Adaptation

Human resilience lay at the heart of the robustness displayed by the German and British armies on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. Military institutions certainly enforced unit cohesion at the front, while societal and battlefield influences may have encouraged men to accept that fighting was necessary. Yet without individuals' innate ability to cope psychologically with the discomfort, danger and, above all, disempowerment of combat, armies would soon have become ineffective organisations full of mentally broken men. The low rates of psychiatric disorders and common displays of astounding endurance witnessed at the front testify, however, to men's success at overcoming unprecedentedly stressful conditions. As the psychiatrist Frederick Dillon observed, ‘it was an impressive fact in the great war [sic] to note the extent to which the ordinary man was capable of adapting himself to active war conditions’.

At the heart of men's adaptation lay the development of appropriate risk-assessment strategies. Soldiers who underestimated or were unable to recognise mortal threat could be overconfident and lose their lives through carelessness. Overestimation of danger could, however, be no less problematic, engendering unnecessary fear and anxiety which might result in panic or mental collapse. Troops new to the front were especially inclined to assess risk inappropriately. On both sides, wartime recruit training was short and often of poor quality. Men consequently arrived in the line with an ignorance of the power of modern weaponry which today seems astounding.