SUSTAINING INJURIES
The First World War saw a huge rise in the number of facial injuries. This can be largely attributed to the nature of the conflict's warfare. Servicemen received early treatment to these wounds close to the battlefield.
AN UNPRECEDENTED SCALE
Injuries to the face and head were nothing new to the British armed forces in the First World War.
In 1794, Admiral Horatio Nelson lost sight in his right eye after being struck in the face by cannonball shrapnel during the Siege of Calvi. Going on to lead the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, he was a visible figure with a face wound in the British military long before 1914.
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Horatio Nelson, 1799 (National Maritime Museum)
Satirical print of Nelson wearing an eye patch, 1798 (©The Trustees of the British Museum)
But while face injuries were not exclusive to the First World War, they were happening with a severity and scale unseen before.
It’s estimated that over 60,500 British soldiers sustained head and face injuries during the First World War.
Even this is a
conservative estimate.
French and German figures sit between 300,000-500,000, so it’s likely that the number of British cases is even higher.
"The floodgates in my neck seemed to burst, and the blood poured out in torrents... I could feel something lying loosely in my left cheek, as though I had a chicken bone in my mouth. It was in reality half my jaw, which had been broken off, teeth and all, and was floating about in my mouth."
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LT. JOHN GLUBB, HIT IN THE JAW, 1917
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WHY?
A number of reasons account for the unprecedented severity and scale of face injuries in the First World War. Click on each box to find out more.
"My head at the moment was inclined to the right, for I was shouting at the men. Like a flash I remembered that about fifty yards to the left of me there was a ‘German strong point’ still occupied by the Germans. A bullet entered my left temple; it must have come from a sniper in that strong point, for I found some days later that it had emerged through the centre of my right eye. I remember distinctly clutching my head and sinking to the ground, and all the time I was thinking, ‘So this is the end – the finish of it all; shot through the head, mine is a fatal wound.’"
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CAPT. GILBERT NOBBS, SHOT IN THE HEAD, c.1916
RESCUE
Injuries to the face and head were widely assumed to mean certain death for servicemen.
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British soldiers were ill-prepared to deal with face wounds themselves and often needed further medical assistance.
​But plagued by a range of obstacles, just getting off the battlefield was a challenge for the facially-injured.​​​​
EARLY TREATMENT
Yet even if men managed to leave the battlefield alive, early treatment for face wounds at the front was rudimentary.
Pulled from the heart of the action, servicemen fell into the hands of trauma surgeons operating in chaotic hospitals close to the frontline.​​
'The Operating Theatre, 41st Casualty Clearing Station, 1918', John Hodgson Lobley (IWM ART 3750)
"The operating theatre looked like a butcher’s shop. There were big pools and splashes of blood on the floor. Bits of flesh and skin and bone were littered everywhere. The gowns of the orderlies were stained and bespattered with blood and yellow picric acid [an antiseptic]. Each bucket was full of blood-sodden towels, splints and bandages, with a foot, or a hand, or a severed knee joint overhanging the rim."
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BRITISH JOURNALIST FRITZ AUGUST VOIGT DESCRIBING A FRONTLINE HOSPITAL
Trying to treat as many of the wounded as possible, these surgeons often just roughly stitched up face wounds to stop the haemorrhaging, without taking into account the amount of flesh that had been lost.
Men were left with contorted faces, some unable to eat or drink.
Moreover, in sealing these wounds, surgeons were, in some cases, also sealing these men’s fates. Dirt and bacteria from the battlefield frequently became sutured into the face, causing infection.
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Sergeant Sidney Beldam
"A good deal of discharge came from my mouth, and I was very miserable, with my pillow always covered with blood and slime. I was later told that I looked very bad, with my mouth dragged down, discharging and filthy, and with my head and neck all bandages."
LT. JOHN GLUBB, AFTER AN EARLY OPERATION NEAR THE FRONTLINE IN FRANCE
CONCLUSION
In many ways, the odds were stacked against those who sustained injuries to the face.
Coming up against new weapons designed to inflict maximum damage, hesitant medical assistance and limited understandings of face wounds, servicemen who sustained facial injuries were lucky to leave the front alive.
But the journey was not over.​ While early treatment on the frontline kept these men alive, the long road to recovery began far away from the battlefield.