Christina Taylor, of Columba College, remembers her great-grandfather and other New Zealanders who suffered severe mental injuries from war.
But on October 26, 1915, he was sent home to New Zealand suffering from severe shell shock, from a shell blast that had left him unconscious for several days. He had left home as a strong, promising, young man, and returned as a man who was not able to hold down steady full time employment for the rest of his life.
And it was all because of the war.
Alexander John Sutherland Cowie was not just an average soldier. In 1910, he joined the Otago Mounted Rifles. By the time World War 1 broke out, he was a captain and able to enlist right from the start of the war at that rank. Not only that, but Alec was my great-grandfather.
When he returned from Gallipoli, there was a job waiting for him in recruitment. He was able to keep this job up for six months before the stress became too much and he was replaced.
He was jobless for the first of many times in his life. Although he was not an ordinary soldier, he definitely was not alone in his condition.
Alec was one of 92,000 New Zealand men who returned from World War 1.
For returned servicemen such as my great-grandfather, the government offered a benefit to replace the income they were now missing and to support their families, although some men - mainly those with higher military rankings - were known to turn down this benefit out of a matter of pride.
Alec Cowie was one who tried to earn money for himself. For 30 years after the war he raised his family from the money he earned from short stints of working, and the income of his mother-in-law. Alec could never work for more than 18 months at a time because he would break down mentally. After 18 months as a custodian of a public swimming pool he even broke down physically and developed facial paralysis.
These were both just common symptoms of the shell shock that so many young men had to suffer from their time in the trenches.
My grandmother (daughter of Alec) recalled that many people were worse off than her father and their family.
When she was growing up in Dunedin, their returned serviceman neighbour would go outside whenever he felt overly stressed and stand facing the park behind their houses and yell directions and orders at the trees. He genuinely believed that - for that short period of time - he was still at war, still a sergeant, and still had men following his orders.
In some countries, like New Zealand, the army recognised the potential impact of shell shock, and those suffering or those with other mental injuries could be sent home, just as if they had a more visible injury.
If my great-grandfather had been in the British Army, he may have been forced to continue fighting instead. All of the stress of war would have led him to mentally collapse and he would have started to make wrong decisions, a very dangerous thing to be doing when you are in charge of soldiers. He may even have been shot for desertion, just because he could not cope with the pressure.
War was a terrible place for the soldiers, but for those who came back injured or with shell shock, home may have seemed just as bad. At war you have purpose. You have authority.
You are doing something good for your family to be proud of. Being an invalid at home you have nothing to do; may be nothing that your family can be proud of.
You just sat at home sucking up more money that you are spitting out.
This must have been such a hard, depressing time for all of the young men, some of whom had suddenly lost all ability to look after themselves let alone anyone else. Many soldiers turned to alcohol to try to solve their problems; but that just led to more.
Families were falling apart and people's lives were being ruined all because of the mental stress put on the men from fighting in the war.
World War 1 caused the death of tens of millions of men, women and children, but the effects of the war carried on for long after those graves were covered. Survivors themselves suffered on for many more years. And then there were the secondary sufferers, who suffered because their loved ones were suffering or had died.
All in all, it was a severe waste of time, money and innocent lives.
It definitely made my great-grandfather's life a lot harder. But then again, maybe if he had not gone to war, he would never have married my great-grandmother, and I would have never been born.
