Driven mad by the horror of war:

Shattering new book lays bare extent of the mental torment the Somme exacted 100 years ago...

The British Army doctor serving in a casualty station just behind the front line in France knew ‘shell shock’ when he saw it.

Men in the trenches whose minds had gone under the barrage of explosives falling on their heads from enemy guns, or by being steeped in so much gore and misery for months on end, had a haunted look about them.

‘They are exhausted, their faces twitch and hands and arms shake constantly,’ he told his wife in a letter home. They were unable to answer the simplest of questions, their eyes were glassy and bulged out of their sockets, their skin was yellow, their teeth chattered, they swallowed constantly. Some could not speak at all. Others just stared into space without comprehension. Continue ...

A shattering new book, released 100 years since the Battle of the Somme, has revealed the true extent of shell shock. Above, a solider carries a fallen comrade during the brutal battle