Ungrateful Bodies: Rehabilitation, Resistance and Disabled American Veterans of the First World War

Abstract

In the United States, rehabilitating disabled veterans generated new systems of medical, military and social management. The Reconstruction Division of the War Department as well as volunteer organisations conducted campaigns to educate not just veterans but the public too, in the role and benefit of rehabilitation, creating powerful discourses to accompany the new systems. Close collaboration between military and voluntary sectors disseminated the discourse of ‘overcoming disability’ in the public domain. Postwar reconstruction was hinged to an ideal that prewar normalcy could be restored. Whilst surgeons, rehabilitators and policy-makers attempted this with disabled soldiers under their care, they encountered resistance from veterans. Some men felt that the focus on employment retraining was at the expense of convalescence; others argued that provisions were inadequate. Disabled veterans often conceptualised the idea of ‘physical restoration’ more fully than governments and rehabilitators. Physical remedy was not just crucial in relieving pain, but also implicated a veteran's sense of self and belief in his future. This paper argues that although successful recovery was measured by the extent to which the disabled were grateful for treatment and retraining, veterans could be critical and resistant.

résumé: Aux États Unis, la réhabilitation des mutilés de guerre généra de nouveaux systèmes sociaux et médicaux pour l'armée. La Reconstruction Division du War Department et des organisations caritatives conduisirent des campagnes pédagogiques pour éduquer non seulement les vétérans mais aussi le public, sur les bénéfices de l'insertion. Une collaboration entre les secteurs militaire et caritatif dissémina un discours visant à ‘surmonter le handicap’ dans le domaine public. En partant du principe qu'une réalité d'avant guerre pouvait être restaurée, les chirurgiens, pédagogues et administrateurs se heurtèrent à la résistance des vétérans. Certains reprochaient à la réinsertion de négliger la convalescence, d'autres critiquaient le manque de moyens. En fait leur vision de la restauration physique était plus complète que celle du gouvernement. Le remède à leurs maux n'était pas seulement physique et contre la souffrance mais touchait à la conscience de soi et à leurs espoirs. Bien que le succès de la réinsertion fut mesuré par rapport au traitement et à son accueil par les mutilés eux-mêmes, ces derniers pouvaient rester critiques.

Notes

 [1] See Gerber, “Heroes and Misfits”, 545–574.

 [2] Priestly, “Thinking Global: Challenges to Disability Studies”, 13.

 [3] Thomson, Reformers and War, 278.

 [4] Zieger, America's Great War, 187ff.

 [5] Carden-Coyne, “American Guts and Military Manhood”.

 [6] Padelford, “The Veterans’ Bonus and the Constitution”, 929.

 [7] Pelka, The Disability Rights Movement, 191.

 [8] Swisher, The American Legion in Iowa.

 [9] Keene, Doughboys, the Great War and the Remaking of America, 6.

[10] Blanck and Millender, “Before Disability Civil Rights”, 2. Note that pensions were extended to disabled people in Southern states during the 1880s and 1890s, having previously been denied under Federal budgets. For a more detailed discussion, see also Theda Skocpol, “America's First Social Security System”, 85–115.

[11] De Witt Law reports the following figures taken from the statistics published in the Disabled American Veterans of the World War bulletin, January 1928. At the time of the Armistice, they state that there were 134,000 wounded (50,000 killed in battle). Between 1918 and 1929, deaths due to military service had exceeded the number killed in action (84,091), and there were a further 634,000 cases of soldiers requiring hospitalisation (with a further 500,000 claims not recognised by the US Veterans Bureau). He states that 257,536 veterans injured in the war were now “enrolled as Soldiers of the D.A.V.” meaning war veterans who have been “disabled in American military or naval service”. In Soldiers of the D.A.V., 9–10.

[12] Byerly, Fever of War, 6.

[13] Clark, The Costs of the World War to the American People, 180.

[14] “Fort Snelling as U.S. General Hospital No. 29 Surgical Services”, Reveille, 33.

[15] Gerber, “Disabled Veterans, the State and the Experience of Disability in Western Societies, 1914–1950”, 899; See Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers.

[16] “The Creed of the Disabled Soldier”, USA General Hospital No. 28 Fort Sheridan, Illinois magazine.

[17] McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, 47.

[18] McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, 47.

[19] Devine, Disabled Soldiers and Sailors Pensions and Training (emphasis added).

[20] Faries, “The Economic Consequences of Physical Disability”, 11.

[21] Faries, “Three Years of Work for Handicapped Men”, 16.

[22] “Reconstructing the Public”, Carry On! 1, no. 1 (June 1918): 14.

[23] Devine, Disabled Soldiers and Sailors Pensions and Training, 14 (emphasis added).

[24] The Come-Back 5, no. 2 (March 27, 1925), front page.

[25] See US posters, “At Work Again” and “Back to the Farm” where men are photographed with prostheses, or working in factories and farms. In the Library of Congress collection, POS, WW1, US, No 30, Washington, DC.

[26] Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men and the Red Cross Institute for the Blind. Library of Congress POS–WWI–US, no. 38.

[27] Lauffer, “The Injured in Industry”, Carry On! 1, no. 9 (June 1919): 11.

[28] “Occupational Therapy”, USA General Hospital no. 28, 41.

[29] Beth Linker, “The Business of Ethics”, 322.

[30] Red Cross Posters, Library of Congress collection, POS, WW1, US, Washington D.C.

[31] Douglas McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, 40.

[32] Memorandum by the Surgeon General for the Secretary of War, Newtown Baker, submitted to the Senate, “Physical Reconstruction and Vocational Training”, 1918, 8–9.

[33] Statistics are quoted from De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V.

[34] In contrast, Civil War imagery conveyed the body of the Union soldier as both emblem of victory and dominance and yet also that his body was a symbol of enormous loss, both in official documentation such as in the display of severed limbs at the Army Medical Museum, and in popular literature that highlighted pain, loss and grotesqueness. The trauma of wounding was ultimately repositioned as part of the triumph of the nation. In Robert I. Goler, “Loss and the Persistence of Memory”, 167. See also Bradley P. Bengtson and Julian E. Kuz, Photographic Atlas of Civil War Injuries.

[35] See Stiker, A History of Disability.

[36] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 127–28.

[37] 1919 March, Frederick Van Loon, Library of Congress.

[38] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 11.

[39] Millbank, “Introduction”, in McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, ix.

[40] Gerber, “Disabled Veterans, the State and the Experience of Disability”, 906.

[41] Devine, Disabled Soldiers and Sailors Pensions and Training, 319.

[42] “To the Disabled Soldier and Sailor”, 5.

[43] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 23.

[44] This example is French, but appears in McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, 31.

[45] See Reznick, Healing the Nation.

[46] McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, 33.

[47] Gelber, “A Hard Boiled Order”, 171.

[48] Colonel William N. Bispham, “Message from the Commanding Officer”, USA General Hospital no. 28 Fort Sheridan, 8.

[49] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 24.

[50] “The Work of the Reconstruction Aide”, Reveille, 74.

[51] Lena Hitchcock, The Great Adventure, vii.

[52] Lena Hitchcock, 46–47.

[53] “The Reconstruction Arm of the Government: Educational Service of General Hospital no. 29”, Reveille, 43.

[54] “If You Are a Patient”, Walter Reed Army Medical Center pamphlet, National Museum of Health and Medicine collection.

[55] “To The Disabled Soldiers and Sailor in the Hospital”, Rehabilitation Joint series 1, Federal Board for Vocational Education, the Surgeon General's Office and the War-Risk Insurance Bureau, Washington, November 1918, 5.

[56] Lauffer, “The Injured in Industry”, 11.

[57] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 11 (emphasis added).

[58] McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, 26.

[59] Faries, Three Years of Work For Handicapped Men, 18.

[60] Bagenstost, “Comparative Disability Employment Law from an American Perspective”, 649. See also Richard K Scotch, “American Disability Policy in the Twentieth Century”, 381–83.

[61] See Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue and the Origin of Modernity.

[62] Birch and Sutherland, “Who's Not Yet Here?”, 132.

[63] Gelber, “A “Hard-Boiled Order”, 165.

[64] State enacted October 6, 1917. De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 15 (emphasis added).

[65] Gelber, “A “Hard-Boiled Order”, 163, 168.

[66] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 24 (emphasis added).

[67] McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier, 34 (emphasis added).

[68] Reveille 1, no. 15, 36.

[69] Gelber, “A Hard-Boiled Order”, 162.

[70] Devine, Disabled Soldiers and Sailors Pensions and Training, 314.

[71] See Dickson and Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic.

[72] Given widespread media and literary attention to the march, it was the subject of much political and social mythologising. Another myth, besides the Communist control of the march, was that the Army killed and maimed many marchers. This is also rather revealing that after the First World War there was public belief that the government was willing to kill its citizens, even those who were national heroes. See Daniels, The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great Depression.

[73] Longmore and Goldberger, “The League of Physically Handicapped and the Great Depression”, 1.

[74] See Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of An American Political Tradition.

[75] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 289, 291, 277–79.

[76] Mc Murtie, The Disabled Soldier, 47 (emphasis added).

[77] For similar attitudes in Britain, Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War; Koven, “Remembering and Dismembering: Crippled Children, Wounded Soldiers and the Great War in Britain”, 1167–1202.

[78] McMurtrie, The Evolution of National Systems of Vocational Reeducation for Disabled Soldiers and Sailors.

[79] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 12.

[80] De Witt Law, Soldiers of the D.A.V., 13.

[81] “To the Household of the Disabled Soldier and Sailor”, 3.

[82] Millbank, “Introduction”, x (emphasis added).

[83] McMurtrie, “Introduction”, in Faries, Three Years of Work For Handicapped Men, 6.

[84] McMurtrie, “Preface”, xi.

[85] Mauss, 1954; Gregory 1992; Laidlaw 2000.

[86] Lieutenant Colonel Casey A. Wood, MC, advised McMurtrie on the “first steps to self-support”. Lieutenant Colonel David Silver, MC, advised him on the chapter on prosthetics, whilst Lieutenant Colonel James Bordley MC, Director of the Red Cross Institute for the Blind, read the chapter with the uplifting title, “Out of the Darkness”. As well, Dr James Miller from the Federal Board for Vocational Education assisted in a chapter on retraining, entitled “The new school house” in which soldiers were cast as schoolboys, as they were in Britain. Indeed McMurtrie was in regular contact with John Galsworthy, the British disabled advocate, and Sir Arthur Pearson, advocate for blinded veterans (newspaper magnate, founder of St Dunstan's in 1915, and who was blind himself), as well as Sir John Collie (Chief Medical Officer, consultant to the British Ministry of Pensions, and influential in Canadian workmen's compensation legislation) and other British and French military and medical rehabilitation experts. Douglas McMurtrie, “Preface”, xi.

[87] See for example Gladys Gladding Whiteside, “Provision for Vocational Re-Education of Disabled Soldiers in France”, 3–29.

[88] Garland-Thompson, Extraordinary Bodies, 6.