Researcher: Barclay A. J. Lane Supervised by: Christoph Mick Home department: History Expected start date: 01/07/2013 Expected end date: 31/08/2013
I am a mature Historical Studies Undergraduate at Warwick University with a particular interest in the effects of twentieth century war on nations, and in particular on British military personnel and civilians. During my life I have been a politician, an accountant, a music event promoter and DJ, and now a university student and employee. I was born in Belfast and have four children.
As our recent involvement in the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Libya and Mali shows, the United Kingdom remains committed to conflict as a method of resolving disputes. It is my belief that we are too willing to wage war without fully realising the consequences of doing so, and that more knowledge and understanding of war trauma will help us to seek alternatives to the horror, death and destruction that inevitably accompanies conflict.
The received wisdom with regard to the civilian population of the United Kingdom during the Second World War is that people maintained a stoical sang-froid in the face of German aggression, that they ‘stood firm in the face of the Hun’ exhibiting the epitome of the ‘Dunkirk spirit’, and that they were determined to ‘carry on’. Whilst there is some evidence to indicate that morale was indeed maintained, and that the British generally remained productive, there are cracks in the narrative of the time which give glimpses into psychological traumas. Nurses broke down, and had to be given short periods of leave. Family relatives had to live with friends in the countryside because of “their nerves”, and survivors of the war suffered from delayed onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) years later.
Thus, in the face of little or no study into the issue of emotional traumas during and after the war, it is the purpose of this project to examine a number of contemporary accounts of the Blitz on Coventry to ascertain whether the people of the city suffered psychological illness as a consequence of the bombing. It will use the advances in our understanding of PTSD over the last seventy years to tease out indicators which may have been missed previously. It is the hope of this researcher that the findings of the project will, in a very small way, help in further studies on the matter and that there will be an updated and revised perspective of WWII traumas at some time in the future.
