BREAKDOWN
Little, Brown,
April 2016
Paralysis. Stuttering. The 'shakes'. Inability to stand or walk.
Temporary blindness or deafness.
When strange
symptoms like these began appearing in men at Casualty Clearing
Stations in 1915, a debate began in army and medical circles as to
what it was, what had caused it and what could be done to cure
it.
Then in July 1916 with the start of the Somme battle the incidence of shell shock rocketed. The high command of the British army began to panic. An increasingly large number of men seemed to have simply lost the will to fight. As entire battalions had to be withdrawn from the front, commanders and military doctors desperately tried to come up with explanations as to what was going wrong. 'Shell shock' - what we would now refer to as battle trauma - was sweeping the Western Front.
Re-assessing the official casualty figures, Taylor Downing for the first time comes up with an accurate estimate of the total numbers who were taken out of action by psychological wounds. It is a shocking figure.
Taylor Downing's revelatory new
book follows units and individuals from signing up to the Pals
Battalions of 1914, through to the horrors of their experiences on
the Somme which led to the shell shock that left the men unable to
continue fighting. He shines a light on the official - and brutal -
response to the epidemic, even against those officers and doctors
who looked on it sympathetically. It was, they believed, a form of
hysteria. It was contagious. And it had to be stopped.
Breakdown brings an entirely new perspective to bear on
one of the iconic battles of the First World War.
Extracts from several excellent reviews of Breakdown:
The Times
called Breakdown 'an impressive, balanced and often deeply
moving book' and concluded: 'As the Somme's anniversary approaches,
anyone who wishes to understand it and its terrible consequences
sould buy Breakdown.'
(9 April
2016).
The New
Statesmen wrote of ‘Historian Taylor Downing’s superb account
of the military response to the epidemic of shell shock…Downing’s
book is a necessary reminder that trauma is an injury and not a
sign of weakness.’
(6 May
2016).
The Financial
Times wrote ‘Downing is too clever a historian to rehearse
clichés…What is innovative about Downing’s approach is the
interleaving of “the crisis of shell shock” with the military
history of the Somme. He tells both histories concisely and with
good balance.’ (25 June 2016)