British Servicemen Research Articles

“Little Goodies in His Kit Bag”: British Servicemen, Masculinity, and Feeding the Home Front in World War II

ABSTRACT In World War II, the British government called on all able-bodied men to join the forces and defend the country, enabling them to fulfill the role of ideal male in wartime. These men also performed masculinity by provisioning families with gifts of food from their service abroad. Such food added to the overall caloric levels of a population on rations, offered a material form of comfort, and sustained connections between the military and home fronts. This article utilizes written memoirs from the BBC’s WW2 People’s War website to examine people’s memories of servicemen’s work with food. These remembrances illuminate the diverse ways in which men, serving in all branches of the forces (Army, RAF, Navy, and Merchant Navy), helped to support the nutrition and well-being (physical and emotional) of British families. Through the lens of food, this article offers a complex and multifaceted view of wartime masculinity.

British Army and Palestine Police Deserters and the Arab–Israeli War of 1948

British servicemen and policemen who had been stationed in Palestine towards the end of the British Mandate and deserted their units to serve with either Jewish or Arab forces have only received cursory academic attention. This article retraces their story, while drawing parallels and highlighting contrasts between both groups of deserters. It analyses their motivations, wartime roles, and experiences and how they were remembered after the war ended. It also places them within the emerging literature on transnational military service.

The Prickly Thorn: A Re-evaluation of Orde Wingate and the Special Night Squads

Orde Wingate’s Special Night Squads played a key role in defeating the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939. Wingate’s Night Squads were distinctive in their approach to counter-insurgency warfare; in addition to bringing Arab insurgents to battle, the Night Squads proved their mettle by ‘flying the flag’ and by improving cooperation between Jewish settlers and British servicemen. Nevertheless, the Night Squad’s accomplishments and legacy must be properly situated within the broader wave of tactical innovations undertaken by the British Army throughout the Rebellion.

Putting the moral into morale: YMCA cinemas on the Western Front, 1914–1918

This article will focus on the wartime cinema facilities provided by the philanthropic association the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the YMCA turned its attention to supporting troops fighting for Britain and her Empire. YMCA huts were built to provide soldiers with food and a place to rest on the frontline, or at home in military camps and railway stations. Alongside the arrangements for entertainments made by the Army at Divisional level, the YMCA had a central role in providing morale-boosting entertainment and moral-strengthening education to British soldiers. Films became a central mode of entertainment for British servicemen serving on the Western Front and the Mediterranean. Cinema shows were the most popular part of the concert party programme, with many cinema halls also acting as theatres. The YMCA had 77 cinema plants, the majority of which were portable units providing free showings to men in forward positions. There were 20 specially constructed cinema theatres in principal Base Camps, each with a capacity of up to 1500 men, and towards the end of the war, the organisation estimated that it had shown films to 35,000 men for every night of the conflict. This article will show how valuable the medium of film became to the British Army in terms of morale and discipline. An effective ‘counter-attraction’ to less wholesome forms of recreation, the cinema was an essential element of wartime life for British troops serving in the First World War.

A Fate Worse Than Death? Lamenting First World War Captivity

This article explores grief regarding British servicemen captured by the Germans during the First World War. It examines prisoner of war (POW) mortality and analyses how death in captivity was privately mourned and publically represented. This study reveals that fallen POWs were subsumed as part of the homogenized war dead, facilitating their conceptualization within a wartime narrative that valorized their sacrifice. However, for POWs who did not die (and for their families), cultural discourses about capture ascribed meanings which resulted in their fate being both lamented and being seen as lamentable. The post-war results were a silencing of POW experiences within the collective memory and history of the war: dead POWs were obscured, indistinct among the fallen; returning POWs largely chose to remain silent and, in any case, the post-war lionization of the battlefield dead denied them a language to vocalize and memorialize their distinct wartime experiences.

The Experience of Spirituality and Disability Sport for British Military Personnel Traumatically Injured in Iraq and Afghanistan: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

The aim of this article is to explore the spiritual experience of disability—sport—rehabilitation for British Service men and women who have sustained traumatic injuries as a consequence of combative warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. At present, Great Britain's military-based initiative, called Battle Back uses disability sport as an integral part of its rehabilitation processes. However, there is a paucity of literature documenting the impact of disability sport, specifically around the spiritual experience of disability–sport–rehabilitation. The article draws upon data gathered from 11 semi-structured interviews with British Service personnel (nine male and two female), the transcripts of which were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Three overarching themes emerged from interview discussion: (a) understandings of spirituality, (b) how disability sport helped to bring back life meaning and purpose, and (c) how the relationship between disability sport and spirituality might be framed in terms of goal striving and goal attainment. Findings indicate how participants used disability sport to re-enter their social worlds and how, as a consequence, they found renewed purpose and meaning in life.

Lessons from the history of brucellosis

The disease we now know as brucellosis was first discovered in the 1850s in Malta. It came to the attention of British medical officers serving on the island after the Crimean War. It was easy to eliminate the disease in British servicemen, but very difficult to reach Maltese citizens. Over the decades, more and more Maltese were infected asthe control measures introduced were half-hearted and were often not even enforced. The work of Dr Themistocles Zammit showed that infected goats transmitted brucellosis and that banning use of their milk would be effective. Pasteurisation was not introduced onto the island until the 1930s, when the production of cheap, small sterile containers became possible. Transmission was also possible through sexual contact and by inhalation when people were crowded in hot airless conditions. Success in controlling the disease requires sensible, strict control of animals and the elimination of infected ones, but will fail without an educated public willing to help. In Malta, failure to control rogue flocks and small flocks kept for family use led to an epidemic caused by the sale of cheeselets (small cheeses). In 2005, nearly a century after Zammit's discovery, Malta was finally free of brucellosis.

Military Migrants: British Service Personnel in Ceylon during the Second World War

Across the territories that comprised the British Empire, the Second World War caused many migrations, some great and some small, but all traumatic and formative for the people involved. Civilians, both local and expatriate, fled in great numbers from the threat of German or Japanese invasion; in some colonies civilians were evacuated from cities threatened by bombing or deemed militarily important; hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women moved around the world and spend significant periods of time in foreign lands – African troops resided in Asia, Indians in the East Indies and Middle East, and British servicemen and women found themselves billeted all over the Empire. Also, forming a fascinating subcategory, were the many thousands of American service personnel who served in British colonial territories. After reviewing the phenomenon of migration within the British Empire during the war, this article focuses on a case study – the experience of British (and some Australian) service personnel based in Ceylon for a range of military purposes, including office work, jungle training, and naval operations. It examines the methods used to acclimatize young service personnel, often going abroad for the first time in their lives, to the strangeness of a foreign, ‘exotic’ land. It describes the impressions the people and environment left on these wartime immigrants, before considering the recreational provisions made for them, and the sexual opportunities that sometimes arose. The article concludes that the experience of these European migrants deserves study as much as the experience of non-European servicemen and women, which has received significant attention in the scholarly literature relating to the Empire at war.

Dental anxiety levels in British servicemen and women.

The objectives of the study were to determine: 1, the level of dental anxiety in British Service personnel; 2 whether there was a difference in dental anxiety levels across the three Services; and, 3, the relationship between number of operational tours and level of dental anxiety. Cross sectional questionnaire survey of individuals attending 3 Armed Services dental treatment centres in the UK. The questionnaires were completed between February 2008 and April 2009. 50 patients each from the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, selected consecutively from those attending the centres for treatment. There was a 100% response rate. Dental fear as assessed by the Dental Fear Survey (DFS) and scores on a scale of fear of dental injections. 27% of the Armed Services experienced severe dental anxiety: a level similar to that found in the general population. There was no difference in the level of dental anxiety or fear of dental injections across the three Armed Services. There was no relationship between number of operational tours undertaken and level of dental anxiety. Dental anxiety is found amongst members of the British Armed Services at levels similar to that in the general population. This represents a challenge for service provision, particularly in operational settings.

A Weak Spot in the Personality? Conceptualising “War Neurosis” in British Medical Literature of the Second World War

Through an analysis of leading British medical journals during the Second World War, this article argues that psychiatric understandings of the “war neurosis” suffered by British servicemen during that conflict were predicated on a notion of the “neurotic serviceman” as an objective personality type predisposed to break down during the strain of wartime. By discounting the effects of traumatic war experiences in favour of an aetiology that located the genesis of psychiatric disorder within the inherently unstable individual, such an approach minimized the influence of the martial environment in favour of heredity and the events of early childhood as the ultimate arbiters of mental stability in service personnel.

“Civilians in Uniform”: Class and Politics in the British Armed Forces, 1939–1945

AbstractThe essay examines the British army's transformation from a small professional force into a mass conscript army between 1939 and 1945. Battlefield defeats and criticism of the nation's conduct of the war acted as a stimulus to reform in the early years. Examining such areas as officer selection, discipline, and the expansion of army education services (ABCA), the essay shows how the military adapted to the recruitment of millions of “civilians in uniform” and in some instances worked to contain or resist change. Special attention is given to class conflicts that arose between officers and “other ranks” and situations where perceived indifference to recruits' basic rights provoked protests and strikes, including protests over slow demobilization in 1946. A final section analyzes the role of ABCA and the forces press in creating a space for political discussion; the radical views prevalent among British servicemen; and the contradictions between the official ban on political debate in the forces, the rhetoric of “a people's war,” and the troops' growing focus on postwar reconstruction and the General Election of 1945.

Sporting Journalism and the Maintenance of British Servicemen's Ties to Civilian Life in First World War Propaganda

The traditional interpretation of First World War servicemen as alienated and isolated from civilians has been increasing challenged in recent years. Scholars have shown that British soldiers maintained ties with civilian life, and that sport and leisure were important to the retention of such links. This article examines one aspect of the propaganda activities of the National War Aims Committee (NWAC). Though mainly a civilian propaganda organization, the NWAC also produced substantial content for a weekly newspaper for servicemen on leave, including the column ‘Sport and Play’. These articles, unusually, had no overt propaganda purpose – they featured little patriotic rhetoric, simply providing information about sporting results and highlights from the cinema, theatre and music-hall. However the columns constituted a more subtle propaganda, providing comforting images of constancy at home and reassuring servicemen that everyday life would remain the same when they returned to their civilian lives. The article suggests that the NWAC recognized and addressed the significance of sport and leisure and the maintenance of bonds with the civilian world for servicemen who had, in most cases, only temporarily left these peacetime preoccupations behind.

Poster Board Number: 83: Management of Maxillofacial Wounds Sustained by British Servicemen in Afghanistan

Statement of the Problem: The incidence of maxillofacial injuries has been reported as having increased from approximately 16% in the 20th century to up to 29% in the 21st century. However, definitions of what constitutes a maxillofacial wound have been unclear and this has led to difficulties in comparing head, face, and neck injury statistics between conflicts. This paper describes the types of maxillofacial wounds and the treatment performed on British servicemen at the Role 3 Hospital in Afghanistan and the Role 4 facility at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in the UK.

Epidemiology of Head, Face and Neck Injuries Sustained by British Servicemen on Op Telic and Op Herrick

Epidemiology of Head, Face and Neck Injuries Sustained by British Servicemen on Op Telic and Op Herrick

Consumers to Combatants? British Uniforms and Identities, 1914–18

By the outbreak of the First World War, glamorous military uniforms and accoutrements already had a long history of luring men into the armed forces. They also played a central role in the process of transforming raw recruits into servicemen, instilling a sense of separation from civilians, and fostering esprit de corps. The purpose of this article is to investigate further the supposed differences between uniforms and civilian garments. Focusing on the experiences of British servicemen who volunteered or were conscripted into the armed forces during the First World War, it questions whether men's sartorial practices and identities changed significantly once they put on a uniform. Did they, the article will consider, cease entirely to be shoppers and consumers once they were no longer civilians? Concentrating on the period of training, when recruits were first introduced to army life and regulations, the article will assess whether uniforms were perceived as different from other commodities, and whether taking off civilian garments also meant a shedding of the sartorial habits of prewar civilian life.

51 Head face and neck injuries sustained by British servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan: 01 March 2003 – 31 December 2008

51 Head face and neck injuries sustained by British servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan: 01 March 2003 – 31 December 2008

49 Mandible fracture patterns seen in British servicemen subjected to blast injury

49 Mandible fracture patterns seen in British servicemen subjected to blast injury

The Palestine Police Oral History Project: The Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford

worked together with British servicemen. At that time, some 18 British officers headed a police force commanded by 55 Palestinian officers and 1,144 Palestinian men from other ranks — in other words, a handful of British officers overseeing a largely indigenous police force. When the British used the word ‘Palestinian’ they referred to both Arabs and Jews who lived in the country. Both Arab and Jewish officers and ‘other ranks’ were active in the police from the very beginning.

How Themistocles Zammit found Malta Fever (brucellosis) to be transmitted by the milk of goats

One hundred years ago on 14 June 1905, Themistocles Zammit, a Maltese doctor, found that five out of six goats reacted to the blood test for brucellosis, then known as Mediterranean or Malta Fever. Vassallo has recounted the search for the source of the disease,1 but Zammit's previous experiments and how he came to test those goats have not been described. The discovery that apparently healthy goats could be carriers of the disease has been termed 'one of the greatest advances ever made in the study of epidemiology'.2 It not only led in a few years to the elimination of the disease among British servicemen, but also revolutionized ideas about animal vectors of disease. Yet Zammit is all but forgotten. The discovery has been described as having arisen from an 'intuitive flash' that the goat might be susceptible,3 and was dismissed as an accident by Sir David Bruce4—a judgment echoed in one of Bruce's obituaries: 'After months of hard and disappointing work, Dr Zammit, a Maltese colleague, happened to examine the blood of a goat'.5 The discovery was neither flash of intuition nor accident. After a year's work, the Mediterranean Fever Commission (MFC) had made little progress. With Zammit's intervention the problem was solved.6 That so many goats were naturally infected was so dramatic a finding that previous work was forgotten—especially since Zammit made few notes.

Royal British Legion War Grave Pilgrimages: A Medical Escort’s Perspective

The Royal British Legion organizes pilgrimages to nearly all parts of the world where British servicemen and service-women and their allies fought and died. The Pilgrimage Department has taken thousands of widows, other relatives, veterans and friends to visit the grave of a loved one or comrade buried overseas. The parties of pilgrims are escorted by Service medical officers and nurses of the Regular and Reserve Armed Forces. The role of the medical escort is described.