[lit-ideas] Re: Mop Rumpchuck


On Feb 27, 2008, at 10:47 PM, John McCreery wrote:
Thanks so much. I am especially interested, however, in the differences between officer and enlisted symptoms you mentioned. Can you generalize a bit? 

John
There is some truth to the generalizations that Pat Barker made in "Regeneration"; because she was reducing reality to fiction, and because she did not spend years doing research, she had to simplify. Enlisted men tended to suffer from grosser symptoms: mutism, spastic movements, uncontrolled speech and wild, erratic behavior that would get noticed and thus be processed by a medical system that was busy and under strain. The risk of exhibiting too gross a set of symptoms was that medical officers might think you were faking and pass you across to the army's disciplinary system. Officers suffered from tics and stammers and smaller symptoms that suggested "sound" kinds of people who were trying to hold things together; the symptoms did not need to be large because officers were always under scrutiny. Both groups were insomniacs who would keep themselves awake to avoid awful dreams. 


David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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