ABSTRACT
During World War One, statistics relating to medical rejections of potential recruits highlighted the poor dental condition of otherwise fit young men. Nevertheless, many slipped through the recruitment process with bad teeth. Their existing level of poor oral health was compounded by the appalling conditions in the trenches and the lack of dental hygiene behaviours, and they began to suffer. The first recorded cases of trench mouth led to official recognition that poor oral health of soldiers was a problem to the fighting strength and efficiency of the British Expeditionary Force. Despite this problem, dental treatment for Tommy in the field was a matter which relied on financial and organisational efforts of the charity sector on the Home Front. Historians of medicine and the military have shown some interest in combatant’s physical and psychological experience of war, but less on morbidity in the trenches. The oral health of soldiers has been overlooked – no historical research exists on the pain and the effects on the body and mind of Tommy’s toothache in the trenches, nor the problem of his dentures in the dug outs. This chapter aims to fill this historiographical gap and argues that recruits suffered as a consequence of their oral health inequalities, a matter which was not fully appreciated at the beginning of the war. Using oral history sources, written memoirs of soldiers and officers, together with contemporary reports of medical officers and dentists, this chapter will highlight the lived experience of dental pain and dental treatment in the European theatre of war.
