Shell Shock at St George’s Hospital

Survivors

No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain  
  Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.  
Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’—  
  These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.  
They’ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed  
  Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,—  
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they’ll be proud  
  Of glorious war that shatter’d all their pride…  
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;  
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

Craiglockart. October, 1917.

– Siegfried Sassoon 

Shell shock in the First World War could obliterate the lives of survivors. It is estimated that by the end of the War over 80,000 cases of shell shock were treated by British Army medical facilities. The psychological damage inflicted on thousands of young men, described by Sassoon in his poem Survivors, can be seen in the recently opened records of St George’s Hospital, Morpeth. One such case was that of Walter Winn, who enlisted into Royal Marines on the 3^rd August 1915 in Newcastle, aged 17. Walter was an Insurance Clerk, born in Morpeth 1898. His war record describes a young man of good character and satisfactory ability. According to his doctor, Walter was a well-developed youth with dark hair, blue eyes and a fresh complexion.

In the medical case notes from St George’s Hospital, it states that Walter’s ‘physiological attack’ has been caused by the shock of witnessing the sinking of the HMS Vanguard. On 9 July 1917, after a day on exercise at Scapa Flow, the Vanguard was sunk almost immediately by a series of internal explosions. Only three men on-board survived the initial blast. One of the injured men, Lieutenant Commander Duke, later died of his wounds. 843 men died in the explosion which remains the worst accident in the Royal Navy’s wartime history. One witness, Ernest ‘Mick’ Moroney, wrote in his notebook that a ‘trawler which was close by got smothered in blood and pieces of human flesh, and afterwards picked up half the body of a marine’.

The trauma of the experience had a profound effect on Walter and his case notes from St George’s Hospital paint a harrowing picture of his condition. His doctor wrote that Walter is deluded and ‘wildly excited’. He hears paranormal voices in the walls that give him electric shocks. He mutters to himself about ships and boats. The doctor notes that Mrs Winn, Walter’s mother, ‘says the lad has been sleeping badly, has threatened to commit suicide on several occasions, has tried to cut his throat with a table knife, which he had concealed up his sleeve, being prevented on one occasion by a sister.’

During the First World War many men, like Walter, found themselves reliving their war and combat experiences long after they had left the battlefield. The physical manifestation of shell shock could include a broad range of symptoms affecting each man differently: anxiety, paralysis, limping or jerking, blindness and deafness, nightmares, heart palpitations, depression and disorientation. Such symptoms of shock were clearly understood by the doctors at St George’s who noted that while Walter is ‘nervous’ and ‘abnormally quiet’ (except in his mutterings to imagined people), his knee jerks, gait and speech are normal. In his notes the doctor appears happy with the progress Walter is making, writing that he is ‘brightening up’  and that he is ‘mentally much improved’ in August 1917. By the end of September, however, he has relapsed, possibly caused by being attacked by a fellow patient. Despite this setback, in the October of 1917 Walter begins to make good progress again and by the 15^th April 1918 is he well enough to leave the Hospital. The final entry in the case notes simply read ‘Discharged – Recovered’.  He had been at the Hospital for almost nine months. Walter’s war record states that he was discharged from the military on the 19^th March 1918, the reasons given as ‘Invalided – Insanity’. There is no mention of the sinking of the Vanguard or Walter’s mental shock. It seems however, the Walter never fully recovered from his war time experiences. In the 1939 Register records Walter as a patient at Newcastle City Mental Hospital. Walter died, aged 76, in the care of Newcastle City Mental Hospital and was buried at All Saints, Gosforth 7 May 1975.

The records of St Georges Hospital give a fascinating and often tragic insight into the lives of the victims of shell shock in our region.