George Sherston's Stay at a Convalescent Hospital

Siegfried Sassoon's Sketch of His Hospital Ward
from His Diary

In 1917, Siegfried Sassoon's alter ego in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer was wounded when a piece of shrapnel shell passed through his lung after he incautiously sticks his head over the parapet at the Battle of Arras. After many stops along the British Army medical network he found himself in a London Hotel converted to a wartime convalescent hospital.

A Selection from: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

By Siegfried Sassoon

With an apology for my persistent specifyings of chronology, I must relate that on May 9th I was moved onto a Railway Terminus Hotel which had been commandeered for the accommodation of convalescent officers. My longing to get away from London made me intolerant of the GreatCentral Hotel, which was being directed by a mind more military than therapeutic. The Commandant was a noncombatant Brigadier-General, and the convalescents grumbled a good deal about his methods, although they could usually get leave to go out in the evenings. 

Many of them were waiting to be invalided out of the Army, and the daily routine-orders contained incongruous elements. We were required to attend lectures on, among other things, Trench Warfare. At my first lecture I was astonished to see several officers on crutches, with legs amputated, and at least one man had lost that necessary faculty for trench warfare, his eyesight. They appeared to be accepting the absurd situation stoically ; they were allowed to smoke. The Staff Officer who was drawing diagrams on a blackboard was obviously desirous of imparting information about the lesson which had been learnt from the Battle of Neuve Chapelle or some equally obsolete engagement. 

But I noticed several faces in the audience which showed signs of tortured nerves, and it was unlikely that their efficiency was improved by the lecturer, who concluded by reminding us of the paramount importance of obtaining offensive ascendancy in No Man's Land.

In the afternoon I had an interview with the doctor who was empowered to decide how soon I went to the country. One of the men with whom I shared a room had warned me that this uniformed doctor was a queer customer. ‘The blighter seems to take a punitive pleasure in tormenting  people,' he remarked, adding, 'He'll probably tell you that you'll have to stay here till you're passed fit for duty.'  But I had contrived to obtain a letter from the Countess of Somewhere recommending me for one of the country houses in her organization; so I felt fairly secure. (At the period of the War  people with large houses received convalescent officers as guests.)

The doctor, a youngish man dressed as a temporary Captain, began by behaving quite pleasantly. After he'd examined me and the document which outlined my insignificant medical history, he asked what I proposed to do now. I said that I was hoping to get sent to some place in the country for a few weeks. He replied that I was totally mistaken if I thought any such thing. An expression, which I can only call cruel, overspread his face. ‘You’ll stay here; and when you leave here, you’ll find yourself back at the front in double quick time. How do you like that that’ In order to encourage him, I pretended to be upset by his severity; but he seemed to recognize that I wasn't satisfactory material for his peculiar methods, and I departed without having contested the question of going to the country. I was told afterwards that officers had been known to leave this doctor’s room in tears. But it must not be supposed that I regard his behaviour as an example of army brutality. I prefer to think of him as a man who craved power over his fellow men. And though his power over the visiting patients was brief and episodic, he must have derived extraordinary (and perhaps sadistic) satisfaction from the spectacle of young officers sobbing and begging not to be sent back to the front.

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I never saw the supposedly sadistic doctor again; but I hope that someone gave him a black eye, and that he afterwards satisfied his desire for power over his fellow men in a more public-spirited manner. Next morning I handed the letter of the Countess to a slightly higher authority, with the result that I only spent three nights in the Great Central Hotel, and late on a fine Saturday afternoon I travelled down to Sussex to stay with Lord and Lady Asterisk.