Ask anyone and they will have a pretty good idea what sort of a bloke Sherlock Holmes is. He’s clever — sometimes too clever — erudite, shrewd, eccentric, a bit of a babe magnet
but above all a winner. He always comes out on top even with the ghastly and dastardly Moriarty. Holmes is a hero. But what about Watson? Sometimes he’s a slouch and other
times he’s a swashbuckler, it depends on who has written the story or who is playing him. In any event we are never quite certain about him.
But the facts upon which he is modelled are fascinating. First, Conan Doyle was a doctor in general practice and we know that he toyed with going into the army. That, of course, is exactly what
Watson did and despite the fact that some of the events are a bit contorted, his military service seems to be based on that of Dr Alexander Preston, who was wounded in Afghanistan during the
horrible melee at Maiwand in July 1880.
In A Study In Scarlet, Holmes first meets
Watson and deduces that:
‘He has undergone hardships and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly…where could an English Army doctor have seen such hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in
Afghanistan.’
And that is why Martin Freeman’s portrayal of Watson in the most recent BBC TV series, Sherlock, resonates today. Freeman takes the
clues that Doyle litters about his scripts and expands them into full scale post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Doyle tells us that Watson was depressed by the death of his first wife, and there
are hints in the way that he tries to dampen Holmes’ wilder ideas that life is not always straight forward for Watson. And when you look at what Preston/Watson actually went through you can
see why this might be the case.
Preston was the medical officer of the 66th Regiment at Maiwand. The British were opposed by a mixed force of Afghani regulars and the nineteenth century equivalent of Al-Qaeda, the Ghazis. Of the
502 men of the 66th who went into action that day, 286 were killed — mainly slashed to death by swords and daggers at very close quarters — and another 32 wounded in just over four
hours. Several hundred sepoys were killed in the same gruesome manner.
Maiwand has been forgotten, but it was one of the worst disasters for British arms in Victoria’s time. (The irony is that British troops today have a base at Maiwand facing the same tribesmen
that their forebears did whilst serving in the same regiments.) You can see why this might have left its mark on any man, why Doyle nods at it and why it is wholly reasonable to expect that Watson
slept rather less than soundly. I have developed this theme in my short story, Doctor Watson’s War, looking at the Victorian
response to PTSD and how, rather surprisingly, that society was wholly sympathetic towards it.
Despite the marks of war on mind and body, Watson wasn’t shy in other departments. As he claims, he had, ‘an experience of women which extends to many nations and three separate
continents.’ Whatever happened at Maiwand, whatever legacy it left, at least one of Doctor Watson’s appetites wasn’t blunted!
Dr Watson’s War by Patrick Mercer is published by Endeavour Press
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