“I zoom up violently, the pressure pushes me into my seat, my sight goes for a second, then more shots… I’m skidding madly, zooming, doing flat turns, quick rolls, anything to stop them getting a bead on me… there’s no smooth flying in a shambles like this, it’s ham-fisted stuff or you’re out.”

— Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Gould Lee, WW1 flying ace.

By Mark C. Wilkins

THE DECADES preceding the First World War saw the rise of industrialization and scientific innovation that yielded many dazzling inventions. Though aviation was still in its infancy little time was wasted, and frail aircraft of spruce and canvas were fitted with machine guns. This gave rise to an entirely new phenomenon: aerial combat.

Combat stress among flyers – or what came to be broadly termed as ‘Aero-Neurosis’ – became more common as the war progressed. It was compounded by the poorly understood effects of high altitude flying, which was described by British flying ace Arthur Lee as “…heaving all the time, mouth wide open, pumping in the bitingly cold air in quick, lung flooding gasps”.

American John McGavock Grider volunteered shortly after the United States joined the war, and was assigned to the Royal Flying Corps in May 1918. In his diary he noted:

“I can’t write much these days. I’m too nervous. I can hardly hold a pen. I’m all right in the air… but on the ground I’m a wreck and I get panicky… We don’t sleep much at night.”

A few days before Grider was killed – shot down behind German lines – he wrote another diary entry which lays bare the fatalism which now permeated his thinking.

“…It’s only a question of time until we all get it… My nerves are all gone and I can’t stop. I’ve lived beyond my time already. It’s not the fear of death that’s done it… It’s this eternal flinching from it that’s [making] a coward out of me. Few men live to know what real fear is. It’s something that grows on you, day by day, that eats into your constitution and undermines your sanity… Here I am, twenty four years old, I look forty and feel ninety. I’ve lost all interest in life beyond the next patrol.”

In addition to the fear of death, seeing the results of their handiwork up-close could also have devastating psychological effects. Canadian flier Roy Brown was credited with shooting down the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. But after visiting the crash site, the spectacle of von Richtofen’s body brought forth unexpected emotions:

“…the sight of Richthofen as I walked closer gave me a start. He appeared so small to me, so delicate. He looked so friendly… Suddenly I felt miserable, desperately unhappy, as if I had committed an injustice. With a feeling of shame, a kind of anger against myself moved in my thoughts, that I had forced him to lay there… I gnashed my teeth, I cursed the war. If I could I would gladly have brought him back to life… I could no longer look him in the face. I went away. I did not feel like a victor. There was a lump in my throat. If he had been my dearest friend, I could not have felt greater sorrow.”

Suffering from nervous exhaustion, Brown checked into hospital shortly afterwards.

Another pilot, Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock, also came unstuck when visiting the site of a German two-seater he shot down in July 1917:

“I shot the pilot in three places and wounded the observer in the side. The machine was smashed to pieces and a little black and tan dog which was with the observer was also killed. The observer escaped death… the pilot was horribly mutilated… I felt exactly like a murderer… These times are so horrible that occasionally I feel that life is not worth hanging on to… I had thoughts of getting married, but not now.”

Mannock confided the above passage to his friend Jim Eyles, who noted the following when Mick was home on leave:

“Saliva and tears were running down his face; he couldn’t stop it. His collar and shirt-front were soaked through. He smiled weakly at me when he saw me watching and tried to make light of it; he would not talk about it at all… He was ashamed to let me see him in this condition but could not help it, however hard he tried.”

Mannock’s last patrol was July 26, 1918. He was over Pacaut Wood when German rifle and machine gun fire hit the port side of his aircraft. The fuel tank ignited, and a tiny blue flicker soon erupted into an inferno. Mick lost control and the blazing aircraft glided down over Pacaut Wood, crashing in flames behind German lines.

Such reactions to the carnage they had caused were also evident in German pilots. Ernst Udet was Germany’s top ace after Richthofen was killed. A sensitive and imaginative man, he too succumbed to curiosity about his victims:

“I felt an insatiable desire to know who my opponent had been… I made my way to the scene of the crash… my opponent… had been shot through the head… the doctor handed me his wallet… ‘Lieutenant C.R. Massdorp, Ontario, RFC 47’. Also in the wallet were a picture of an elderly woman and a letter. It said: ‘don’t be too reckless. Think of father and me’… Somehow one had to try to get rid of the thought that a mother wept for every man one shot down.”

As the war progressed, the field of combat aviation psychiatry evolved with it. The diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders however, was often skewed towards getting the men back to their cockpits quickly. Some were regarded as cowards or ‘malingerers,’ which tended to compound the sufferers’ difficulties. Over time, hospitals specifically for flyers began to emerge. One of these was mentioned by Canadian Roy Brown:

“They do a lot of research work here into the different kinds of troubles which are peculiar to flying people. It is purely for RAF officers so they get lots of material to work on. It is a very good idea having a hospital like this as in an ordinary hospital they do not know how to treat the troubles of flying people.”

Brown, like many men, was discharged from hospital to serve in a reduced capacity as a flight instructor. Some sufferers were granted a series of leaves as bureaucrats and military and medical leadership struggled with what to do with them. Publications regarding this type of trauma were considered counterproductive to the war effort, and so treatment and diagnosis tended to emphasize the effects of high altitude flying and various physiological disorders, and downplay the psychological trauma experienced by combat flyers.

William Lambert of Ohio volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps in late 1916. After training in Toronto, Canada he was sent to Europe, and in March 1918 joined a squadron in France. Lambert initially espoused a ‘what will be, will be’ fatalism common among pilots at the time. However, the war became increasingly personal when his close friend and wingman Lieutenant J Daley was killed:

“Daley was gone forever… We had been almost like brothers… I can see him even now, on patrol, after doing something that pleased him. He would move in close to me, wingtip to wingtip, look over and wave to me with a wide grin covering his face… I would certainly miss Daley.”

Lambert’s decline into combat fatigue caught him by surprise; like a slow fuse that finally reached its charge:

“Almost everything from that day… is a blank. I do not know what happened to me, only that I was suffering from… the effects of combat fatigue… My recollection is of watching someone loading my gear into a tender.”

Lambert soon found out that he had been admitted to a resort turned-hospital:

“We were patients there. This puzzled us. What were we doing there? Later I was in a London hospital, evidently for the whole of September… being attended by two doctors. One had a slender, flexible wire contraption about twelve inches long and to which was attached an electric cord. This wire was inserted into, and pushed half way up, one of my nostrils and it was explained as part of the treatment to the ruptured ear drums I had apparently contracted… I seem to recall enduring this most painful and extremely unpleasant torture about every second or third day for a period of several weeks… About the last week of September I was told that if I wished I could go home at my own expense for three months leave. You can bet that ‘I wished.’”

This appears to be a description of electro-shock therapy, an early form of treatment for those suffering from combat stress. Lambert was finally discharged and returned to Ohio.

Aviation psychiatry evolved as the war progressed but was initially frustrated by inadequate diagnosis, treatment, and infrastructure. It seems from reading the diaries and letters of pilots who endured the terror of aerial combat that those who confronted their mortality head-on fared better. Those who repressed their feelings suffered exponentially, and those who were able to accept the horrors of war endured longer than those who could not.

Regardless of how each individual dealt with the strain, the words of flying ace Arthur Gould Lee doubtless applied to pilots of every nationality when he said: “those of us who were to pass safely through this strife and bloodshed would be affected by it all the rest of our lives.”

Mark C. Wilkins is a historian, museum professional and lecturer at St. Mary’s College, Maryland. He is the author of ‘Aero-Neurosis: Pilots of the First World War and the Psychological Legacies of Combat’ published in 2019 by Pen and Sword Books.