Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Watch the Bee Go Get The Hun - Patriotic Sheet Music

Sheet music is a fascinating avenue into historical culture, and the patriotic jingles of the First World War are no exception.  Songs such as "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag", or "A Long Way Tipperary", immediately bring that conflict to mind.  The Sheridan Libraries Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University features a vast collection of digitized sheet music for research and enjoyment in  "The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection".  Clicking the World War I subject category yields 574 items, including popular soldiers' tunes such as "Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo?", patriotic odes to President Wilson and General Pershing, and a number of titles featuring belligerent threats aimed at the German enemy.

One of these belligerent numbers is the oddly titled, "Watch the Bee Go Get the Hun" whose cover features the familiar mustachioed caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm, subject to on onslaught of American soldier-bees, guided by the lamp of lady liberty!  The song was penned by Walter Hawley, and published in New York in 1918.



The lyrics of the song are as follows:

There's a beehive in America they call the U.S.A., And is far from 'over there'.
There's a hundred million busy bees a buzzing night and day, And they will soon be over there.
Uncle Sam is spending money so the bees can get the honey.
It's up to you to see them through the thickest of the fray.

Just watch the bee go get the Hun,
And bye and bye you'll see them run,
We're sending swarms and swarms of bees,
far across the deep blue seas,
To buzz around that big long distant gun.

So help the bee to get the Hun, Stamp U.S.A. on every one.,
And the Germans will be wiser when our Bees have stung the Kaiser,

Watch the bees go get the Hun.
Just Watch the Hun.

There are busy bees at Washington as busy as can be,
Preparing plans for 'over there'
And every bee throughout the land is watching anxiously
The bees who've landed over there.

The grand old Bell is ringing,
And our bees have started singing.
Their sting will win, good-bye Berlin,
it's all off Germany.

Just watch the bee go get the Hun,
And bye and bye you'll see them run,
We're sending swarms and swarms of bees far across the deep blue seas,
To buzz around that big long distant gun.

Our busy bees will get the Hun
With Kaiser Bill we'll have some fun,
To our bee-hive we will bring him so our little bees can sting him,

Watch the bees go get the hun.
Just Watch the hun.

It seems the bees here are variously ammunition, soldiers and civil servants.  It's a very busy metaphor! Why one would want to bring the Kaiser to the American bee-hive for a stinging when millions of bees are flying overseas is also a mystery.  Fortunately, Phonofile's youtube channel features a phonograph cylinder recording of "Watch the bee go get the Hun", so you can sing along at home.  All together now!



Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Soldiers Disturbing the Peace: Crime and Drunkeness in Nova Scotia, 1941-45

Military Districts in Atlantic CAN Hyperwar.
It is hard to deny the overarching narrative of the Second World War as the "good war".  In the reduced, synthesized, and simplified version of the conflict, Nazi villains are thwarted by the Anglo-American heroes in a clean story of right and wrong.  Individual experience, of course, rarely matched this crisp moral contrast, as lives are lived in the complex blur of intentions, identities, and circumstance.  In Military District No. 6 (Nova Scotia and P.E.I.) during the war there is plenty of evidence to support Kipling's thesis that, "single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints."


VE Day Riots, Halifax. Life as a human blog.
Halifax was clearly a disciplinary problem during the war, and the major efforts to keep the peace made by Military District (MD) No. 6 and Atlantic Command were in the capital city.  The most celebrated incident of military misdemeanour was the VE Day Riot of 7-8 May 1945, but there were plenty of  disturbances before the end of the war in Europe.  Almost a year earlier, on 3 June 1944, the Halifax Daily Star reported:

In some parts of Halifax the misconduct of service personnel has already become notorious. [...]
         So far as most citizens can see, the Provost Corps is more concerned with raising vegetables within the precincts of Citadel Hill than in patrolling the streets and apprehending offenders. [...]
            The plain fact of the matter is that discipline among military personnel in this community just isn't being maintained in the manner that citizens have a right to expect.
            Far too many instances of women being accosted, insulted and exposed to ridicule have taken place for authorities to admit of the least complacency.

The military and civilian police in Halifax simply couldn't keep up with massive influx of service personnel.  There was a lack of provost to police them, and a lack of accommodations to entertain them.

Smaller towns across Nova Scotia also had their problems with rowdy soldiers.  Places like Kentville, New Glasgow, Debert and Tormentine, towns on the railway line or near training bases, experienced troubles with late-night revelry getting out of hand.  Restaurants and hotels were ransacked and goods stolen.  Fights were a common occurrence.

That Canadian soldiers acted contrary to a sanctified memory which puts them on a pedestal is no surprise to the student of military history.  John Baynes in his 1967 classic Morale: A Study of Men and Courage notes that even first-class battalions could cause troubles in their local garrison town.  Baynes wrote in reference to British regiments before the First World War that, "The experienced officer knows almost by instinct whether the trouble is due to poor morale or high spirits.  Good soldiers must have a bit of devilment in them, and it is no good becoming alarmed at occasional outbursts of misbehaviour." (95)

In January 1943, the St. Peter's Anglican Church in Eastern Passage Nova Scotia was the site of soldierly debauchery.  The organist there discovered property damage, spilled beer, and vomit around the altar, "from which there was a odor [sic] of liquor".  (RG24 Vol. 2189) Other evidence left at the scene of the crime, as reported by an inspector on the case, borders on the absurd:

"INVESTIGATING THIS MATTER FURTHER THE WRITER again contacted Rev. E.A. KINGSBURY, at this time he informed the writer that there was still a package of hot dogs in the church which he though had been left there by the persons responsible for the desecration of the church.  Rev. KINGSBURY went to the church with the writer and handed these hot dogs over.  Further enquiries were then made at Murdock's Canteen and Miss FAULKNER recalled that these three men, whom she had identified on January 19th, had ordered some Hot Dogs done up so as they could take them out with them, also that one of the men had asked her to put a cigar in one of the buns instead of a sausage so that he could play a joke on someone.[...]
Three empty beer bottles, and the two hot dogs are contained on the attached [form] 246. and are held at this office pending further developments in this case."(Inspector TW Chard to the Deputy Attorney General, Province of Nova Scotia, "Re: Desecration of St. Peter's Anglican Church, Eastern Passage, N.S. Complaint of Rev. A.E. Kingsbury","Disturbances M.D. No. 6 - Canadian Active Service Forces", Folder HQ-54-27-63-7, Library and Archives Canada, RG24 Volume 2189, 22 February 1943.)


Aside from weenies and beer bottles, there was testimony that singled out the culprits, identifying one man as having returned to barracks wearing a priest's gown and ordering his fellow soldier to "get down and say his confession." One gunner was given twenty-one days detention with forfeited pay, and the other reverted to the rank of gunner permanently."Statement No. 2: Statement of Reg. No. B.600160 Gnr. Samuel MONTAGNA, R.C.A. Devils Battery, Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia", RG 24 Volume 2189,  19th January 1943.


Trouble around military pay-day was common, and there was no lack of business proprietors calling for guards to be stationed near their properties.  Having one's premises placed out of bounds was another possible remedy, but this action was clearly not favoured due to the loss of military business.

Alcohol was almost always involved in these disturbances.  Several early incidents surrounded bootlegging establishments, with soldiers getting drunk and causing trouble.  In Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia on 14 June 1940, Antonio DiVito's candy store, where bootleg liquor was refused to soldiers, became the site of a quarrel and some petty property damage.  Ethnicity was a factor in this case.  DiVito was an Italian naturalized in 1922 (or '23) and a woman had attempted to incite the crowd to destroy Italian businesses by suggesting that since she had a son in uniform that DiVito should be enlisted as well."Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry assembled at Sydney Mines, N.S. on the 16th June, 1940. by order of Lieut.-Col. W.H. Dobbie, D.S.O., R.C.A. Commanding Sydney Fortress. for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting upon the circumstances surrounding a disturbance in Sydney Mines, N.S. on Friday, 14th June 1940 in which troops of the Sydney garrison are alleged to have taken part.", RG 24 Volume 2189, 16 June 1940.



Soldiers training in New Glasgow, 1940.
The Memory Project.
In New Glasgow in early February 1941, a number of soldiers on leave got into a huge brawl and burned the house of a bootlegger.  Race again was a major factor here, as the African-Canadian bootlegger worked and lived in a black neighbourhood.  Much racist vitriol was exposed in the court proceedings.  A Mr J.C. Dorrington, who sold beer from his house, had denied the soldiers drink as he was closing up his shop.  When they forced entry into his home, he and some friends beat them up.  Soldiers returned later with a  mob and drove Dorrington and his family out of his house, destroying it.

The prime culprits were members of the Essex Scottish regiment.  Judge-Advocate General R.J. Orde's comments on the incident suggest that racist attitudes by southern American personnel in the unit may have prompted the destruction of the house.  The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry were also involved in the incident, and it appears that there was also brawling between members of the two regiments that night in New Glasgow.  The court martial proceedings of this case are rich enough to be quoted at length in a future blog post. RJ. Orde, [likely to Adjutant-General] "The trouble in New Glasgow",  RG 24 Volume 2189, 11 February 1941.
 
What are we to glean from these cases of soldiers gone wild?  Jeff Keshen's work Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada's Second World War, takes issue with the notion of the good war, and discovered a great deal of Canadian soldiers and civilians alike behaved in unpatriotic and even criminal ways.  The record of disturbances in Nova Scotia certainly confirms this.  Perhaps Keshen's categories, however, of saint, sinner, and soldier, are not mutually exclusive.  While the racist clash in New Glasgow, with its drunken vitriol and violence, are not the stuff of military heroism, is it not possible that some members of the Essex Scottish regiment or the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry acted bravely in battle in August 1942 when they stormed the beaches in the ill-fated Dieppe raid?  Were the saints of Dieppe past sinners at New Glasgow?

The Canadian Encylopeida
 on the Dieppe Raid
Our conception of military valour takes a snap-shot of a life and defines an individual by it.  It would be ridiculous to suggest that one of the men awarded the Victoria Cross at Dieppe, (a Lieutenant Colonel and a padre), were involved in these previous digressions, yet it is not unreasonable to believe men who behaved very poorly on that drunken night in Nova Scotia, later proved themselves as brave soldiers under fire.  Military crime scuffs the polished finish of military memory, betraying a tarnished halo adorning the statuesque good war.  To take time to consider transgressions of military discipline, however, is not to smear the name of the Canadian soldier in the Second World War, but to humanize him.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

1930s Insulin Shock Therapy - Snippet from the work of Edward Shorter

Ladislas Meduna,, 1955,
 UofIllinois Archives
Before the days of electroconvulsive therapy, experimentation was conducted in the interwar years inducing convulsions in schizophrenic patients.  In the late 1920s, Polish psychiatrist Manfred J. Sakel had experimented with insulin coma therapy for use on schizophrenics and others.  Camphor was one drug that was used, but it was found unreliable in its reactions, and patients reported great feelings of anxiety before the fits, not to mention the drug's tendency to induce vomiting. Metrazol, or Cardiazal was discovered by Ladislas von Meduna to be a superior drug to induce therapeutic seizure.

Before the 1930s, it was largely sedatives and hypnotics that were being used on psychiatric patients, with opiates and barbiturates coming to the fore in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively.  If one counts laxatives as drugs, evidence exists for their use as psychiatric treatment as far back as the middle ages, and one could likely find similar uses in ancient times.  While we might like to think of Prozac as a revolutionary change in mental health treatment, it certainly had its forebears.  

Insulin shock therapy is given in
 Lapinlahti Hospital, Helsinki in 1950's
In the 1930s there were brief experiments with convulsive drug treatments, before these were swept away by the tide of electroconvulsive therapy.  Ladislas von Meduna was a Budapest psychiatrist who in 1934 was breaking ground in the use of insulin induced comas for the treatment of schizophrenia.  Seizures were an occasional side-effect of insulin comas, and some psychiatrists thought these were therapeutic, and induced them using cardiazol or camphor.  An account of one of Meduna's early patients gives an idea of the gap between the sanitized official record and the lived experience of the patient.  Meduna noted of his thirty-three-year-old patient that he had been committed to the Budapest State Hospital in 1930 on the basis of his delusions and hallucinations.  He had reportedly spent 1933 hidden under his bedcovers, and in January 1934, he had stopped eating.

Meduna administered camphor, and 45 minutes later the patient had his first seizure.  In the next couple of weeks, he would have five more injections.  Meduna reported:

 On the morning of February 10, the patient spontaneously arises from bed, is lively, speaks, and asks for something to eat.  He is interested in everything going on about him, asks about his illness and realizes that he has been sick.  He asks how long he has been in the hospital, and as we tell him that he has already been there four years he cannot believe it. (Shorter, 214-217)

Edward Shorter’s work A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (New York: 1997) relays the after-effects of the treatment:



In reality, the patient felt so good that he escaped from the institution, went home, ‘and found out that the cousin living with his wife was not a relation at all but his wife’s lover.  He beat up the cousin and kicked him out of the house; proceeded to beat up his wife and told her that he … preferred to live in the state mental hospital where there is peace and honesty.’ (Shorter, 214-217)

Shorter's work argues against the disciples of Foucault who since the 1970s have damned psychiatry as a state tool to incarcerate the disruptive.  Shorter emphasizes that mental illness was real, and could be cured by various biology-based methods.  It is interesting to note, that Meduna's 1934 convulsive shock experiments reported that of 110 patients treated (presumable schizophrenics), half went into remission.  As the above account suggests, "cure" was not always synonymous with completely positive outcomes, and the dangers of inducing seizure and the low vital signs connected to insulin sleep therapy were always clear.

Southern Albertans interested in psychiatry and its history may wish to attend a couple upcoming talks.  Edward Shorter is in Calgary for a few days in early February 2015, and presenting two public talks at the University of Calgary.


The second talk is at 3:30pm. Monday February 9th at the Community Health Sciences department on the third floor of the Teaching Research and Wellness (TRW) building on the University of Calgary's Foothill's campus.  RSVP to Beth Cusitar bcusitar@ucalgary.ca.  The talks is as follows:



“DSM:  The History of a Train Wreck”



Diagnosis in psychiatry was once dominated by the German heavyweights.  After the Second World War, the United States becomes the world champion of psychiatry, and American diagnoses take over, first in the DSM-1 in 1952, then in the revolutionary DSM-3 in 1980, which was a dramatic break from psychoanalysis and offered hope for the diagnostic future.  But buffeted by institutional politics, the demands of patient organizations, pressures from niche marketers within the field, and the profit horizons of the pharmaceutical industry, the diagnostic promise of DSM-3 failed to be realized, and the entire diagnosis machine of DSM has started to run out of control.  We are now at DSM-5 (2013).  There probably will not be a "DSM-6."