A Fate Worse Than Death? Tales of Cheerfulness, Acceptance and Agency amongst Facially-Wounded British Soldiers in the Great War
"To the victims of such grievous injury, the mental suffering is acute. They suffer frequently from terrible depression, hiding themselves in corners of hospital wards, refusing to return to home or friends in dread of the pity, or even worse, the repulsion, that they know their awful disfigurement would evoke."
‘New Features For Old: Wonders of Plastic Surgery’, Morning Advertiser, 27 July 1917.
Comments like this about men who had sustained facial injuries during the First World War could be found in almost every newspaper in Britain during the conflict. Indeed, in Britain, injuries to the face were widely considered a fate worse than death. But how accurate is this?
While reintegration into society was certainly not smooth for British servicemen returning from war with a face wound, narratives of total rejection and misery somewhat obscure the reality of living with a facial injury. Life was not always as bleak as press cuttings like this suggest.
A great many of the facially-wounded found at least a degree of self-acceptance of their changed appearance. Although missing his nose, Joseph Pickard refused to let the prejudice he encountered control his life:
Joseph Pickard (© Media Drum World)
“I think it was the first time I was out the hospital and I wanted to go down and have a look at the place … I passed about two or three streets and when I got there all the kids in the blinking neighbourhood had gathered. Talking, looking, gawping … I could’ve hit the whole blinking lot of ‘em. I knew what they were looking at. So I turned round and I went back to hospital … I was sitting one day and I thought, it’s no good, I can stop like this for the rest of my life. I said you’ve got to face it sometime, so I went out again, after that I just walked out, any time I was going anywhere I just walked out.”
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Oral history interview with Joseph Pickard, conducted by Peter Hart, 1986 (© IWM 8946)
It would have been understandable if Pickard became a recluse after this experience, but instead he exhibited significant resilience and refused to live his life dictated by the reactions his face received. Indeed, when you look through the medical case notes of the patients at the Queen’s Hospital, far from ‘hiding themselves in corners of hospital wards’ as the Morning Advertiser suggests, you sense an eagerness to move on from medical treatment and simply get on with life. This is unsurprising; most were young men who had spent much of their adult life conscripted on active service and then recovering in hospital. After spending over two years at Sidcup between 1917-1919, 24-year-old Private G Young’s record reads:
“Patient has been advised to return after 6 months, but he does not wish for any further treatment, and is quite satisfied with present condition, which, however, could be considerably improved.”
Royal College of Surgeons of England, (MS0513/1/1/41)​
Despite room for further reconstructive surgery, Young had few issues with his appearance and was ready to begin his post-war, post-hospital life instead. A visible facial difference did not always mean men felt hopeless and isolated themselves.
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Historian Eilis Boyle has suggested that this cheerful stoicism that facially-injured veterans showed towards their wounds and post-injury lives was a deliberate strategy to reject the narratives being told about them and change public perceptions. Certainly, the decision by those like Pickard and Young to do this - to get on with their lives and, in the words of Pickard, simply ‘face it’ - paid off. Pickard recalled that when he returned to his home in Alnwick, he found that people became used to his appearance and if he did not reference his face then ‘nobody would be bothered with it’ (Pickard, IWM 8946). This was not an uncommon experience. While many did face rejection because of their visible difference, many also found support and acceptance - particularly amongst their families and local communities. Although Private Walter Ashworth’s first fiancée broke off their engagement because of his new appearance, disgusted by her behaviour, a friend of the fiancée struck up a friendship with Ashworth which later turned to love. They married and went on to have a daughter. Similarly, when Captain John Wilson arrived at the Queen’s Hospital with a severe face wound after his tank was hit, he remembered his wife ‘visited quite happily’ and his parents were pleased that he had ‘got home in one piece’ (Wilson, LIDDLE. WW1.TR.08.69). For Wilson’s parents, his face wound was not a loss at all.
Wedding photograph at Queen's Hospital. Gillies is seated on the far right (© BAPRAS)
Indeed, many went on to lead happy and successful lives, challenging the perceived limitations of life with a facial difference. Pickard went on to occupy a public-facing role as the manager of a clock-making shop; Wilson - using skills learnt from the Queen’s Hospital classes - became one of the officially-appointed tailors to the Netherlands Air Force; Lieutenant John Glubb even returned to the army after his jaw injury and became the Commander General of Transjordan’s Arab Legion from 1939-1956. Far from an exclusionary, his jaw injury inspired his endearing nickname Abu Hanaik (‘father of the little jaw’) amongst his men.
'Father of the little jaw', Commander General John Bagot Glubb, Jordan, 1950 (public domain)
It’s clear, then, that whilst examining how men with facial injuries were presented in mainstream media is key to understanding how they were perceived in Britain during the First World War, it’s important to reconcile these wider narratives with individual experiences. Experiences of living with a facial injury in Britain were much more varied than accounts in newspapers like the Morning Advertiser would suggest. Although undeniably coming up against significant obstacles because of the way they looked, many also found support and acceptance and went on to rebuild successful and fulfilled lives. Perhaps more importantly still, however, these stories also illustrate that the facially-wounded exercised a great deal of agency in their own recovery. While we often focus on the work surgeons like Harold Gillies did to help these men recover, we should not forget the resilience and courage British servicemen showed to rebuild their own lives.
​Explore Further
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Level 1: Oral history interview with Joseph Pickard, conducted by Peter Hart, 1986, Reel 18 (© IWM 8946).
Level 3: Andrew Bamji, ‘Facial Surgery: The Patient’s Experience’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle, Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experience, (Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Limited, 1996).
Level 3: Eilis Boyle, '​‘An uglier duckling than before’: Reclaiming agency and visibility amongst facially-wounded ex-servicemen in Britain after the First World War', Science Direct, 13:4 (2019), 308-322.