Tommy Talk: War Hospital Magazines and the Literature of Resilience and Healing

Brumby, Alice

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_4

Alice Brumby²

573 Accesses

Abstract

War hospital magazines are an important yet neglected part of First World War print culture, offering invaluable insight into the experiences and perceptions of wounded servicemen (“Tommies”) undergoing treatment regimes. These magazines reveal soldiers’ diverse responses to their wartime environment, showing that satire and humour were part of a wider, more complex emotional reaction. In contrast to other historians’ findings, this chapter demonstrates that for many of the men contributing to these magazines, resilience to the war and their injuries came from a sense of genuine patriotism and achievement rather than scathing resistance. It provides an insight into the unique cultural and artistic responses of wounded patients, which show a different picture of how they understood and responded to their wartime experiences.

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Notes

1.
Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau, Men at War: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism in France during the First World War, trans. Helen McPhail (Oxford: Berg, 1992).
2.
J.G. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 13; Jeffrey S. Reznick, Healing the Nation: Soldiers and the Culture of Caregiving in Britain during the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 66.
3.
Graham Seal, “‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’: Trench Culture of the Great War,” Folklore 124, no. 2 (2013): 178–199. See also Graham Seal, The Soldiers’ Press: Trench Journals in the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
4.
Jane Chapman and Dan Ellin, “Dominion Cartoon Satire as Trench Culture Narratives: Complaints, Endurance and Stoicism,” The Round Table 103, no. 2 (2014): 175–192, https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2014.898500.
5.
Julie Anderson, War, Disability and Rehabilitation in Britain: ‘Soul of a Nation’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011); Leo van Bergen, Before my Helpless Sight: Suffering, Dying and Military Medicine on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Peter Barham, Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War (London: Yale University Press, 2007); Fiona Reid, Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain, 1914–1930 (London: Continuum, 2011).
6.
Alice Brumby, “‘A Painful and Disagreeable Position’: Rediscovering Patient Narratives and Evaluating the Difference between Policy and Experience for Institutionalised Veterans with Mental Disabilities, 1924–1931,” First World War Studies 6, no. 1 (2015): 37–55, https://doi.org/10.1080/19475020.2015.1047891.
7.
Michael Roper, The Secret Battle: Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
8.
Ana Carden-Coyne, The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 2.
9.
Reznick, Healing the Nation, 83.
10.
Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989), 232, 230, 229.
11.
Seal, “We’re Here Because We’re Here,” 178.
12.
Chapman and Ellin, “Dominion Cartoon Satire,” 189.
13.
Editorial, Huddersfield War Hospital Magazine (hereafter HWHM), Souvenir Edition. No page numbers to this edition.
14.
Anon, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, October 9, 1915.
15.
Anon, Huddersfield Parish Magazine, November 1915, 2.
16.
F.G. Coward, “Correspondence,” Huddersfield Daily Examiner, September 6, 1919.
17.
Ibid.
18.
Major-General Sir W.G. MacPherson, History of the Great War Medical Services: vol. 1, Medical Services in the United Kingdom, 1914–1918 (London: HMSO, 1923), 96.
19.
Anon, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, July 7, 1916.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Anon, “Hospital Jottings,” HWHM, December 1916, 12.
22.
Table, HWHM, July 1918, 12.
23.
Editorial, HWHM, July 1916, 1.
24.
Ibid., 1.
25.
Editor, “To Our Readers,” HWHM, November 1917, 2.
26.
Editor, “To Our Readers,” HWHM, September 1916, 2.
27.
Editorial, HWHM, July 1916, 1.
28.
British Red Cross, “Auxiliary Hospitals.” Last modified 2017. http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/History-and-origin/First-World-War/Auxiliary-Hospitals.
29.
Anon, “To Our Readers,” HWHM, November 1916, 2.
30.
Anon, “News of an Old Patient,” HWHM, April 1917, 2.
31.
Anon, “Our Oldest Patient,” HWHM, March 1918, 8.
32.
Ibid., 8.
33.
Editorial, HWHM, December 1916, 1.
34.
Ibid.
35.
Editorial, HWHM, December 1916, 2.
36.
Cyril Pearce, Comrades in Conscience: The Story of an English Community’s Opposition to the Great War (London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2001), 21 and 28.
37.
Editorial, HWHM, July 1916, 2.
38.
See F. Garland, “Sonnet on Looking at our Hospital Magazine,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
39.
Chapman and Ellin, “Dominion Cartoon Satire,” 180.
40.
Ernest Clarkson, “1917,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
41.
An Old Patient, “Wounded,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
42.
Private John Stewart, “Heard in the Wards,” HWHM, August 1916, 8.
43.
Robert Middlemas, “Letter,” HWHM, June 1917, 8.
44.
Ibid.
45.
C. Elder, “Bravo Huddersfield War Hospital,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition; Jack Custer, “Letter,” HWHM, June 1917, 8.
46.
Carden-Coyne, Politics of Wounds, 2; Reznick, Healing the Nation, 83.
47.
A Patient, “Hospital Definitions,” HWHM, April 1918, 11.
48.
Corporal Brook, “A Tale of a Stitch,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
49.
Ibid.
50.
A Patient, “Hospital Definitions,” HWHM, April 1918, 11.
51.
Quoted from Yorkshire Daily Observer in HWHM, August 1916, 9.
52.
Anon, “We Wonder,” HWHM, September 1916, 4.
53.
J. Hamilton, “A Patient Says ‘Good Morning’ to the Nurse,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
54.
J. Hamilton, “Those Who Watch Over Us,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
55.
Corporal Thomas, “R.A.M.C. Orderly, Doing His Bit,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
56.
Anon, HWHM, September 1916, 3.
57.
Ibid.
58.
A Patient, “Hospital Definitions,” HWHM, April 1918, 11.
59.
Ibid.
60.
A.C. Stagg, “How I survived fifteen days wounded with practically no food,” HWHM, September 1916, 2.
61.
J.L. Crammer, “Extraordinary Deaths of Asylum Inpatients During the 1914–1918 War,” Medical History 36, no. 4 (1992): 430–441.
62.
Editor, HWHM, February 1918, 2.
63.
Corporal Thomas, “Somme Bite,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
64.
Fuller, Troop Morale, 13; Reznick, Healing the Nation, 66.
65.
Anon, HWHM, November 1916, 3.
66.
Drummer Dowling, “What We Do Not See in the Park,” HWHM, Souvenir Edition.
67.
Anon, “When Will England Realise the War,” HWHM, November 1917, 3.
68.
Anon, HWHM, August 1916, 3.
69.
Drummer Dowling, “Drummer Dowling’s Idea of Duty and Inclination,” HWHM, June 1916, 3.
70.
Anon, “To Our Readers,” HWHM, December 1916, 2.
71.
Ibid.
72.
Ibid.
73.
The Hive, 5161, B010:16, 6, Worcester Infirmary, Weekly Minute Books, 1912–1920, 416.
74.
Anon, “Late Again!” HWHM, September 1917, 3.

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Google Scholar
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Google Scholar
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Article Google Scholar
Carden-Coyne, Ana. The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
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Chapman, Jane, and Dan Ellin, “Dominion Cartoon Satire as Trench Culture Narratives: Complaints, Endurance and Stoicism.” The Round Table 103, no. 2 (2014): 175–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2014.898500.
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Huddersfield War Hospital Magazines. Accessed from Kirklees Museums and Galleries.
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Pearce, Cyril. Comrades in Conscience: The Story of an English Community’s Opposition to the Great War. London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2001.
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van Bergen, Leo. Before My Helpless Sight: Suffering, Dying and Military Medicine on the Western Front, 1914–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK
Alice Brumby

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Correspondence to Alice Brumby .

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University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
Martin Kerby , Margaret Baguley & Janet McDonald , &

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Brumby, A. (2019). Tommy Talk: War Hospital Magazines and the Literature of Resilience and Healing. In: Kerby, M., Baguley, M., McDonald, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_4
Published: 05 December 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96986-2
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