WWI Victoria Cross recipient may have mental illness to thank for bravery, WA historian says

A WA war hero who received the Victoria Cross for his conduct in France during World War I may owe his bravery to his psychiatric condition, a Perth historian says.

Martin O'Meara came to WA from Ireland as a young man and travelled from place to place, getting labouring work where he could find it, often in the South West town of Collie.

He enlisted in the AIF in August 1915 in 16th Battalion at the age of 30 and was sent to Egypt, then to the Western Front in France where his conduct earned him the Victoria Cross.

"He was acting as a stretcher-bearer and went repeatedly into no man's land, sometimes under fire, to save the wounded," said historian Philippa Martyr.

"He is thought to have saved over 25 individuals in this way. He also brought supplies up to the front in dangerous conditions."

Wounded several times in the course of his service, O'Meara was promoted from corporal to sergeant and received his VC in London from King George V.

O'Meara returned from war in 1918.

However, he spent the rest of his life in mental institutions after being certified insane.

Ms Martyr, who works at Graylands Hospital for psychiatric patients, has done extensive research on O'Meara.

She said it was impossible to retrospectively diagnose the soldier's mental condition given few records existed about it, but it was possible his illness gave him unexpected courage.

"Perhaps it was that mental illness that also gave him the strength to do the amazing things he did when he was under pressure," she said.

"People with a mental illness, even ordinary everyday people, can be gifted in ways that we don't expect."

Churchill's 'black dog' key in war leadership?

Ms Martyr said while the exact nature of O'Meara's mental illness was not known, the possibility that it gave rise to his bravery was "tantalising".

"What if O'Meara's brave acts under fire were actually made possible by his mental illness?" she said.

"What if he had actually lived for many years with some kind of mental disorder - that he was one of those people who lived in a slightly different world from everyone else, but that this was precisely what made it possible for him to take those enormous risks and save those lives, when he was under pressure?"

She said exploring the links between extreme courage and mental illness might offer a way of celebrating O'Meara's condition, instead of glossing over it.

"People often talk about Winston Churchill and his celebrated 'black dog', but if you took away the depression, would Churchill have been such a great war leader?" she said.

"T.E Lawrence is another example; someone who was both very brave but also mentally rather unstable. In fact, military histories are full of people like this.

"Sometimes their contribution is a terrible one, like the insane Lord Cardigan who ordered the fatal Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War.

"But perhaps it's equally possible that their contributions could also be brilliant and courageous, precisely because they weren't 'normal'."

Certified insane on return

Upon his return to WA in 1918, O'Meara was quarantined at Woodmans Point because of the Spanish flu pandemic in Perth at the time.

Ms Martyr said it had been reported that O'Meara was already insane when he returned and had to be immediately locked up.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," she said.

She said he had given a coherent newspaper interview the week he returned, but then began to behave quite differently, with his military medical record stating he had "suicidal and violent tendencies … rambling in his statements ... staring, overstrung appearance."

He was transferred to Stromness, a small hospital for returned servicemen with mental health issues, and certified insane on November 30.

In January 1919, he was admitted to Claremont Hospital for the Insane and later moved to the newly-built Lemnos Hospital for mentally ill veterans.

Documents record him dying in 1935 of "chronic mania and exhaustion", and he was buried with full military honours.

Ms Martyr said O'Meara's plight attracted mixed attention at the time, with most newspaper articles about him carefully avoiding any mention of his illness.

"On the one hand, he was a local hero; on the other, he was a local embarrassment," she said.

"His 'illness' was always described in the press in the most circumspect of ways. His funeral coverage is a great example of this."

She said while his funeral was reported extensively, any mention of his madness was avoided.

Some historians believed O'Meara received barbaric treatment in various institutions, including electric shock therapy and being restrained in a straitjacket for up to 23 hours a day.

But Ms Martyr said it was more likely that he was given above average treatment because of his status as a decorated war veteran.

She said while the former soldier was put into a straitjacket at night because of his unpredictable behaviour, he was "almost certainly not" restrained in one for 23 hours a day.

Electric shock therapy was not invented until three years after O'Meara's death, and although his mental health records were not able to be accessed until 100 years after his death, Ms Martyr said he may have been treated with sedatives.

"But there's nothing in them anywhere to suggest that he was treated worse than anyone else in Claremont; in fact, it seems that he was treated rather better because his wartime achievement was respected, and he was seen as a victim of war, not as a 'lunatic' per se," she said.

"I would think that when he was transferred to Lemnos, which was built for men with wartime psychiatric injury, he would have been something of a celebrity. But this is just a guess - we know so little about the history of Lemnos."

No chance of return to community

Ms Martyr said it was time to view O'Meara not as a victim of war but as someone who was functional despite his illness, and was able to work, join the Army and support his country.

"The real tragedy is that there was so little that could be done for O'Meara, once his illness erupted so publicly," Ms Martyr said.

"For him, there were no choices, and no possibility that he could ever live in the community again, even if he'd become 'well' for a long period of time."

Fortunately, times have changed, and Ms Martyr said the Vietnam War in particular had improved attitudes towards and treatment of veterans with psychological and emotional problems.

"I think we are now much more sensitive to the realities of what extreme stress can do to a human being," she said.

"It can bring out the best in them, but it can also bring out the worst."