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Updated: May 26, 2025
No, I am not badly wounded nor seriously ill. Neither am I suffering from shell-shock, nor even from cold feet. A Blighty injury of the cushiest is the spring actuating this Jack-in-the-Box appearance. Have patience. To-day's inactivity has bred a pleasant boredom, which I shall work off by writing you a history of the reasons why I am back from the big war.
'But, of course, she believes he is a prisoner. 'My dear Hester, if he were, we should certainly have heard! Enquiries are now much more thorough, and the results much more accurate, than they were a year ago. 'Loss of memory? shell-shock? said Hester vaguely. 'They don't do away with your disk, and your regimental marks, etc.
I have described what happened on our side of the lines, our fearful losses, the stream of wounded that came back day by day, the "Butchers' Shops," the agony in men's souls, the shell-shock cases, the welter and bewilderment of battle, the shelling of our own troops, the lack of communication between fighting units and the command, the filth and stench of the hideous shambles which were our battlefields.
The tiles collapsed like cards, and all the bridal party was killed as by a lightning stroke. Only the soldier-priest was spared. Strangely, he was not even touched. But horror had driven him mad. Since then he spoke only to rave of Liane and Jean; how beautiful they had looked, lying dead before the wrecked altar. "The doctors say it is like a case of shell-shock," the Captain finished.
Men became jibbering idiots with shell-shock, as I saw some of them, but others rejoiced when they saw our shells plowing into the enemy's earthworks, laughed at their own narrow escapes and at grotesque comicalities of this monstrous deviltry. The officers were proud of their men, eager for their honor and achievement.
There were generals who said: "There is no such thing as shell-shock. It is cowardice. I would court-martial in every case." Doctors said: "It is difficult to draw the line between shell-shock and blue funk. Both are physical as well as mental.
You served in France with Canadian troops and there, you will be proud to know, you won among other honors the highest honor that the Government of England can award a hero. There you were shell-shocked, in the last months of the war. "You did not return to your home. Shell-shock, Forest tells me, is a curious thing, resulting in many forms of mania. Yours led you into crime.
When Sir Henry Durwood questioned him he was careful to conceal the fact that he had been a victim of shell-shock. As a matter of fact, Penreath's behaviour in the breakfast room that morning was nothing more than the effects of the air raid on his disordered nerves, but he would sooner have died than admit that to strangers.
Supposing the Germans had got on to them, and trotted them out first, and one of our own guns had potted him or me, that would have been a jolly sell. What makes you ask after Timmy? I hardly like to tell you the awful thing that's happened to him. He had to travel down to the base hospital on a poor chap who was shivering with shell-shock, and he never came back again.
A subway employee or a traffic policeman in New York ought never to suffer from shell-shock if he goes to war. The account of personal risk which in other wars might make a magazine article or a book chapter, once you sat down to write it, melted away as your ego was reduced to its proper place in cosmos. Individuals had never been so obscurely atomic.
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