EFFACED FROM SOCIETY
CULTURAL NARRATIVES & PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS
​In Britain, significant social stigma existed towards injuries to the face. They were seen differently to wounds affecting the rest of the body. Examining the press, the arts and government propaganda, this section explores how servicemen with facial injuries were perceived and thought of in Britain during and immediately after the First World War.​
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WOUNDED TOMMIES
During the First World War, every part of the body was at risk of being injured.
41,000 British servicemen had limbs amputated, 272,000 received leg and arm injuries which did not require removal, and 89,000 more sustained other serious injuries. ​​​​​
A cultural
narrative is a shared story or interpretation that is shaped by the beliefs, values,
and experiences of a particular group.
In total, over two million British servicemen returned home injured
or permanently disabled.
The high number of casualties meant that wounded and disabled men became a regular sight in Britain.
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Wounded Dominion troops on the streets of Britain (IWM Q67411)
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A large sign requesting 'Quiet for the Wounded' hangs outside Charing Cross Hospital at Agar Street, London, September 1914 (IWM Q53311)
"…when the Dome was turned into a hospital and the men who had lost legs were collected there, they had all felt horrified. But now when in most parts of the town, on the front and on the piers, you saw swarms of such men, it had ceased to affect most people."
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CAROLINE PLAYNE, ON BRIGHTON'S ROYAL PAVILION AS A HOSPITAL
A HERO'S WELCOME?
Yet war wounds were not just accepted in Britain, but celebrated.​
​
Signs of injury to the body, such as missing limbs, crutches and slings, gave servicemen heroic status as someone who had fought and sacrificed for his country. ​​
"...badges of their courage, the hall-mark of their glorious service, their proof of patriotism."​
EDWARD MARSHALL, HELP FOR WOUNDED HEROES: THE STORY OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LIMBS, 1920
"Next to the loss of life, the sacrifice of a limb is the greatest sacrifice a man can make for his country."
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'THE DEBT OF HONOUR', THE TIMES, 12 DEC 1920.
Servicemen with these injuries were highly visible in British wartime media. ​
​The stereotype of the wounded yet cheerful Tommy with an amputated leg or an arm in a sling frequently appeared in newspapers, art and government propaganda.​
Historian Joanna
Bourke has suggested that while servicemen feared being injured,
there was a degree of romanticising and envy of wounds and disablements.
Stereotypical image of the cheerful
wounded serviceman
(Glenside Hospital Museum)
Wounded servicemen were often portrayed as having a cheerful and stoical attitude despite their injuries.
(Daily Sketch, 30 April 1915)
Crutches and slings were among the most common depictions of wounds and disability (IWM PST0415)
The image of servicemen with these injuries was used to encourage other men to enlist.
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"WE HAVE FOUGHT FOR YOU
NOW BOYS PLAY THE GAME & FIGHT FOR US!"
(National Archives of Australia, A18613606​)
"Today some boys in blue was passin’ me,
And some of ‘em ‘ad no legs to walk,
And – well, I couldn’t look ‘em in the face,
And so I’m goin’, goin’ to declare."
​​
'THE VOLUNTEER',
ROBERT SERVICE
The 'boys in blue' was a common nickname for the wounded owing to the colour of the military hospital
uniform.
​​But not all wounded servicemen received this hero's welcome.​​
Injuries to the face were not viewed in the same way as injuries to other parts of the body. ​​
​
"What kind of vision does your mind conjure up when you hear or see the word ‘wounded’? Probably if you are an average stay-at-home civilian, a limping man in a blue hospital suit or, at worst, an indefinite huddled figure on a stretcher. But there are other wounded that the mind instinctively avoids contemplating. There are men who come from battle still walking firmly, still with capable hands, unscarred bodies, but who are the most tragic of all war’s victims, whose endurance is to be tried in the hardest days, who are now half strangers among their own people, and reluctant even to tread the long-wished-for paths of home. In medical language they are classed as ‘Facial and Jaw Cases.’ Think that phrase over a minute and realise what it may mean."
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'MIRACLES THEY WORK AT FROGNAL', DAILY SKETCH, MAR 1918
THE WORST LOSS OF ALL
Different types of wounds were thought to impact men in different ways.
While injuries to limbs made servicemen heroes, wounds to the face were seen as the worst fate that could befall a man – a fate worse than death.
"So intimate and sacred, somehow, and so precious a man’s face to his being that the loss of a limb – grave as it is – seems to many a trifle to it."
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'WORST LOSS OF ALL: PUBLIC DEEPLY MOVED BY WAR-TIME REVELATION', MANCHESTER EVENING CHRONICLE, MAY 1918​
LOOKING AWAY
'Making his first attempt to walk with the new limbs: A wounded soldier at Roehampton House with artificial legs’, Illustrated London News, 16 Oct 1915 (© Illustrated London News Ltd / Mary Evans)
With stigma surrounding injuries to the face growing, the British media overwhelmingly chose to simply 'look away' from facially-wounded servicemen.​
They could be written about in unflinching detail, but images of men who had sustained facial injuries were almost never shown to the British public in newspapers, art or official posters.
​​
Coverage of men with other war wounds was far more common.
On the very rare occasion a serviceman with facial wounds was shown, his injuries would be largely concealed.
​
​​In 1917, the Daily Mail featured an image of Queen Mary meeting a facially-wounded patient at the Queen's Hospital. The patient, however, was positioned so that all that could be seen was the side of his bandages.
'Picture Gallery', Daily Mail, 16 Nov 1917
Patriotic newspaper placard, Daily Mirror (n.d.)
(IWM PST13007)
For civilians in Britain, the sight of a face wound was unsettling evidence of the horror and destruction taking place at the front to their husbands, sons and brothers.
The lack of visibility of facial injuries was in part because of the desire to keep the horrors of war away from the public.​
15 million people read a daily or Sunday paper in Britain during the First World War, making newspapers a key way propaganda was circulated.
Patriotic journalists wrote headlines and featured stories which aimed to keep morale high in Britain and encourage men to enlist.​​
Photographs
and artworks of
facially-wounded British servicemen did exist, but these were created for medical purposes and were not intended to be seen by
the public.
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"Nowhere does the sheer horror and savagery of modern warfare appeal so vividly to the mind and senses as it does in a tour of these wards. A shattered arm excites our pity, an absent leg arouses our compassion, but a face ravaged by shrapnel or 'star shell' cannot fail to arouse a certain amount of repulsion. Better, one feels, would be the majesty of death than these mutilations of features that make us what we appear outwardly to our fellow men."
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'MOULDING NEW FACES. FROM A SURGEON', DAILY MAIL, 15 SEP 1916
FROM HORROR TO RELIEF
Coverage of the facially-wounded, therefore, made sure to lead British readers from horror to relief.
Reports of these injuries in newspapers largely focused on men healing. They emphasised the medical treatment they were receiving and the innovative reconstructive surgery taking place.
Surgeons like Harold Gillies were presented as god-like heroes who could perform miracles and return the facially-wounded to acceptability.​
'Plastic Surgery Wonders', Daily Mail, 3 Nov 1921
"...soon the scientist will rival Nature herself in creating and rebuilding … the most extraordinary medical discovery of this wonderful age … terrible facial injuries can be so patched up as to remove all horror and grotesqueness and make the sufferer quite normal again."
'OUR HOSPITAL PAGE', DAILY GRAPHIC, JULY 1917
''Petting before potting - the men take much interest in the rabbits', Daily Sketch, 12 Jun 1918
Despite the emphasis on these 'miracles', images of the actual surgical process were not shown.
The few photographs published of facially-wounded men depicted them engaging in rehabilitation activities, whilst concealing any permanent scarring or changes.​
The horror - and guilt - the British public felt towards men with face wounds was eased by the marvels of modern medicine.​
"Their success in making good the wreckage of the war is practically complete ... The maimed men are to be found sitting alongside you in omnibuses and trains, working in shop and office, on the land, or back in the Navy and Army again. You would not have an inkling of what had happened to them."
'PLASTIC SURGERY WONDERS', DAILY MAIL, 3 NOV 1921
CONCLUSION
In Britain, injuries to the face were seen as the cruellest fate the war could deal, worse even than being killed. While injuries to limbs altered just the body, face wounds threatened a man's identity and humanity. ​​Consequently, in the British media, facially-wounded servicemen were dehumanised, unofficially censored and assumed to be hopeless.
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But how closely did these cultural narratives mirror reality? Were face wounds really a fate worse than death for the men who sustained them?
​What was life actually like in Britain for those who lived with a facial injury?
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