New book to lift ‘silence’ on British Great War veterans’ trauma
Funded by the National Army Museum, Dr Michael Robinson will reveal the First World War’s lasting mental impact on British veterans, like his great-grandfather.
Image: IWM (E(AUS) 939)
With Armed Forces Day approaching this weekend, people around the UK will be celebrating and supporting service personnel, veterans and their families. But since the last person who served in the First World War died in 2012, celebrating and remembering those veterans and their experiences now relies increasingly on historical research to uncover.
It’s why the National Army Museum has awarded £200k to Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Dr Michael Robinson, at the School of History and Cultures, to write a book analysing the treatment and experiences of working-class and middle-aged First World War veterans during the Great Depression. The book will focus on men who suffered from emotional and psychological wounds arising in the longer term, years after their demobilisation.
“Like many people in Britain, my family has a direct connection with the First World War,” says Dr Robinson. “My paternal great-grandfather served on the Western Front for four years. Yet, on returning home, he apparently told his family members very little about his war experiences. The subsequent lack of historical research on the long-term experiences of British Great War veterans continues this supposed silence.
“Thanks to the generous post-doctoral funding of the National Army Museum, I aim to rectify this narrative. My upcoming book will reveal the First World War’s continued influence on the lives of men like my great-grandfather. As middle-aged men, veterans clearly and passionately articulated the war’s long-term impact on their sense of identity and psychological health.”
This upcoming study builds upon research that Dr Robinson has previously published on disabled Great War veterans. This includes his monograph, Shell-Shocked British Army Veterans in Ireland, 1918-39: A Difficult Homecoming, published as part of Manchester University Press’s ‘Disability History’ series. He has also published related articles in War in History, Social History of Medicine and the Journal for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.