From time to time, family history research leads in unexpected directions.
More recently, it led to a conversation.
I was invited to take part in a FamilyHistories podcast discussing the life of Ted Mayhew – a story I first set out to piece together through family records, photographs, and the occasional coincidence.
Ted was held as a prisoner of war at Stalag VIII-B (later 344 Lamsdorf) then E72 Hohenzollern Coal Mine, a Second World War labour camp in what was then Upper Silesia, now in Poland.. He, like so many others, endured years of captivity followed by the ordeal of the Long March in the terrible winter of 1945.
What the podcast allowed, perhaps more than anything, was time to reflect on what came afterwards.
Ted returned home to a very different world – and, like many former POWs, carried the effects of his experiences with him. Today, we might recognise some of this as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), though at the time there was little understanding of what that meant, or how best to respond to it.
The episode also features Professor Walter Busuttil of Combat Stress, a UK charity supporting veterans’ mental health, who offers insight into how such trauma has been understood – and treated – from the First World War to the present day.
It’s often said that history is about events.
But more often, it is about what happens afterwards.
