THE BOYS ON BLUE BENCHES
LIFE WITH A FACIAL INJURY
Former servicemen could have a difficult transition back to civilian life in Britain after sustaining a facial injury in the First World War. Rejection and isolation in everyday life were not uncommon and many struggled to come to terms with their new faces. But this was not the only outcome. Experiences were more varied than wartime cultural narratives would suggest.
ISOLATION
​​​Men with facial injuries could have difficulty finding employment after the war and were often given jobs that kept them out of sight.
Cinema projectionist and night staff were viewed as appropriate roles, as they kept these men in the dark and away from customers.​​​
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The tendency to 'look away' from the facially-wounded in the British media extended beyond the printed page and spilled into everyday life.
Walter Ashworth, September 1917 (Gillies, Plastic Surgery of the Face, 1920)
Recovered from surgery, Walter Ashworth returned home to Bradford to pick up his old job as a skilled tailor.
His employer, however, had not expected him to have facial scars and refused to let him work in the shop front. Ashworth was instead given a menial role in the back, a demotion which upset him so much that he handed in his notice.
His employer realised his mistake when customers refused to deal with anyone else, but Ashworth’s confidence had been knocked and he couldn't bring himself to return.
"We had two night watchmen, both wounded very badly in WWI. They had gone through facial reconstructive procedures after the War but the price they paid for their Country was unbelievable. They were so disfigured, only night work was possible, they never looked us in the face..."
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SHEILA ANSTALL, NURSE AT THE QUEEN'S HOSPITAL IN 1950s
Even in spaces where facially-injured patients were 'supposed' to be, they still encountered isolation and segregation.
Benches outside the Queen’s Hospital were painted blue to warn local residents of Sidcup that someone with a facial difference might be sitting there.​​
Nothing like this existed for any other type of wound.
​​​​​​​​The standard hospital uniform of a blue suit and red tie - known as ‘hospital blues’ - also offered passersby some warning.​​​
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Convalescents with face wounds playing billiards in their 'hospital blues',1917 (IWM Q54137)
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Military hospitals
issued wounded servicemen
with a special uniform which was cheap to produce and easy to launder. It also made convalescing servicemen obvious, discouraging them from drinking or going absent without leave when they were allowed out of hospital.
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British Army hospital uniform (IWM)
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The limited exposure the British public had to injured faces in the media heightened anxieties about encountering them.
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Fearful of the patients marching through the town for their exercise, the tune of popular soldier song 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary' became a signal for mothers in Sidcup to call in their children. ​​​
Residents of Burnham-on-Crouch, where a convalescent home was situated, went as far as to petition for facially-injured men to be excluded from the town.
The 'frightening' patients of the Queen's Hospital (© BAPRAS)
"One of the things that comes back to my mind from the horrors of that time is that they used to send us to a convalescent home at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex. The people of that place requested the matron to keep us indoors, as it gave them "the shivers" to see us out walking."
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TROOPER HORACE SEWELL, KICKED IN THE FACE BY A HORSE
REJECTION
Men with facial injuries also experienced rejection in their personal relationships.
Both Lt. Stanley Cohen and Private Walter Ashworth’s fiancées left them when they found out they had been wounded in the face.​
Others were made to feel like an outsider in society.
​​Passersby would call out unpleasant names at Sydney Twinn as he walked down the street because of his noticeable jaw injury. When his wife had a baby, people crowded around the pram to see if the child had inherited his face.​
Feeling the effect of Britain's history of sensationalising visible differences, a patient recovering with a tubed pedicle half-joked to Harold Gillies that he was “earning a living as an elephant man in a travelling circus”.​​
Click me
Above: 19th century advertisement for “The Elephant Man” show
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Below: Queen's patient with a tubed pedicle (IWM HU110798)
SHAME
Some servicemen felt their own shame and embarrassment about their changed appearances.
​An anonymous ‘Corporal X’, whose face had been partially destroyed by a piece of shrapnel, broke off his own engagement before his fiancée had a chance to see him.
After catching his reflection in a shaving glass, Corporal X wrote to his fiancée Molly to ask her to release him, saying he’d fallen for another woman he met in Paris.​​​​​​​​
For Corporal X, it was better to lie and for Molly to think he had fallen in love with someone else than it was for her to see his face.​
"It wouldn’t be fair to let a girl like Molly be tied to a miserable wreck like me … I’m not going to let her sacrifice herself out of pity.”
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'CORPORAL X', REMINISCENCE OF NURSE CATHERINE BLACK
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Indeed, the reactions of loved ones weighed
heavily on the minds of the facially-wounded.
"Your son Lieut Kay [sic] asked me to write to you & tell you the worst – poor boy he had his left Eye knocked out - & his right leg Amputated, he is very ill indeed, besides the Eye & leg his jaw was fractured, so you see how very ill he must be. He wished me to write & tell you all, because he said he could not do it. He says he cannot come back to his Wife like that, but I tell him you will be glad to see him anyhow … he worries so much about things.’
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LETTER WRITTEN BY A QUEEN'S NURSE TO THE MOTHER OF
LT. ARTHUR KAYE
For some, this shame continued into later life.
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Corporal Bob Davidson was wounded in 1916 while carrying a stretcher with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was left with a large defect in the roof of his mouth and was unable to eat without making a loud snuffling sound.
Embarrassed and self-conscious, for the rest of his life he would eat alone in the kitchen.
Corporal Bob Davidson, c.1916 (© RCS)
It was often the psychological scars which ran the deepest.
William Spreckley, early stage of treatment (Gillies, Plastic Surgery of the Face, 1920)
William Spreckley, c.1945 (Spreckley family)
​William Spreckley’s physical scars were, remarkably, barely visible after Gillies had reconstructed an entirely new nose for him - indeed, Spreckley is considered one of Gillies’s most successful cases.
But Spreckley saw himself differently and was impacted by this until the end.
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"All his life he thought he looked hideous."
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ALEXANDRA KINGMAN,
DAUGHTER OF WILLIAM SPRECKLEY
Others only found peace in death.
Private David Howard was severely wounded in February 1918, losing his lower lip, chin and part of his jaw. After nine operations, he was released from hospital in September 1920 to recover before further treatment.
He was found dead by a surgeon in a nearby cottage the following Boxing Day ‘due to alcoholic poisoning’ (case notes 206228, Private D. Howard, 26 December 1920).
"I was an unlovely object."
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PRIVATE PERCY CLARE, SHOT IN THE JAW
"I am afraid you will have to prepare yourself to receive
rather an uglier duckling than before."
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REGINALD EVANS, LETTER TO HIS MOTHER AFTER BEING SHOT IN THE JAW, 5 MAR 1916
AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE
​These cases make for emotional and moving reading.
Those who returned from the First World War with visible facial differences evidently faced significant obstacles because of their changed appearances.
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But do they tell the full story? Isolation and rejection were not the only outcome for British servicemen who suffered facial injuries.
"[Though he faced] prejudice because of his disfigurement, he never let it get him down … he carried his facial scars and a shrapnel-riddled back all his life with dignity and bravery … He was an extremely popular man, very dapper and always carried himself proudly and without embarrassment and socialised a great deal."​
DIANE SMITH, GRANDDAUGHTER OF WALTER ASHWORTH
CONCLUSION
British newspapers often wrote about servicemen with facial injuries in sensationalising terms and, without photographs to counter these stories, derogatory and inaccurate stereotypes of these men became common perceptions.
For British veterans who had sustained injuries to the face and now lived with a visible facial difference, rejection, isolation and shame were real challenges.
But, alongside this, many also found support and acceptance. The vast majority of facially-injured servicemen went on to rebuild happy and successful lives, defying many of these prejudicial assumptions.