settle and soon turned gangrenous. Survival was impossible. The terrifying ulcerous sight prompted the ever conscientious Gillies to remind himself, ‘Never do today what can honourably be put off to tomorrow.’
The healing period between bouts of surgery meant the hospital corridors were full of hideous faces with slits instead of eyes, vacant bloody spaces which had once contained noses, skewed and distorted mouths with tongues lolling uncontrollably, huge and grotesque from a jawless chin. These were the patients, as Ward Muir observed, ‘at whom you are afraid to gaze unflinchingly: not afraid for yourself but afraid for him’.
Often the convalescent men could not eat or drink and were given unlimited quantities of egg nog to provide the protein their bodies needed. Chickens were kept on the hospital estate, their eggs vital for the nourishing drink, while the huge demand for milk to make up the other component of the ‘nog’ was provided by the herds of cows that munched their way along the nearby grassy Sidcup fields.
Captain Jono Wilson had been sitting in front next to the tank driver in 1917 as they rolled towards Cambrai when for one moment he had raised his helmeted head over the top. His nose was the least protected part of the face. A German shell made a direct hit. The driver crumpled lifeless into his seat while Jono plastered his field dressing on to the hole in his own face and took a swig of rum. German prisoners carried him along the quayside at Boulogne and within the day he was ‘happily ensconced in Major Harold Gillies’s Face Hospital’. From there he was able to hear the bells of Sidcup ringing out to celebrate victory.
Although Captain Wilson acknowledged that ‘a face hospital is perhaps one of the most depressing’ of all such places, the atmosphere at Sidcup was often buoyant. The patients gave themselves the exclusive licence to describe each other as ‘ugly’. There was laughter and music. A pilot strummed the piano with the burned bones of fleshless fingers and through lips that had been restored by Gillies, sang the refrain, ‘And now I’ve got a mother-in-law from drinking whisky through a straw.’ He had married his nurse.
Between operations men would leave the hospital grounds to go into Sidcup village wearing their distinguishing uniform of bright cornflower blue jackets and red ties, objects of curiosity and fear to almost all but themselves and those who cared for them. Blue benches were placed in strategic parts of the town, the colour a warning code that fearful sights might be seated on them. Publicans were forbidden to serve the patients alcoholic drinks for fear that tempers might suddenly fray. One man, Jocky Anderson, on celebrating the end of his fiftieth operation, managed to get hold of some alcohol and had returned to his ward, paralytic with drink, and smashed up everything in sight.
By the end of the war 11,572 major facial operations had been performed and gradually Gillies saw the number of cases before him diminishing. Men were returning to civilian life. Sydney Beldham, a new nose replacing the cobbled mash that had arrived in the operating theatre a year earlier, was employed in the proud job of chauffeuring his saviour. Infantryman Herbert Alfred Palmer had, in his enthusiasm to fight for his country, signed up at the beginning of the war at the age of 15, using his elder brother Edward’s identity to mask his age. Five years later, with the broken structure of his face rebuilt, he founded the Bromley and Bickley Working Men’s Club. Harry Reynolds met his wife at a hospital dance and trained as a radiographer. Mickey Shirlaw, a Motherwell miner, became fascinated by dental reconstruction and was trained by Archie Lane as a dental technician.
Another patient, Guardsman Maggs of the Welsh Guards, gave his surgeon such professional satisfaction that he was persuaded to make something of an exhibition of himself and his exemplary new nose in front
The healing period between bouts of surgery meant the hospital corridors were full of hideous faces with slits instead of eyes, vacant bloody spaces which had once contained noses, skewed and distorted mouths with tongues lolling uncontrollably, huge and grotesque from a jawless chin. These were the patients, as Ward Muir observed, ‘at whom you are afraid to gaze unflinchingly: not afraid for yourself but afraid for him’.
Often the convalescent men could not eat or drink and were given unlimited quantities of egg nog to provide the protein their bodies needed. Chickens were kept on the hospital estate, their eggs vital for the nourishing drink, while the huge demand for milk to make up the other component of the ‘nog’ was provided by the herds of cows that munched their way along the nearby grassy Sidcup fields.
Captain Jono Wilson had been sitting in front next to the tank driver in 1917 as they rolled towards Cambrai when for one moment he had raised his helmeted head over the top. His nose was the least protected part of the face. A German shell made a direct hit. The driver crumpled lifeless into his seat while Jono plastered his field dressing on to the hole in his own face and took a swig of rum. German prisoners carried him along the quayside at Boulogne and within the day he was ‘happily ensconced in Major Harold Gillies’s Face Hospital’. From there he was able to hear the bells of Sidcup ringing out to celebrate victory.
Although Captain Wilson acknowledged that ‘a face hospital is perhaps one of the most depressing’ of all such places, the atmosphere at Sidcup was often buoyant. The patients gave themselves the exclusive licence to describe each other as ‘ugly’. There was laughter and music. A pilot strummed the piano with the burned bones of fleshless fingers and through lips that had been restored by Gillies, sang the refrain, ‘And now I’ve got a mother-in-law from drinking whisky through a straw.’ He had married his nurse.
Between operations men would leave the hospital grounds to go into Sidcup village wearing their distinguishing uniform of bright cornflower blue jackets and red ties, objects of curiosity and fear to almost all but themselves and those who cared for them. Blue benches were placed in strategic parts of the town, the colour a warning code that fearful sights might be seated on them. Publicans were forbidden to serve the patients alcoholic drinks for fear that tempers might suddenly fray. One man, Jocky Anderson, on celebrating the end of his fiftieth operation, managed to get hold of some alcohol and had returned to his ward, paralytic with drink, and smashed up everything in sight.
By the end of the war 11,572 major facial operations had been performed and gradually Gillies saw the number of cases before him diminishing. Men were returning to civilian life. Sydney Beldham, a new nose replacing the cobbled mash that had arrived in the operating theatre a year earlier, was employed in the proud job of chauffeuring his saviour. Infantryman Herbert Alfred Palmer had, in his enthusiasm to fight for his country, signed up at the beginning of the war at the age of 15, using his elder brother Edward’s identity to mask his age. Five years later, with the broken structure of his face rebuilt, he founded the Bromley and Bickley Working Men’s Club. Harry Reynolds met his wife at a hospital dance and trained as a radiographer. Mickey Shirlaw, a Motherwell miner, became fascinated by dental reconstruction and was trained by Archie Lane as a dental technician.
Another patient, Guardsman Maggs of the Welsh Guards, gave his surgeon such professional satisfaction that he was persuaded to make something of an exhibition of himself and his exemplary new nose in front
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