Adam Smith in Beijing

Library Journal

Here are the experiences of five British veterans who survived World War I physically but came home damaged goods. It is the psychic impact of the horrific war that Barrett (English, Univ. of London; Imagination in Theory) examines through the experiences of Willis Brown, Douglas Darling, Ronald Skirth, William Tyrrell, and Lawrence Gameson. Each was the victim of shell shock or what is now known as posttraumatic stress disorder. Yet Barrett reveals that these succinct mental classifications do not do justice to what these men experienced. It was the cumulative effect of death as a constant companion that changed these veterans forever. They all returned home to apparently normal lives but beneath the surface there was illness, alcoholism, bitterness, and depression. Through interviews with the soldiers' descendants and a careful reading of archival material buried in the Imperial War Museum, Barrett evokes the bloody crucible these five men passed through. She may be criticized for not offering more in-depth documentation of the archival resources used, but no one will question the authenticity of her compelling characterizations of these five veterans of the Great War. Sadly, this is a timely work. A worthy addition to the extensive literature on the mental health of combat veterans; recommended for all libraries.
—Jim Doyle

Kirkus Reviews

A collective biography of five shell-shocked veterans of trench warfare. Delving into mountains of personal papers, letters and photographs in London's Imperial War Museum, Barrett (Modern Literary and Cultural Theory/Queen Mary, Univ. of London; Imagination in Theory: Culture, Writing, Words, and Things, 1999, etc.) tells stories of three soldiers and two military doctors. All witnessed terrible things, suffered mental breakdowns and seemed to recover, but the experience permanently colored their lives. Investigating the flood of psychiatric casualties among uninjured soldiers, World War I physicians preferred an organic cause, so the term "shell shock" entered the vocabulary. Experts explained that soldiers in proximity to explosions suffered subtle brain injuries, but readers will share the author's shock at discovering how much the simple horror of trench life contributed to their breakdowns. Soldiers walked, slept, ate and fought among dead and rotting bodies and body parts. The smell of decaying corpses grew more intense during the summer and after battles, but it never vanished. "I thought by now the horrors of war could no longer shock me. I was wrong," writes Bombardier Ronald Skirth. "It must have been some ghoulish influence that drew me to the old battlefield and three months after the fighting had ceased the mangled, putrefying bodies of men and beasts still lay awaiting burial." Classic WWI memoirs (by Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and others) mention disgusting details of trench warfare, but those were written for publication and after time had softened the memories. The soldiers profiled here recorded their uncensored feelings on the spot. "The significant context ofthese life stories," writes Barrett, "is not what can be remembered, but what has survived for us to study." Fear and the death of comrades figure prominently, but it was the nauseating sights and smells that dominated their thoughts. When one of the author's subjects, a doctor, revealed this to a postwar Parliamentary investigation into shell-shock, it was censored. A unique contribution to war literature.