Lieutenant Charles Vesta Victor Coombs
Born 1879 in Exeter, Devonshire England
Enlisted with the 169th Battalion
Died December 27th, 1919, London, England
Buried in Canadian Military Cemetery in Brookwood, Surrey UK
Two years after he laid down his arms, deep into the night on Boxing Day 1919 a colossal battle raged inside him. Lying amongst the sheets he thrashed and churned, grasping and punching and hopelessly trying to fight them back. With screams and bloodcurdling shouts, he attempted to ward off the unseen opponents, yet the enemy continually and relentlessly bore down upon him. He sought to evade their daggers with thrusts and violent spins, ducking every jab levelled upon him in the darkness. He dug his face into his pillow so as to not see them and clasped his hands around his ears to shut them out but the onslaught continued unabated. With increasing ferocity…louder…louder... the screams of terror, of fear and fright, of noises that he only last heard when he was in the trenches all but consumed him. There was no escape from it…for the enemy was inside his own mind.
This man…like so many, many others who served in the trenches of the Western Front and returned home a sick, broken, devastated man fighting for his life. The things these men saw; the inhuman, inhumane, unbelievably shocking and gruesome things they witnessed were imprinted into the back and fronts of their minds. In the daytime, they would seek shelter behind the normalcy they so much wanted and needed. They look to become human again by spending time with their children, or their wives, returning to their jobs and spending time with friends…however it was not the days these men feared. It was the nights.
Today, we refer to the condition where the minds of men are bombarded by the horrendous memories and experiences of war as PTSD…or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At the time it was referred to neurasthenia, PUO (Pyrexia of an Unknown Origin), Trench Fever or Shell Shock. The soldier whose experience were described above was Lieutenant Charles Vesta Victor Coombs of the 116th Ontario County Battalion.
Coombs was born in Exeter, Devonshire England in 1879. While he did not emigrate to Canada until 1913 at the age of 34, he would have been a successful business professional. When he arrived in Canada he worked as an executive in an Advertising firm and Charles and his wife Jesse lived in a grand house in the tidy neighbourhood of Danforth. From their house Charles would look out and down his serene tree-lined street and see only success, peace and prosperity. When he lived in England, he served with the Devonshire Territorials and joined the 109th Regiment, a Toronto-based militia unit, when he arrived in Canada. With the recruitment drive hitting every city and town in Canada in the fall of 1915, on the 17th of January 1916, Coombs decided to enlist with the 169th Battalion. It would not be until later that fall when Charles would bid adieu to his wife and set off with his unit to England via Halifax.
Charles descent as both a man and a soldier began late in the evening of July 22nd, 1917. It was on this night where his Company was positioned along a sector called the Mericourt Maze, outside of the suburb of Avion France. His orders were to lead his platoon over the top and following a bombardment of the German positions, take their front-line trenches which were situated in front of a slag heap called Fosse 4. That was the plan...however an hour before Zero Hour the Germans released a gas attack on the Canadian positions. Having never yet being entrusted to lead an attack combined with limited experience recognizing a gas attack, the men in his platoon grappled with their units and desperately tried to affix their box respirators in time. Struck with fear in the darkness, they stumbled and struggled to maintain composure when an artillery bombardment was set upon their position. Coombs was knocked out by the concussion and left helpless, prone and injured in the gas-soaked trenches. Lieutenant Coombs first time leading men in an attack also turned out to be his last. He was sent back to England to recover…and would never again return to the front.
Following the injuries Coombs received he returned to England and spent almost a year in recovery in hospital. While he was able to recover from exposure to the gas, it took him some time to recover from the accompanying paralysis and significant brain injury that resulted from the concussion of the shellfire. The injuries of the brain tend to do significant damage to the men fighting in the trenches. The challenge is that the shellfire on the Western Front was omnipresent, and every man was a potential victim from its’ effects. The second issue is the fact that brain injuries are hard to diagnose as there is no apparent damage to the skin or body of the solider. Yet if you can look inside their skulls, the damage was devastating. The concussion from the blasts caused a soldier’s brain to violently reverberate back and forth inside their skull deeply bruising the organ. The result was the men experiencing constant pain, headaches and confusion leading to feelings of anxiety, stress, speech disorder and unbearable nightmares. After a year slowly recovering and recognizing that he was in no condition to return to the front, Coombs was transferred to a to a safer, quieter, more relaxed situation. He was sent to the War Records Office before being discharged and sent home in May of 1919.
The details on the challenges he brought home to Canada are unknown, however he did return to England less than two months after arriving…and returned alone. Now, either separated or divorced, his descent continued. Many soldiers suffering from PTSD endured sleepless nights where they would suffer from hallucinations or have visions replay over and over again in their minds. With each sleep, the terrifying memories they experienced in the trenches would return to them. The horrifying sounds of death and destruction would violently wake them from their slumber. Often, the only thing they knew that could keep the monsters at bay was to drown them in the whisky. Thus, night after night, they medicated themselves with drink until they were reduced to a comatic state. While whisky may have provided them with a momentary respite, the nightmares always returned, often with a vengeance and offered the men no true respite from the enfilade.
Late in the evening of Dec 26th 1919, despite his desperate attempts to employ a bevy of whisky beverages to quiet and silence them, the beasts were reawakened in the mind of the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant was staying at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. The hotel chambermaid afterwards admitted to serving him 3 whiskies, however this was probably on top of numerous ones he had already consumed before. He had friends from his time serving in the war and they were concerned about their mate. They would call upon him and call again…and on this night they felt that something was amiss and rushed over to the hotel to check in on him. However, when they arrived it would prove that they came too late. They opened the door to his room and saw a man wrestling with the monsters of his mind, “muttering to himself” and “grabbing at imaginary things in the air” above his bed. It was at this time, when in a fit of desperation, Lieutenant Charles Coombs reached beneath the pillow and grabbed his revolver and to the shock of those who had come to save him, he put the gun to his head and silenced the beasts.
Lieutenant Charles Coombs death was ascribed to be self inflicted whilst of unsound mind. He is buried at the Canadian Military Cemetery in Brookwood Surrey, UK. Remember him.