31 July 1917 marked the first day of Passchendaele, and - at the Maudsley hospital in London - Adeline and Phyllis are on the offensive.
Written by Katie Hims Directed by Jessica Dromgoole Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Notes Home Front Season 11 focuses on madness and trauma, both military and civilian, and is subtitled 'Broken and Mad', a line from the Sassoon poem, Survivors
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. Of course they're 'longing to go out again,'- These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,- Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride... Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
Folkestone is still recovering from the first Gotha Air Raid that struck suddenly and devastatingly on 25 May 1917, killing nearly a hundred citizens. At the heart of this narrative are three soldiers suffering war neurosis (shell shock), but the story refracts out to the madness of a town that has recently experienced significant trauma. The polarities of treatment for soldiers - from the talking cure of Dr Argent (& WH Rivers) to the 'punitive' methods of Dr Pilchard (& Lewis Yealland) - find a parallel in civilian manifestations. Post air raid anxiety, on a personal and a civic scale, can be treated by arrest and prosecution, or by accommodation and understanding.