SOLDIERS DON'T GO MAD

The devastating trauma of modern warfare and its influence on psychotherapeutic advancements and inspiration for some of the most emotionally charged poetry of the 20th century.

Craiglockhart War Hospital, which opened in October 1916 outside of Edinburgh, was among the first hospitals established to treat officers suffering from shell shock (later called PTSD). Rather than return these officers to civilian life, the treatment was intended to prepare them to return to battle and fill in the ranks of massive losses sustained since the beginning of the war. Craiglockhart was notable for the significant role it played in advancing therapeutic treatments of shell shock through psychiatrists such as W.H.R Rivers—and for the impact this facility had on the lives of two emerging poets: Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The literary journal The Hydra, produced by the patients and edited by Owen, became “a vehicle...for some of the most profound and heartrending poetry of the war.” Within an engrossing novelistic structure, Glass, a former war correspondent and author of They Fought Alone and The Deserters, expertly weaves the stories of these men into a history of Craiglockhart and advancing insights into the causes and treatments for shell shock. Along the way, the author traces how class differences influenced the level of treatment provided. Only ranking officers received sufficient treatment for shell shock, while the soldiers were often forced to go back into battle or risk being executed. Drawing from letters, diary entries, and military and medical documents, Glass probes deeply into the complex lives of Rivers, Sassoon, and Owen, and he capably explores the profound influence that Sassoon and Rivers had on each other’s careers and how the burgeoning friendship between Sassoon and Owen impacted their poetry and feelings about the war. “To both poets, the war was damnable,” writes Glass. “Sassoon blamed the country’s rulers and its complacent citizenry, while in Owen’s poetry the war appeared as a natural catastrophe beyond human control.”

An absorbing, well-researched addition to the expansive canon of World War I literature.