Our Journal: First World War Studies

This paper focuses on British soldier’s experience of amputation, as it was one of the more common and physically traumatic experiences of war. This paper brings together not just the soldier’s experience of the physical wounding of amputation, but the emotional experience of traumatic injury. Much of the historiography has separated the physical wound from emotional trauma, and this paper endeavours to bring them together. The experience of amputation and the emotions associated with recovery, fears about employment and loss of social status combined to create anxiety. Emotional reactions to amputation were understood to bring on conditions such as jumpy stump, as a manifestation of repressed trauma. Instead of rejecting this show of emotion as expressed by the stump, orthopaedic surgeons, in the main, accepted the reaction of the stump and worked with the patients to aid them in controlling this manifestation of trauma. In a similar vein to other non-specialists in psychiatry, orthopaedic surgeons in amputation hospitals diagnosed and devised their own methods for dealing with the mentally traumatic aspects of wounding. Healing wounds was of vital importance, and the stump and its repair remained the central focus. The manifestation of emotional trauma was treated as a side-effect of the physical injury, as the body was often more easily cured than the mind. The doctor and the patient’s intimate relationship with the stump provided it with a wide range of meanings, constructions and representations.

Key Words: amputation, trauma, emotion, stump, orthopaedic

This article explores the experience of Italian soldiers blinded in the First World War. In particular, it focuses on the rehabilitation and retraining programmes established in Florence at the Comitato fiorentino per i ciechi di guerra (Florentine Committee for the War Blinded) and its Director Aurelio Nicolodi. The article provides a meaningful interpretation of the experience of the Italian war blinded, and their influence on the treatment of the civilian blind after the war. In doing so, it reveals a hitherto understudied area in the history of war disability in Italy.

Key Words: rehabilitation, retraining, blindness, servicemen, disabled, civilians, Florence, Italy

Despite the interest in shell shock and disability history, the plight of the mentally afflicted veteran after the armistice and into the interwar years has only recently started to be studied by historians. This paper seeks to add to this emerging field by looking at the lived experiences of ex-servicemen institutionalized within the Ministry of Pensions Hospital at Kirkburton in Yorkshire, in the north of England. It focuses on the written letters of the patients, which have been preserved within the patients’ casebook files. These letters are extremely important for what they suggest about the life of the institutionalized ex-servicemen in the interwar years. By utilizing the casebooks alongside these letters, this paper will highlight some of the diverse responses of patients to their mental disabilities and to hospitalization. These patient narratives highlight that far from being passive or powerless, many patients were able to develop an extraordinary array of responses and coping mechanisms. The experiences of many of the patients, and the dissatisfaction expressed in the majority of their letters, identify that these men were deeply unhappy in their incarceration. It would appear that medical men came to regard these patients as incurable cases, rather than as mentally ill ex-servicemen who deserved any special treatment. Despite their hospitalization in a separate institution, the letters identify how these men’s experiences were very similar to those of the ‘ordinary lunatic’ throughout the interwar years.

Key Words: mental impairment, madness, Ministry of Pensions Hospital, patient narratives, Yorkshire, interwar years

This article focusses on a region which up till now has not received much attention from scholars of disability, Tsarist and Soviet Russia. The article focuses on the complex ways Russian disabled veterans from the First World War were represented in different visual source materials like newsreels, documentaries and feature films. It evaluates the differences between different kinds of disability and the way that they were represented in film from a number of well-known directors. The article employs sources from archives to analyse the myriad of ways in which disabled veterans were constructed and used by the state during and after the Revolution.

Key Words: disabled veterans, Soviet, Russia, cinema, Great War

This article addresses an episode in the history of the First World War and its immediate aftermath that has previously been overlooked: the establishment of professional guide dog training in interwar Germany. The brutal, mechanized nature of warfare produced some of the most gruesome injuries ever seen. A significant number of blind veterans suffered no physical injuries other than the loss of their eyesight; they were still young, relatively fit and eager to return to work. It was this group in particular which stood to benefit enormously from the implementation of guide dog training. Under this scheme, which the German state initially made available to war veterans in 1916, dogs became helpers, and, furthermore, equal partners to disabled soldiers. This article shows how the resultant cooperation between guide dogs and their owners placed the human–animal bond on a new footing. It evaluates the significance of guide dogs both within the narrow context of ‘prosthesis production’ and the wider context of the rehabilitation system adopted by the Weimar Republic. It also seeks to contribute to the history of animals by emphasizing the significance of the war as an interspecies moment. Within this context, this article demonstrates how the partnership of mutual trust forged between guide dogs and their human companions had its roots in wartime, when soldiers often came to regard animals almost as an extension of themselves. This article reveals that guide dogs performed a variety of roles. On a mundane level, they fulfilled an economic function, reducing the burden on paid attendants, spouses and friends, and enabling their masters to get to their workplaces independently. They were mobility aids – living prostheses – who effectively replaced the eyes of blinded soldiers, albeit figuratively. They also provided companionship and emotional support in a way that was reminiscent of the comfort nurses gave injured soldiers during the war. Significantly, the social, economic and emotional impact of guide dogs went far beyond the partnership they forged with their owners; it affected those in their immediate environment and society as a whole. The common experience of guide dog ownership led to the development of a distinct identity and ‘emotional community’ among blind ex-soldiers, as well as boosting their self-confidence, which in turn inspired them to assert their rights and negotiate their citizenship in new ways. Even more remarkable is the broader significance of the German experiment, which acted as a catalyst for the successful employment of guide dogs on a global scale, enabling thousands of blind people – the majority of whom were civilians – to benefit from the scheme.

Key Words: guide dogs, blind, veterans, independence, rehabilitation, mobility, Germany