FEAR IN ROYAL NAVY

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27962, 8 May 1956, Page 18

FEAR IN ROYAL NAVY

Assessment Given By Doctors EFFECT OF PROLONGED MENTAL STRAIN (Special Correspondent N.Z.PA.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, May 7. An assessment of fear as shown and experienced by officers and men of the Royal Navy during the war is given in an official volume published by the stationery office on the operations of the Royal Naval Medical Services. The volume says the Royal Navy trained its crews on this principle: “I am a British sailor. British sailors have always been the best seamen and the finest fighters and the heroes of the people: therefore I am a ehor.’’ Having established a man’s morale, the task was to sustain it, says the volume. One doctor’s action report read: “During one attack I carefully observed a sailor at the back of the bridge whose job was to telephone the order of the gunnery officer. The attack was heavy and the general noise and confusion was unbelievable. I have never seen anybody quite so terrified as this sailor. His head. body, and limbs were trembling and he transmitted his orders in a voice which was a high-pitched squeak. Nevertheless, he continued to do the job and managed somehow to keep himself from breaking down completely.” Commenting on the doctors’ duties, the volume says: “The medical officer had to appreciate that people are like different kinds of liquid with different boiling points. He had to recognise that each officer and man possessed a ‘threshhold of fear.’ Rigorous training and leadership had aimed at increasing the natural threshhold. but prolonged mental strain and physical hardship endured through months, even years, of active service could not fail to reduce the threshhold.”

It was found that the risk of driving a man too hard and too long was greater in the case of .executive officers. There was, too, the fear of failure.

One doctor wrote: “The final factor which stimulates him mentally to everincreasing speed is the fear of failure, which amounts almost to a phobia. My feeling is that unless he is given an adequate period of rest, a collapse with a subsequent error of judgment must occur eventually.”