REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
A REFLECTION ON TODAY
The First World War is no longer in living memory. The last veteran to serve in the trenches passed away in 2011. Even the Queen’s Hospital, which continued to treat veterans after the conflict, marks 100 years since its closure this year. So how do we remember the conflict and the facially-wounded in Britain today? And how much – or how little – has changed for people living with visible facial differences?
​Although ending over 100 years ago, the First World War still resonates deeply with many people in Britain today, and remembering the conflict has become a central part of British identity and culture. Each November, millions of us in the UK wear a red poppy and pause for two minutes of silence to pay respect; if you attended school in Britain, you likely at least recognise - if not know by heart - poems written by British servicemen such as Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est, Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier and Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen which appear in one form or another on the English curriculum each year; the UK government even set aside £50 million for the centenary of the conflict, with the aim to ‘capture our national spirit in every corner of the country’. On the whole, remembrance of the First World War is something that people in Britain take very seriously.
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​Unlike in other participating countries such as Germany, opposition to remembering the war is almost unheard of in the UK. Whether people see it as a bloody yet heroic defeat of an aggressor or little more than a futile waste of life, it is almost universally-agreed that those who gave their lives in the First World War should be remembered with reverence and respect. Indeed, even in the satirical comedy Blackadder Goes Forth, which largely mocks the war and those who organised it, the infamous final scene of the poppy-covered battlefield ensures that the dead are still remembered with a great deal of seriousness and sincerity.
The final scene of Blackadder Goes Forth (BBC, 1989)
​And yet, while there is much to be admired in
this reverence for the dead and resolution to
honouring them, it has led to a neglection of
the many other combatants who were not
killed but nevertheless still affected by the
conflict. Alongside the 780,000 British and Irish
servicemen who died, over two million more
returned home wounded, maimed or
permanently disabled. Each year, however,
these men are simply left out of Britain’s
commemorative events and discussions.
'The Glorious Dead' inscription on the Cenotaph, London (founded in 1920)
​​In no group is this more evident than amongst the facially-wounded. Whilst war memorials listing the names of those killed can be found in almost every village, town and city in Britain, the first dedicated to the 60,500 servicemen who sustained facial injuries in the First World War was founded in just 2019. Indeed, these men have been largely forgotten from our understanding of the conflict. When we think of the ‘wounded Tommy’, we instinctively think of someone with an amputated leg or an arm in a sling, not an injured face. Even the
Stereotypical wounded servicemen on crutches and with arms in slings, 1917 (IWM PST0415)
exhibitions, books and academic papers which have been produced on facial injury tend to focus on Harold Gillies and the medical advancements made. Rarely are the lives and experiences of the men presented or discussed. In a more contemporary but equally revealing omission, to my knowledge, only a single veteran with visible facial injuries has been incorporated into the Remembrance Sunday Cenotaph Parade in the last 10 years.
Britain’s neglection of the facially-injured becomes particularly clear when you compare it to the prominent role the gueules cassées - ‘men with broken faces’ - occupy in France’s parades, monuments and exhibitions for the Great War. So why such a difference?
It can be at least partly explained by the countries’ different experiences of the conflict which shaped initial remembrance practices of the 1920s and ‘30s. In France, the heavy engagement in combat from the outset and the resulting extreme losses (almost double the number of British dead) and devastation on the landscape were impossible to ignore. Veterans with facial injuries were publicised as walking anti-war propaganda to prevent it from happening again. For a British public experiencing widespread bereavement
l'Union des Blessés de la Face et de la Tête memorial to the 'gueules cassées' in France (UBFT)
and simply seeking to move on, however, overlooking reminders of the destructive consequences of war made sense. It was understandably important to those in mourning in Britain to remember the conflict as altogether just and righteous in order to believe that the deaths of their sons, husbands and brothers hadn’t been in vain. Seeing men who had suffered what was thought to be the very worst loss of all disturbed this narrative.
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British mourners at the burial of the 'Unknown Warrior', 1920 (IWM)
Yet while this avoidance may have been understandable in the years immediately after the war, continuing the same remembrance practice today makes less sense. It’s natural to feel sadness about the scale of tragedy the First World War created, and even empathy with what our ancestors must have gone through, but we can’t claim to still be mourning in the same way. These are no longer the deaths of close family members, and so our continuation to exclude and avoid the facially-wounded in Britain suggests something else is also at play.
Undertaking this project, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about how servicemen with facial injuries were perceived in Britain in the early twentieth century, and it’s led me to reflect on our attitudes towards people with visible facial differences today and how much - or how little - has really changed. Put plainly, our continuation to look away from these men within British remembrance is also simply just a symptom of the ongoing prejudice and unconscious bias against people with facial differences in the UK today. Indeed, psychological studies have found that an onlooker’s ‘discomfort’ exists towards people with visible facial differences whereby people struggle with where to look and what to say, leading to their avoidance and ostracism altogether. ​​​​
Watch Changing Faces* campaigners Dylan and David discuss their experiences of living with a visible difference in the UK; representations of facial differences in the media today; and the steps we still need to take to move towards a more inclusive world.
*Changing Faces is a charity dedicated to providing support and promoting respect for everyone with a visible difference. Find out more about their work here.
Some of the representations and language used to describe facially-injured servicemen in this exhibition are shocking and that is a positive sign that attitudes towards people with visible facial differences have changed for the better. But Dylan and David’s reflections show that echoes of the way these men were treated in Britain in the early twentieth century still linger on. Feelings of isolation, a lack of visibility, and prejudicial stereotyping in the media are all still realities for the 596,000 people living with a facial difference in the UK today. Worryingly, moreover, this is on the rise. Up from 34% in 2019, now half (49%) of people with a visible difference in Britain report that they regularly experience hostile behaviour.
‘A lot of the time people forget that there are people out there with visible differences, but they don't get the attention … they might have a lot to say but they're not given the chance or the time to speak.’
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– Dylan, Changing Faces campaigner,
interview with Bia Cottenden
So while the injured faces of the First World War may be an uncomfortable topic to explore for some, it is precisely this discomfort which makes it important. Dylan and David comment that, ultimately, increased visibility of people with facial differences is what is key to changing attitudes. Remembering these servicemen - seeing their faces, hearing their voices, knowing their stories - allows us to appreciate and normalise the remarkable variety of people and human experiences which do and have always existed. ​​