Leonard Mayall – a war time tragedy
By
Colin Mayall
I never met my grandfather Lewis Mayall. He died months after I was born . He was one of
eight children born to Edward
Mayall and Sarah Chadwick . t
There were four boys and four girls. The boys all served in
the Army and fought in the First World War. This story is a bout Leonard born
in Rastrick West Riding of Yorkshire on the 27
June 1888 . Rastrick was a
small town famed for its
brass band shared with neighbouring Brighouse . There were
some six mills in the town and in
the 1901 Census we find out just
how important to the economy they were .
Edward Mayall my great grandfather aged 55 was working as a woollen card cleaner, Sarah
his wife aged 49 is not listed as working and with a
big family was in probability
looking after the house . Mary the
oldest daughter was 17 and listed as a cloth inker , her sister Lily aged 16 as a silk spinster and then Leonard , the oldest
boy at
home was a woollen piecer . Their
house was situated at 7 New Hey Road near Round Hill , home of Rastrick Cricket
Club and was comparatively rural .
It is probable that an army life offered much more prospects
for a young lad . His brother Lewis had joined the 17th Lancers and moved with them to South Africa where they
participated in the Boer War. Brother Jack had joined the Duke of Wellington’s – the West Riding
Regiment and Leonard too signed up – to
the 4th West Yorkshire Corps .
The Certificate of Attestation was dated 29thMay 1906 and he was only 17 years old.
Some four years later he had transferred to the 1st Battalion the
Northumberland Fusiliers and was on his way to India . The Regiment were based were
based at West Ridge Rawalpindi. In 1914 as war loomed the Regiment were based
at Portsmouth and when War eventually broke out It was assigned to the 9th Brigade, 3rd
Infantry Division and remained with it throughout the war. It landed at Le
Havre on 14 August 1914 and remained on the Western Front until the Armistice
with Germany. It fought in the following major battles:
MAYALL Family c 1900
Back Row: John ( Jack ) Mayall Eliza Mayall Mary Alice Mayall
Lewis Mayall
Middle Row : Sarah Chadwick
Leonard Mayall Edward Mayall
Front Row : Louisa Mayall
Brook William Mayall
The
Mayall Family outside New Hey Road Rastrick c 1900
Battle of Mons
First Battle of the Aisne
First Battle of Ypres
Battle of the Somme (1916)
Battle of Arras (1917)
Third Battle of Ypres
First Battle of the Somme (1918)
Battle of the Lys (1918)
Second Battle of the Somme (1918)
Battles of the Hindenburg Line
The Northumberland Fusiliers earned 67 battle honours and was
awarded five Victoria Crosses, but at the cost of over 16,000 soldiers killed
in action, and many thousands wounded. The Northumberland Fusiliers mostly saw
action in the main theatre of war, engaged in static trench warfare on the
Western Front in Belgium and France, but also participated in fighting on the
Macedonian front, the Gallipoli Campaign, the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and
the Italian Front.
When Leonard first contracted “ shell shock “ or “ sickness “
I could
not ascertain but am of the opinion it
was during one of the early battles in 1915. . I do know that his
service record tells us that he was discharged on the
4 August1917. He had been awarded the Victory Medal. The British Medal
and Star Medal as well as being
promoted to Lance Corporal . He had been
transferred to the 3rd Battalion. The 3rd Battalion were
a special
reserve battalion who were based at Newcastle
at the outbreak of War and moved
to East Boldon ( near Sunderland ) where it remained throughout the War as
part of the Tyne Garrison . This fact enhances the probability that he was
retained in the Regiment
after suffering the shell shock
but was transferred from France/ Belgium
back to the UK . He
was also
attached to the Manchester
Regiment for a short period but no
details can be found
 |
After his discharge Leonard became a resident at Storthes Hall
Mental Hospital in Huddersfield . It had
been built and operated for many year as the West Riding Pauper and
Lunatic Asylum before changing the
name to something not quite so shameful .He had married a local lass in 1919 but there did not appear to have been any
children . He obtained a job doing
manual work in a local mill .His wife
lived in Bradford as a kitchen maid in a
hotel. Leonard died in October 1939 in Storthes.
Having researched Leonard’s
sad War experience and having spent the
last 22 years of his life in a mental hospital, I wanted to find out
more about the circumstances and
how extensive it was amongst the British Forces.
Following is
from the Study aforementioned
By the end of World War One , the British Army had dealt with 80 000 cases of shell shock ,
including Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred
Owen . Professor Joanna Bourke of
Birbeck ,University of London researched how the Army tackled the extreme trauma this in some detail and I highlight the various sections which I consider pertinent to our study of Leonard Mayall .
Battlefield
breaking points[41]
On 7 July 1916, Arthur Hubbard painfully set pen to paper in
an attempt to explain to his mother why he was no longer in France. He had been
taken from the battlefields and deposited in the East Suffolk and Ipswich
Hospital suffering from 'shell shock'. In his words, his breakdown was related
to witnessing 'a terrible sight that I shall never forget as long as I live'.
He told his mother:
'We had strict orders not to take prisoners, no matter if
wounded my first job was when I had finished cutting some of their wire away,
to empty my magazine on 3 Germans that came out of one of their deep dugouts.
bleeding badly, and put them out of misery. They cried for mercy, but I had my
orders, they had no feeling whatever for us poor chaps... it makes my head jump
to think about it.' [Punctuation and syntax as originally written]
He was buried, dug himself out, and during the subsequent
retreat was almost killed by machine gun fire.
Hubbard had 'gone over the top' at the Battle of the Somme.
While he managed to fight as far as the fourth line of trenches, by 3.30pm
practically his whole battalion had been wiped out by German artillery. He was
buried, dug himself out, and during the subsequent retreat was almost killed by
machine gun fire. Within this landscape of horror, he collapsed.
Medical symptoms
Aerial Photo of a World War One battlefield Aerial shot of a
battlefield on the Western Front .Arthur
Hubbard was one of millions of men who suffered psychological trauma as a
result of their war experiences. Symptoms ranged from uncontrollable diarrhoea
to unrelenting anxiety. Soldiers who had bayoneted men in the face developed
hysterical tics of their own facial muscles. Stomach cramps seized men who
knifed their foes in the abdomen. Snipers lost their sight. Terrifying
nightmares of being unable to withdraw bayonets from the enemies' bodies
persisted long after the slaughter.
The dreams might occur 'right in the middle of an ordinary
conversation' when 'the face of a Boche that I have bayoneted, with its
horrible gurgle and grimace, comes sharply into view', an infantry captain
complained. An inability to eat or sleep after the slaughter was common.
Nightmares did not always occur during the war. World War
One soldiers like Rowland Luther did not suffer until after
the armistice when (he admitted) he 'cracked up' and found himself unable to
eat, deliriously re-living his experiences of combat.
...everyone had a 'breaking point': weak or strong, courageous
or cowardly - war frightened everyone witless...
These were not exceptional cases. It was clear to everyone
that large numbers of combatants could not cope with the strain of warfare. By
the end of World War One, the army had dealt with 80,000 cases of 'shell
shock'. As early as 1917, it was recognised that war neuroses accounted for
one-seventh of all personnel discharged for disabilities from the British Army.
Once wounds were excluded, emotional disorders were responsible for one-third
of all discharges. Even more worrying was the fact that a higher proportion of
officers were suffering in this way. According to one survey published in 1917,
while the ratio of officers to men at the front was 1:30, among patients in
hospitals specialising in war neuroses, the ratio of officers to men was 1:6.
What medical officers quickly realised was that everyone had a 'breaking
point': weak or strong, courageous or cowardly - war frightened everyone witless.
Defining trauma
Photo of a shell shocked victim undergoing a medical
examinationA medical officer examining a recruit More difficult, however, was understanding
what caused some panic-stricken men to suffer extremes of trauma. In the early
years of World War One, shell shock was believed to be the result of a physical
injury to the nerves. In other words, shell shock was the result of being
buried alive or exposed to heavy bombardment. The term itself had been coined,
in 1917, by a medical officer called Charles Myers. But Myers rapidly became
unhappy with the term, recognising that many men suffered the symptoms of shell
shock without having even been in the front lines. As a consequence, medical
officers increasingly began emphasising psychological factors as providing
sufficient cause for breakdown. As the president of the British Psycho-Analytic
Association, Ernest Jones, explained: war constituted 'an official abrogation
of civilised standards' in which men were not only allowed, but encouraged:
'...to indulge in behaviour of a kind that is throughout
abhorrent to the civilised mind.... All sorts of previously forbidden and
hidden impulses, cruel, sadistic, murderous and so on, are stirred to greater
activity, and the old intrapsychical conflicts which, according to Freud, are
the essential cause of all neurotic disorders, and which had been dealt with
before by means of 'repression' of one side of the conflict are now reinforced,
and the person is compelled to deal with them afresh under totally different
circumstances.'
...a soldier who suffered a neurosis had not lost his reason
but was labouring under the weight of too much reason...
Consequently, the 'return to the mental attitude of civilian
life' could spark off severe psychological trauma. The authors of one of the
standard books on shell shock went so far as to point out that a soldier who
suffered a neurosis had not lost his reason but was labouring under the weight
of too much reason: his senses were 'functioning with painful efficiency'.
Possible Cures
Photo of a shell shocked veteran : Four-fifths of shell shock
cases were never able to return to military duty ©Nevertheless, how were these men to be cured
of their painful afflictions? From the start, the purpose of treatment was to
restore the maximum number of men to duty as quickly as possible. During World
War One, four-fifths of men who had entered hospital suffering shell shock were
never able to return to military duty: it was imperative that such high levels
of 'permanent ineffectives' were reduced. However, the shift from regarding
breakdown as 'organic' (that is, an injury to the nerves) to viewing it as
psychological had inevitable consequences in terms of treatment. If breakdown
was a 'paralysis of the nerves', then massage, rest, dietary regimes and
electric shock treatment were invoked. If a psychological source was indicated,
the 'talking cure', hypnosis, and rest would speed recovery. In all instances,
occupational training and the inculcation of 'masculinity' were highly recommended.
As the medical superintendent at one military hospital in York put it, although
the medical officer must show sympathy, the patient 'must be induced to face
his illness in a manly way'.
...their reputations as soldiers and men had been dealt a
severe blow.
Sympathy was only rarely forthcoming. Sufferers had no choice
but to acknowledge that their reputations as soldiers and men had been dealt a
severe blow. After a major bombardment or particularly bloody attack, if the
combatant had acquitted himself adequately, signs of emotional 'weakness' could
be overlooked, but in the midst of the fray, the attitude was much less
sympathetic. 'Go 'ide yerself, you bloody little coward!', cursed one Tommy at
a frightened soldier. When the shell shocked men returned home, things were not
much better. Men arriving at Netley Hospital (for servicemen suffering shell
shock) were greeted with silence: people were described as hanging their heads
in 'inexplicable shame'. No-one better described the mix of shame and anger experienced
by the war-damaged than the poet, Siegfried Sassoon. In October 1917, while he
was at Craiglockhart, one of the most famous hospitals for curing officers with
war neuroses, he wrote a poem, simply called 'Survivors':
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain / Have
caused their stammering, disconnected talk. / Of course they're 'longing to go
out again', - / These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. / They'll
soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed / Subjection to the ghosts of
friends who died, - / Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
/ Of glorious war that shatter'd their pride... / Men who went out to battle,
grim and glad; / Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
Books and articles
Shell Shock: A History of the Changing Attitudes to War
Neuroses by Anthony Babington (Leo Cooper, 1997)
From Shell Shock to Combat Stress by JMW Binneveld (Amsterdam
University Press, 1997)
War Neurosis and Cultural Change in England, 1914-22 by Ted
Bogacz (Journal of Contemporary History, volume 24, 1989)
Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War
by Joanna Bourke (Reaktion Books, 1996)
No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World War One by Eric J
Leed (Cambridge University Press, 1979)
Problems Returning Home: The British Psychological Casualties
of the Great War by Peter Leese (The Historical Journal, volume 40, 1997)
Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980 by
Elaine Showalter (Virago, 1987)
The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker (Viking, 1996 )
Links
Archive of primary documents from World War One Established
and maintained by the World War One Military History discussion group, the site
focuses on 1890-1920, discussing topics from military, diplomatic, social, and economic
issues to the arts.
The Great War The PBS site for 'The Great War and the Shaping
of the 20th Century' series goes beyond the military and political history of
World War One to explore its ongoing social, cultural and personal impact.
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The Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive
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