Veterans: War Neurotic Ex-Servicemen

Abstract

While war neurotic pensioners in Britain were better off than their nearest peers on the Continent — in France there were no payments from the war, in Germany existing payments ceased in 1926 — many thousands of lives were permanently blighted by the war. One indication of the number is that there were 187 out-patient clinics in Britain treating mental disorders of all kinds by 1939, and that among their patients were many of the 120,000 in receipt of combat-related pensions.¹ The experience of war neurotic ex-servicemen can best be understood by seeing them both as part of the wider community of veterans affected by postwar social change, Ministry of Pensions policies and bureaucratic structures, and also as a particular instance whose claims were examined and reassessed by the Special Medical Board system. One viewpoint provides the common social context within which every veteran lived; the second makes available the particular details of assessed and reviewed pension claims for psychological debility that influenced the lives of the 114,600 pensioners who claimed awards. between April 1919 and May 1929.² Doctors’case notes and memoirs illustrate the difficulties in which ex-soldiers found themselves as well as the bitter resentment that the work of the Ministry sometimes aroused. Pension case notes and administrative documents give a further insight into ex-servicemen’s everyday lives and continuing neurotic conditions.