Robert’s Recovery
The shell shock article in your November issue prompted me to revisit notes that my grandfather, Harry Kington, made about his First World War experiences. Among these records is a newspaper cutting that tells how one of his comrades in the 12th London Regiment recovered from the condition.
Harry’s own notes (18 April 1915) recorded: “In a trench [at Zonnebeke near Ypres] with 15 others. Ellis wounded and Poynter [sic] loses senses.” This was Private Robert Pointer, and the newspaper announced that: “Medical men on both sides of the Channel have been greatly interested in the case of a young soldier, Rifleman Pointer… a patient at the 4th Northern General Hospital, Lincoln.”
The interest was in Pointer’s
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suddenly regaining the speech he had lost during a bombardment. He had practised mouthing words silently for several weeks, when one night he found he could speak again. He told reporters: “I kept jawing to myself all night in case it went again… I remembered that a man would be coming round with a cup of tea at five in the morning, and when he came along… I said ‘Shove it down there, old son!’ He nearly shot the tea over me. Then he fetched the sister, and everybody seemed inclined to kiss me.”
After reading your article, I rootled around a bit more, and found that the collection of newspapers on findmypast. co.uk now has a vivid account from Robert Pointer of the day his speech went (in the Lincolnshire Echo, 19 May 1915). His battalion endured an eight-mile walk to dirty trenches where cover was patchy at best. The troops came under heavy rifle fire and shelling, and then, worst of all, terrifying bombardment from trench mortars. As Pointer tended a wounded comrade, a deafening explosion sent him senseless: “I am told I went temporarily mad, and tried to climb out of the trench to fight the Germans… When I came to I was in hospital.”
What seems surprising about these conditions is that many of his comrades survived them, rather than suffering in the same way. Even Pointer’s ‘recovery’ turned out to be partial, as the Army discharged him as medically unfit in 1916, his service record confirming his plight: “Neurasthenia. Shell shock originated April 1915 at Ypres. Disabled by shell explosion – remembers nothing till he found himself in hospital Boulogne. Is in a highly neurotic condition, with muscular tremors and increased reflexes. Suffers from insomnia. Due to shell shock from explosion of shell on active service. Permanent.”
But perhaps in the longer term his prospects were less bleak; he and his wife had children, and on the 1939 Register he was still living with several of them in South London. He may well have had grandchildren, who might still be living, and I wonder whether any of them would know of the interest his experiences attracted over 100 years ago.
Paul Gliddon, York
EDITOR REPLIES: I think you are right Paul. It’s surprising that more men didn’t suffer like Pointer. I suspect a lot of the psychological scars were just accepted and not recorded, rather than not suffered.