Some soldiers faked VD to avoid combat, while more than 300 were shot for deserting. Joanna Bourke explores cowardice

In war, mass slaughter is intentional. No one who has witnessed the agonised expressions on the faces of people stumbling back from the front lines can ignore the fact that while these men and women may have escaped death and dismemberment, they will never be able to forget their experiences. No wonder some try to escape, contemplating everything from malingering to desertion, despite the permanent stigma of cowardice - not to mention the physical dangers.

During the first world war, more than 3,000 death sentences were passed in the British forces, of which 11 per cent were carried out. Although men were executed for murder, quitting post, violence, disobedience, mutiny, sleeping on post and casting away arms, the most common crime was desertion, and use of the death penalty was vigorously defended by the army on the grounds that it was an effective deterrent.

In this, however, it was less than successful. One first world war soldier was sentenced to death on three separate occasions - having deserted three times - before finally being made to suffer the penalty. Furthermore, the existence of the death penalty made soldiers reluctant to inform on their comrades.

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Shirking or malingering was a less risky way for cowards to act and could be quite sophisticated. Medical officers sometimes called it "brickibus aureatus" or "gold bricking". Digitalis, belladonna and thyroid extract could produce circulatory disturbances; between five and ten grains of picric acid would make the skin look jaundiced; sugar added to urine might simulate diabetes; caustic liquids might harm the skin; lesions might be provoked by biting or sucking the skin; tobacco or pepper in the eyes could induce conjunctivitis. Some men deliberately infected themselves with venereal disease, or simulated it by injecting condensed milk into their urethra. In one military hospital in Britain during the second world war, patients with a particularly infectious strand of gonorrhoea were discovered selling their venereal discharge to neighbouring bedfellows who were "recovering too rapidly to suit their tastes".

The other option was to fake madness. Private Edward Casey, a first world war cockney soldier who served in both France and Salonica, wrote: "I admit I am a coward - a bloody, bleeding coward - and I want to be a live coward not a dead blasted hero." He managed to delay further service by pretending to be shell-shocked. Although such dissemblers were exceptional, it was widely thought that psychiatric diagnoses gave "fear a respectable name". Medical officers declared themselves devastated to discover that "all men are not possessed of manhood and that the 'yellow streak' down the backs of some of our fellows is invisible to the unaided human eye".

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But during the first and second world wars, some British and American experts argued that cowards could, in fact, be identified simply by looking at them. Cowards were said to possess particular types of bodies, and the technique of "screening" recruits according to their height, chest width and weight was based as much on ideas of the relationship between physical manliness and courage as it was on healthiness.

According to one second world war scheme, recruits should be divided according to their "masculine component". A recruit possessing a "strong masculine component" had an angular and muscular body, narrow hips relative to shoulders, "flatness of the mammary area" and abdomen, a space between the thighs, "prominence of inner curvature of calves" and pubic hair running towards the navel. He should be immediately sent to the front.

Men with weak masculine components were characterised by a roundness and softness of body outline, lack of muscles, relatively greater hip breadth to shoulders, fullness in the mammary area, "feminine abdominal protuberance", close thighs, "greater outer curvature of calves" and lateral distribution of pubic hair. Unlike "masculine men", they might carry their arms at an angle at the elbow. The unmanly body indicated a womanly mind and personality.

In wartime, attitudes to such men could be harsh. After a major bombardment or particularly bloody attack, signs of emotional "weakness" could be overlooked. But in the midst of the fray, the attitude was much less sympathetic. Frightened men might be kicked, shaken and beaten by fellow servicemen afraid that cowardice was a "virus" that would spread.

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This did not mean that all acts of heroism were revered among men at the front. The "temporary lapse" of the coward was considered similar to the "momentary heroic impulse" of the highly decorated hero. Combatants recognised that many heroic acts were not performed by men possessing courage but by those scared to death. Others devalued medals because they were given to men who, either through sheer terror or the stupidest bravado, needlessly risked their own lives and the lives of their comrades.

What kept most men in the front line was not a sense of the rightness of the cause, or the fear of being executed, but a sense of loyalty to their comrades combined with a powerful resolution to ignore the threatening environment. "Fate" was deemed responsible for everything, with the attitude: "If the bullet has my name on it, there is nothing I can do."

Joanna Bourke is professor of history at Birkbeck College, London.

IV anglo-american HistoriansThe Times HigherJjune 30J2000 Mons survivor Private Thomas Highgate, who was shot as a deserter at the age of 19 northants press agency

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