Healing the Nation: Soldiers and the Culture of Caregiving in Britain during the Great War (review)

Jeffrey Reznick's fascinating history of caregiving during the First World War, Healing the Nation, examines the experience of wounded soldiers at "rest huts" behind the lines and at military hospitals and convalescent facilities back in England. Given the extraordinary casualty rate of the Great War, Reznick argues that soldiers were united as much by a "comradeship of healing" as by the better documented comradeship of the trenches. Providing care for wounded soldiers, many Britons hoped, would also enable civilians to participate in the war effort and contribute to a general healing of the nation.

At the most basic level, "rest huts" run by voluntary aid agencies such as the YMCA, the Salvation Army, and the Church Army attempted to bring a "touch of home" to battle-worn soldiers overseas. With comfortable chairs, pianos, gramophones, and novels, these huts reflected domestic rather than military ideals. Authorities also hoped that these facilities would provide a wholesome alternative to the bars and brothels of nearby French towns.

Reznick then moves on to detailed case studies of two military hospitals—the First Eastern General Hospital in Cambridge and the King George Hospital in London. These were both vast, factory-like institutions, where the need for efficiency and economy created an atmosphere that was stark, uncomfortable, and highly regimented. For example, the much touted "roof garden" at the King George was in reality, and in the words of a contemporary, "just a dismal stretch of concrete bounded by iron railings" (54). With a ratio of one nurse for every sixteen beds, these hospitals provided a vivid contrast to facilities for officers, which were usually in refitted private homes and where the ratio was one nurse for every four beds.

An important theme of Reznick's book is the contrast between the military's need for efficiency and soldiers' desire for comfort and rest. To this end, the author compares a great deal of official propaganda, which emphasized the positive experience of recovery, to soldiers' accounts, which underscored the discipline and monotony of hospital life. In this regard, Reznick makes especially good use of material from hospital magazines. Like the more familiar trench newspapers, hospital magazines were also compiled and published by soldiers themselves and contained an often humorous mixture of prose, poetry, and cartoons. Although subject to censorship, soldier publications were given wide latitude to satirize military life (the bad food, constant drill, and overbearing discipline), as authorities recognized the value of the magazines in forging unit cohesion and in letting soldiers blow off steam.

Hospital magazines especially delighted in satirizing the routine and efficiency of the medical establishment, which for many soldiers represented a continuation of military discipline. For example, a number of cartoons by soldier patients depicted monstrous machines that dole out "fresh air" in minutely calibrated doses or bathe and disinfect patients on conveyer belts. Another frequent object of hospital magazine humor was the "lady visitor," a middle-class woman who annoys patients with her patronizing airs and impertinent questions about their injuries.

Reznick's concluding chapters detail occupational therapy routines at military hospitals as well as attempts to retrain severely wounded soldiers for a return to civilian life. Recuperating soldiers were often employed in hospital workshops where they made splints and crutches for other soldier patients. This production saved the War Department a great deal of money, though it was invariably justified as a necessary therapy for the men. Soldiers themselves almost always resented the work, which they viewed as exploiting their situation and interfering with well-earned rest. That some of the occupational facilities were located in former workhouses only added to the indignity of the experience. Soldiers also feared that the government might use token efforts at retraining to reduce their military pensions, a fear that proved justified during the postwar austerity of the Depression.

Overall, the book is a model of careful argumentation and...