The wounded body
World War I caused unprecedented levels of destruction to human bodies, both physical and psychological. New military technology caused injuries that doctors had never had to deal with before on a scale that was simply without precedent. The stresses of this war of attrition (a war of "grinding down" in which victory resulted from wearing down the enemy through enormous loss of life and material) caused psychological trauma in large numbers of soldiers; doctors came up with names for new phenomena like shell shock that they had simply never seen before. While the intensity and scale of suffering was absolutely horrific, it did force doctors to make quick advancements in medicine. Blood banks were established and transfusions and the portable x-ray both emerged during the war, and important progress was made in improving survival after amputation, as well as advances in the fields of prosthetic and orthopedic surgery. Go to The Medical Front WWI website at http://www.vlib.us/medical/ for links to more excellent primary sources about these and other medical issues.
- Physical
- Amputation
Improved medical treatment on the field meant that doctors and nurses were able to save the lives of many soldiers who likely would have otherwise bled to death as a result of their wounds. On the other hand, the spread of infection, especially from shrapnel wounds from shellfire, often meant that injured limbs could not be saved. Consequently, after the war ended there were thousands of veteran amputees. Adjusting to post-war life for these men was often difficult, especially for members of the working class and the peasantry, who could no longer perform the same physical labor they had done before the war.
- Blindness
For those soldiers who survived a gas attack (which could cause death by asphyxiation), the result was often partial or complete blindness. Shrapnel and other wounds could also cause blindness. Thousands of soldiers left the battlefield having lost their sight, and there were few resources available to them. The few centers that existed to help soldiers suffering from blindness launched an awareness campaign following the war, publishing several posters that read "Blinded for you"; some examples can be seen in the second row.
- Disfigurement
Disfiguring injuries were an unfortunately commonplace occurrence during World War I. Determined to improve the quality of life of some veterans with such injuries, an American sculptor from Boston named Anna Coleman Ladd came to France in 1917. She established a studio in Paris where she made casts out of clay or plasticine of the disfigured men's faces, and then sculpted prosthetic masks for them from extremely thin galvanized copper, which were painted to match individual skin tone. The masks, which were attached via strings or eyeglasses to the patient's face, enabled wounded soldiers to hide particularly distressing facial injuries and attract less unwanted attention in public. Dozens of injured veterans were able to receive hand-crafted prosthetics from Ladd and her team. Sadly, the need for prosthetics exceeded the capacities of providers like Ladd and her atelier to furnish them and many veterans had to learn to adjust to life with dramatically disfiguring war injuries.
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The video on the left shows sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd fitting soldiers for masks in her studio in Paris. |
- Psychological
- Shell Shock
The intensity of the firepower and bombardment in World War I was unmatched by any previous conflict. Many soldiers who were subjected to the relentless artillery fire and bombings went into a state of shock that became known as shell shock. Soldiers affected by shell shock suffered from various symptoms, but the most common were sleeplessness (insomnia), panic attacks, an inability to see, talk or walk, a lack of emotional and/or physical self-control, and sexual dysfunction. At the beginning of the war, victims of shell shock were usually removed from the front line until "cured," but by the end of the war, they were often forced to remain in their units.
The British film Regeneration (1997) directed by Gillies Mackinnon and based on a trilogy of novels by Pat Barker (the Regeneration Trilogy), tells the story of British combatants in World War I who were sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh (Scotland) for psychological care. See the film section under "Culture" for more information on this film, which will be screened as part of our class.
The British film Regeneration (1997) directed by Gillies Mackinnon and based on a trilogy of novels by Pat Barker (the Regeneration Trilogy), tells the story of British combatants in World War I who were sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh (Scotland) for psychological care. See the film section under "Culture" for more information on this film, which will be screened as part of our class.
The Raced Body
As mentioned in the "Global War" section (under the "Military and Politics" header), European armies recruited troops from throughout their colonies. When the U.S. joined the war in 1917, many African-Americans also enlisted; about 13% of the active duty American troops who came to Europe were African-Americans. The bravery, courage and exemplary service of many of these troops was not enough to quell racist sentiments: soldiers of color fought in segregated units, which were often given particularly dangerous missions, and they faced harassment from many white soldiers and civilians. Such racist sentiments were also directed against soldiers of color from the colonies. For example, the text in the German language poster on the bottom right-hand corner readers "The German women's protest against the colored occupation of the Rhine"; essentially, this poster is one example of the general hostility many civilians had towards having soldiers from the colonies in their home countries. While this hostility undoubtedly made life difficult for soldiers of color, many channeled their frustrations and anger into liberation movements and later gave rise to battles for decolonization. Protests against colonial rule emerged across the world, as veterans and others refused to accept subject status after having come to Europe's aid. In the U.S., African American veterans challenged entrenched structures of white supremacy.
* Click here to see to see pastel portraits of World War I soldiers from different ethnic and national backgrounds, designated as "Military Types," by Swiss artist Eugène Burnand.
* Click here to see to see pastel portraits of World War I soldiers from different ethnic and national backgrounds, designated as "Military Types," by Swiss artist Eugène Burnand.
The Sexual Body
- World War I and Sexual Pleasure and Abuse
The Great War created numerous opportunities for both sexual pleasure and abuse. Civilians and soldiers found that traditional boundaries of color, sexual orientation, nationality, and class could be transgressed far more easily than in peacetime. Prostitution flourished because sexual liaisons could be economically profitable for destitute women. Organized prostitution was often promoted by the military since sexual prowess was considered central to robust masculinity. Single women and women whose husbands or partners had either perished on the front or were far from home also sometimes slept with the enemy in order to obtain material benefits or political protection. Homosocial spaces both on the home front and the battlefront where one gender dominated were commonplace. Such spaces frequently gave rise to close emotional and sometimes sexual relationships between individuals of the same gender. Although sex between men was technically illegal in most combatant countries (France was a notable exception, since French sodomy laws were repealed at the time of the French Revolution), there is abundant evidence that male and female homosexual relationships existed in both military and civilian environments. Lesbian relationships flourished among women in the ambulance corps, and amongst nurses on the front, as did gay male relationships between men serving in all levels of the military. While homosexuality in both men and women was officially discouraged (and often punished), close emotional and sexual bonds between individuals were sometimes tolerated in what we might classify as early examples of "don't ask, don't tell." On the darker side, rape, sexual torture and abuse all too frequently accompanied military occupation and victory. We can find numerous depictions of such vile behavior in propaganda posters from both sides of the conflict.
- Venereal Disease and Prostitution
Although the subject was considered taboo, prostitution, as noted above, was quite common during World War I. Soldiers from all armies frequented brothels (which were easy to find near the front), and the French Army even maintained its own brothels for troops to use. The popularity of such brothels created a moral panic among civilians and military alike who blamed prostitutes for spreading venereal diseases and weakening the vitality of the troops. Although male soldiers were just as apt to carry disease as female prostitutes, posters like the two in the row below placed the blame squarely on the women.
- Gender Roles and War
The Gendered Body
- Homosocial Space
As soldiers during World War I were almost exclusively male (with notable exceptions such as the Woman's Battalion of Death in Russia), with whole battalions formed of "pals" who had all attended the same public schools and came from the same towns and villages, the front became a unique site of male bonding. Scholars today study the impact of this homosocial space which was characterized by the presence of a single gender in which intense friendships between members of the same gender were actively encouraged and promoted on the development of twentieth century gender relations writ large. As discussed above, although officially discouraged, homosocial spaces provided fertile ground for sexual experimentation. Many scholars also argue that the intensity of the friendships formed in these homosocial spaces served to reshape ideas of what ideal masculinity was or could be; intimate friendships between males and profound grief at a comrade's death ran counter to Victorian proscriptions that relegated emotions to a world of "female love and ritual." Intense friendships between men often persisted after the war ended and became one of the most common literary tropes in the postwar years. Ernest Hemingway's works, for example, frequently examine the ways in which wartime friendships between men changed and adapted in the post-war decades.
- Class and Effeminacy
During the war the persistence of class hierarchies meant that some men had to perform tasks that were traditionally considered to be women's work. These men were known as "batmen." A batman was a soldier assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant. Batman performed numerous services for their masters: they would clean uniforms and shoes, prepare tea and meals, do laundry, sweep out and clean quarters, drive the officer to and from assignments, and generally serve as an assistant and bodyguard. Before the advent of motorized transport, an officer's batman was also in charge of the officer's "bat-horse," the horse who carried the pack saddle with his officer's kit during a campaign. The term is derived from the obsolete bat, meaning "pack-saddle" (from French bât, from Old French bast, from Late Latin bastum), and man. The official term used by the British Army in the First World War was Soldier-Servant. Every officer was assigned a servant, usually chosen by himself from among his men. The image to the left shows the cooks and KP men from the 137th Spruce Squadron.
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Not all civilians supported the war. Some objected to fighting for religious reasons, others were political or moral pacifists. Many of these registered with their governments as conscientious objectors or "C.O.'s". During the Great War, the conscientious objector (C.O.) was a frequent subject of ridicule and derision on picture postcards. Each C.O. pleaded his case before a tribunal comprised of people who saw it as their duty to gain as many recruits for the army as possible and openly hated and despised those whose conscience would not allow them to kill on political, religious or moral grounds. However, many of the man who objected to serving in the army did agree to serve in non-combatant roles, as ambulance drivers, stretcher bearers and army chaplains (priests). Their work often took them near the front lines and they often received recognition for acts of courage. Nevertheless, conscientious objectors were sometimes despised by a public who felt that they were shirking their duty (giving rise to the famous "White Feather Campaign" in Britain, where women present a white feather for cowardice to men seen in public out of uniform) and were ridiculed in the media for their "weak and cowardly" behavior.
- Female Masculinity
While many war posters relied on the idea that women required protection from a brutish, evil enemy, World War I was also a time in which women entered the factories and the industrial workforce in unprecedented numbers. Whereas much industrial work had previously been seen as male work (with certain exceptions as within the garment trade, where women had been employed in increasing numbers throughout the nineteenth century), the mass exodus of men to the front meant that factories (especially those that made weapons and munitions) had to hire women to keep up with demand. Weapons factories that previously were exclusively male now had predominantly female employees. Such working women helped to cultivate new ideas about female strength and masculinity, and helped to spread the belief that women could easily assume men's roles. Although women proved to be remarkably effective workers, producing at high demand despite being paid far less than their male counterparts, they were fired en masse at the end of the war when returning male soldiers wanted their jobs back. Although many women never rejoined the work force, for some the chance to work and become economically self-sufficient was enough to motivate them not only to fight against gender segregation in the work force, but also for political power and civil and economic equality. When women were granted the vote in Great Britain and the USA in the aftermath of the Great War, it was in part on the strength of the arguments that they made regarding their wartime contributions to national victory.
Further Research
* Short documentary on the Harlem Hellfighters, an African-American infantry unit in WWI who spent more time in combat than any other American unit, made by the History channel.
* See the website The Medical Front WWI at http://www.vlib.us/medical/ for links to primary documents about medical advances during the First World War.
* For an interesting film on women's fight for the vote in the USA, both before and after the war, see the HBO film, "Iron-Jawed Angels," http://iron-jawed-angels.com/.
* See the website The Medical Front WWI at http://www.vlib.us/medical/ for links to primary documents about medical advances during the First World War.
* For an interesting film on women's fight for the vote in the USA, both before and after the war, see the HBO film, "Iron-Jawed Angels," http://iron-jawed-angels.com/.