EVOLUTION OF A WW1 OFFICER
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"For the first 3 weeks, an officer was of little use in the front line; he did not know his way about, had not learned the rules of health and safety, or grown accustomed to recognizing degrees of danger.
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At 4 weeks he was at his best.
At 6 months he was still more or less all right; but by 9 months, unless he had been given a few weeks' rest on a technical course, or in hospital, he usually became a drag on the other company officers.
After a year, he was often worse than useless.
The unfortunates were officers who had endured two years or more of continuous trench service. In many cases they became dipsomaniacs.
Officers had a less laborious but a more nervous time than the men. There were proportionately twice as many neurasthenic cases among officers as among men, though a man's average expectancy of trench service before getting killed or wounded was twice as long as an officer's.
I knew a few who had worked up to the point of two bottles of whisky a day before being lucky enough to get wounded or sent home in some other way.
A two-bottle company commander of one of our line battalions is still alive who, in three shows running, got his company needlessly destroyed because he was no longer capable of taking clear decisions." – Capt. Robert Graves, Royal Welch Fusiliers, Somme, France, 1916. #ww1 #reality #stayzero #zerofoxtrot