mechanized labouring, substantially advanced by the war, were reinforced in the new peace, as the government administered its bureaucratic procedures to convert formerly unproductive ex-soldiers into newly industrious employees. The War Office attempted to put ‘shell shock’behind it too, drawing a line under the episode with the findings of the War Officer Committee of Enquiry published in 1922. However, in employment exchange and pensions’medical examinations, veterans, the general public and politicians continued their fascination with the mental disabilities thrown up by the recent conflict.