HOW SURGEON HAROLD GILLIES THOUSANDS OF MEN TO FACE THE WORLD AFTER THE WAR.

 

 HOW SURGEON HAROLD GILLIES THOUSANDS OF MEN TO FACE THE WORLD AFTER THE WAR.

 It’s the staring I hate.’ 

During the Great War, surgeon Harold Gillies helped thousands of men to literally face the world again. 

A procession of men arrived at his London Queens Hospital with jaws, noses and cheeks destroyed, tongues torn out and eyeballs dislodged. 

With no textbooks to follow, Gillies had to invent his own solutions. ‘He would set to work on some man who had had half his face literally blown to pieces with the skin that was left hanging in shreds,’ remembered a nurse. 

While men who lost a limb were treated as heroes, those suffering facial injuries were often shunned. Mothers hurried their children indoors to avoid seeing them, while women broke off engagements to their disfigured fiancés. 

Unsurprisingly, disfigured men suffered bouts of despondency and melancholia, which sometimes lead to suicide. 

Gillies’ wife, Kathleen, frequently visited the wards, where she tried to ‘revive hope in despairing hearts.’ 

Another nurse remembered that the hardest thing to do was ‘rekindle the desire to live’ in these men. 

Nurses had to learn not to react to the distressing sights to which they were exposed. 

Mirrors were banned from the wards, although one nurse recalled a soldier coming into possession of shaving-glass. ‘I pretended not to see it when he called me over and asked me to put screens around his bed. Every nurse learns that there are moments when it is better to leave a patient alone because sympathy would only make things worse.’

Patients were encouraged to walk the local streets where some benches were painted blue so that passersby would be warned in advance that a disfigured man might be sitting there.

Moved by these stories, I featured Wilfred Rhodes in ‘Night in Passchendaele’, who himself, has a disfiguring scar running across his cheek which leaves his face misshapen. Rather than return to Australia, he seeks refuge in the French countryside with similarly wounded men.

While walking with Wally, who is similarly injured, Rhodes volunteers:

‘It’s the staring I hate.’

‘And the look of horror on kids’ faces,’ agrees Wally. 

‘I bloody despise it.’

Their simple exchange sums up the psychological trauma suffered by thousands of men who were disfigured in the Great War. 

Wild live activities

Wildlife activists demanded that forest department should take immediate steps to stop rampant poaching of wild boar throughout the state and ensure all power lines in forest areas are insulated cables

Three elephants died within 12 hours in Odisha, including two of electrocution, in three separate incidents as they fell prey to bushmeat poachers who had laid a trap with high tension 11 KV wires to kill wild boars.

The elephant was found dead after electrocution in Dhenkanal district on Tuesday, said the forest officials.(Sourced)

In Kadala village under Hindol range of Dhenkanal district, a full grown 35-year-old makhna (tuskless male elephant) was found electrocuted along with a wild boar this morning by locals.

 Dhenkanal divisional forest officer Prakash Chand Gogineni said late on Monday evening, the lone elephant was passing by the village when it was tracked by elephant trackers and an official of power distribution compnay TDCCOL was asked to switch off power to avert electrocution.

“However, he did not listen to us, saying the lines were insulated. But poachers had already cut through the insulation and dangled electric wires which killed the wild boar first and the elephant later.

 We would write to the distribution company with all the records, seeking departmental action against the junior engineer for not paying heed to to our requests. We are also trying to apprehend the person who laid the live wire,” said Gogineni.

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Similarly, late on Monday night, a 12-year-old tusker in Sambalpur district was also found electrocuted at Jadu Loisingha village after it came in contact with an electric wire connected to 11 KV line.

Sambalpur divisional forest officer Sanjeet Kumar said the tusker may have died after coming in contact with the live wire laid for poaching wild boars. 

“It has been a common practice for some hunters to lay electric wires to prevent their crops from being destroyed by pachyderms and other wild animals. And this caused the death of the tusker. Exemplary punishment will be handed down to the culprits found,” said the DFO.

The elephant, part of an 18-member herd, was seen on Sunday night among paddy crops at Basiapada and Bargetikra in the area. There, the people drove the herd away into the forest. Samples have been collected for lab tests from the carcass which bore no injury marks.

The DFO said he has ordered a probe into the incident and directed assistant conservator of forest to submit a report in this connection within three days.