ABSTRACT
Wilfred R. Bion begins his war memoirs with an entry of 26 June 1917, by stating "In writing this, I cannot be absolutely accurate in some things, as I have lost my diary." The actions he describes in the war memoirs are terrifying and detailed. They form the basis for his later understanding, as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, of the inner torments faced by the patients he treated. In reading War Memoirs one has the distinct impression that, “Bion’s life-impulse was fuelled by his blatant anti-authoritarianism”: Bion berates many of his fellow officers and superiors for their downright abstention of duty in the face of his enemy, cowardly wriggling their way out.
