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Books

The way we treat our heroes is a disgrace

No longer the MoD’s responsibility, our traumatised ex-forces feel abandoned, betrayed and shamefully dependent on charity, according to Matthew Green’s Aftershock

19 September 2015

8:00 AM

19 September 2015

8:00 AM

Aftershock: The Untold Story of Surviving Peace Matthew Green

Portobello, pp.336, £20, ISBN: 9781846273292

Matthew Green, former Financial Times and Reuters correspondent, remains unimpressed by officialdom’s response to casualties who aren’t actually bleeding:

Ever since October 1914, when ‘Case One’ arrived in Myers’s care, the system for tending to the mental wellbeing of soldiers has grown up in a piecemeal and ad-hoc fashion, overshadowed by the Army’s stubborn ambivalence towards psychological injury

(Dr Charles Myers was the Cambridge psychologist seconded to the Royal Army Medical Corps who first used the term ‘shell shock’.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £18 Tel: 08430 600033. Allan Mallinson is a retired British Army officer and the author of the Matthew Hervey novels, most recently Words of Command.

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