Respond to the following prompts:
- What ideas or themes presented in your chosen reading were new to you?
- Did the article lead you to look at this period of history any differently? Why/Why not?
(PHOTO: Francis Derwent Wood @ http://www.projectfacade.com/index.php)
Operation Mend is the modern evolution of the work begun by Sir Harold Delf Gillies, Francis Derwent Wood and others during the First World War. If you read "Faces of War" you should view both of these sites.
This response is due Friday 5/15.
39 comments:
I chose the to read the article entitled “Another welcome letter: Soldiers’ letters from the great war.” The themes that I had not thought of before until reading this article were the themes of catharsis and individuality. The article that I read focused greatly on the fact that soldiers often times wrote letters to their families about how hard the war was for them. Wilfred Owen is one case in point, for in his letter to his mother, he remarked that he had “suffered seventh hell.” Although, the article mentioned that a large number of soldiers’ chose to lie to their parents about how miserable they felt during the war, the fact still remained that soldiers enjoyed writing to their parents because it caused them to feel a “sense of nostalgia.” The theme of individuality was also present in the soldiers’ letter article. If one were to collect all the letters written during WWI, one would notice that WWI brought many people together. These people had different social statuses and held various beliefs about the war. Wilfred Owen had a negative opinion of the war because he disliked killing his enemies on the battlefield. In all likelihood, his killing of enemy troops must have resulted in him realizing his own mortality. It is probable that he became fearful of death as the war dragged on. In contrast, Edward Wyndham was nearly fearless during battles, for he was a devout Christian who believed that heaven awaited him after he died. This is only one example of different opinions about WWI.
It is of the utmost importance that I mention that this article did change my view of the period. Whereas the Spielvogel textbook talked about the war in a way that was detached, the article focused more on the psychological minds of the soldiers. Additionally, the Spielvogel textbook tried to generalize the overall mood of the war, but this was different from the article, which suggested that there wasn’t any single mood. As mentioned previously, individuality was a major theme; people did not always agree with another person's impression about the war. This article has given me much to ponder.
The first article I read was “Faces of War”. The idea of plastic surgery during World War I was one entirely new to me. I had originally assumed that plastic surgery and reconstructive surgeries had been invented a lot more recently than that. Obviously, plastic surgery at the time of World War I was still primitive, as the article refers to it as an “act of desperate improvisation borne of the Great War”. In other words, such technology had not existed prior to perform plastic surgeries, and when the technology was invented it was not very advanced. Although the idea of plastic/facial reconstructive surgeries had not occurred to me, they do seem like logical inventions because facial wounds are the most seriously and obviously disfigured, so it would make sense for people to aim to fix them at any cost. The idea of masks put over a victim’s face was also new to me, as this is something no one would ever do today as a means of hiding facial disfigures. The masks reflect how poor the medical technology of the time was. Still, the idea was interesting to me because it combined art and medicine. The article mentions that Francis Derwent Wood realized “his abilities as an artist could be medically useful…inspired him to make construct masks for the irreparably facially disfigured.” Although it mentions a major flaw in the masks, they barely lasted over a year, they provided good “psychological effect…self respect, self assurance, self reliance”. This effect was probably very important in helping wounded soldiers return to regular life.
This article helped me look at the period differently because it compared advances in military versus medical technology. I had never thought about the extent to which military advances exceeded medical procedures. It was interesting to see that people had invented such dangerous and destructive military tools, and to such a great extent that medical technology quickly fell behind and could not help people damaged by the newer weapons.
The second article I read was “Another Welcome Letter”. This article discussed letters written to families back home from soldiers during World War I. Through various short examples, clips from several different letters, the article addressees common themes in the writing of many soldiers. Two ideas mentioned that I had not known about before were the censoring of some letters, although this does seem logical since it was wartime, and the mention of poetry being used in some letters. This article deepened my understanding of the war from various perspectives, for example many soldiers wrote to their mothers. The article discusses that many were “protective and underplayed the horror” while others blatantly addressed the hell they saw in war. The differing facts put into and purposely omitted from the letters could obviously make two accounts of the same event appear very differently to their family members, who, of course, had not actually witnessed them. This is an interesting concept. Another theme presented was that many wrote to grieve about losses of their friends and fellow soldiers. The point about how many befriended animals and took comfort in nature around them was one I had not considered. Although I found this article interesting, it did not help me to look at the time period differently. It did, however, help me to realize that through different accounts from different people, those living at the time of World War I could easily have had drastically different knowledge about it based on the limited and biased information presented to them in letters.
The first article that I read, “Another Welcome Letter: Soldier’s Letters from the Great War,” presented many new themes and ideas to me about World War I. The most apparent of these was the close relationship with nature that soldiers, fighting on both sides, had with the “nature” around them. According to the article, this was a result of many soldier’s loneliness. For example, one soldier named Edward Thomas pessimistically wrote how he wished he had a friend at war but still goes on to describe the “lovely” landscape around him how “larks & partridges & magpies & hedge-sparrows made love & the trench was being made passable for the wounded that will be harvested in a day or two..” This was quite surprising to me because all of the accounts of World War I that I have read talk about the bleak, destroyed, and desolate environments that surrounded the trenches where the battles took place. Another new idea that was presented to me through reading this article was that the fighting in the war brought a sense of universal sympathy to all people involved. Or as Charles Sorely comically stated in one of his letters, “Perhaps afterwards, I and my likes will again become indiscriminate rebels. For the present we find high relief in making ourselves soldiers…” Though I have read other excerpts from WWI letters, this article did lead me to look at this period slightly differently because I had never read a group of letters from soldiers of all different ages, opinions, and writing styles, so never before was I able to see the “complete picture” of life at war. This definitely enhanced my understanding of what soldiers as a whole were going through during the First World War.
The second article that I read, “Faces of War” included a new idea to me in pretty much every sentence that the author wrote. As a whole, I had absolutely no previous knowledge that plastic surgery or any other type of facial reconstruction or rehabilitation was carried out during World War I. I was pretty amazed that many of Sir Harold Gilles’s techniques during WWI “are still important to modern plastic surgery.” When learning about World War I it had also never crossed my mind that soldiers would have experienced an immense amount of wounds to the face and “it was grimly accepted that facial disfigurement was the most traumatic of the multitude of horrific damages the war inflicted.” This made much sense to me after reading the article because I cannot even imagine what it would have been like to lose what makes me, well, me. I also found it intriguing that when a patient’s case was too extreme for surgical reconstruction, artists and sculptors such as Francis Derwent Wood and Anna Coleman Ladd would create detailed and realistic masks to replace what had been lost on a soldier’s face. This seemed slightly cruel to me at first, but I realized that with the technology at the time, they really had no other choice when trying to make a patient feel as whole as possible. "Always look a man straight in the face," one resolute nun told her nurses. "Remember he's watching your face to see how you're going to react." This quote immediately reminded me of the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” for some reason and I find it very haunting and it further justifies the articles claims that facial injuries are the most devastating. This article definitely led me to look at this period differently, most notably through the eyes of a facially wounded soldier who can no longer look at children without scaring them, but with the help of these brave surgeons and artists can “have a home," one soldier had written her. ". . . The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do."
I began reading theWilliam Henry Bonser Lamin letters but there are a lot of them so im still reading them. In reading his letters to different members of his family a theme that surprised me was that he seemed rather optimistic and okay with being in the war. It could have been because it hd only been a couple of months but he did seem rather hopeful that what I would have assumed. He did comlain about food since they always did not get enough but that is what most boys and men would complain about no matter what. In the letter on September 23, 1917/2007 he was writing about how he was wounded, yet he said, though “we have some rough times out here I think the Germans have it rougher”. That to me seemed like a rather optimistic outlook when you’re in the middle of a war and just got injured in battle. Another idea that I found interesting was the idea that a successful attack, which was mentioned in the June 10/11 date, they lost a quarter of the 1000 soldiers in their battalion. To me that seems outrageous for that many people to be lost in a short battle and have it be called successful.
The second article I read was Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers’ Letters from the Great War. In this letter it seems to show why the letters I read before seemed so optimistic. He was probably censored in what he wrote to his family like the men in this article. I find that surprising but it does make sense since they wanted to keep moral up with the people back home. It was surprising to see that the soldiers were “cynical and critical of both government policy and military chaos around them” as well. Today if you are in the military you cannot complain about the government or military. It seems like they were allowed a lot more freedom in what they were allowed to say as soldiers in war at this time. Another idea that was new to be was that some soldiers were sad about their friends’ deaths like Patrick Shaw-Stewart. I found this to be different from what I have known since I was always told one soldiers are at war its like they hardly have feeling, like just go day to day because they have to. It surprised me that they still felt that sorrow and loss when someone close to them died. Another idea that seemed rather odd to be was the fact that the soldiers looked to nature for companionship and something to distract them from being lonely. I had never really thought the soldiers would feel lonely since others always surround them but I guess it does make sense. When you’re going through something difficult you normally keep to yourself, which could cause you to become lonely. It makes sense that the men who needed a friend looked to animals and nature since they were something that they could always depend on to listen to whatever they just needed to share just like Edward Thomas did. The idea of looking to nature had never crossed my mind though before I read this article. These articles did lead me to look at this period of history. I did not realize the magnitude of death in World War One before reading these articles. To think about how many people died because of this war is outrageous. I obviously realized people had died but I did not realize that many gave their life in the battles. It also showed me how censorship played a part in propaganda and boosting the peoples moral. They were always trying to make sure that people only new good things that were happening instead of the truth. This period of history is definitely a tough one but I have now gotten a better look at what truly happened during this First World War.
The first piece on WWI that I read was the blog of Harry Lamin's letters from the front. I found this blog extremely interesting, as it gave me insight to the actual events that were going on in that young man's life at the time. It was amazing for me to find out that soldiers actually had time to go out on "weekends", which were paid trips into towns where they could relax, although these occasions were rare it surprises me that they occurred at all. It also surprised me that overall it seemed as if a solder lived day to day through their letters from home. Almost all of Harry's letters included some form of the phrase, "please try to write every week or so, even if it's just a line or two," meaning that he truly did love to hear from his family back in England. I can only assume his desire for letters were not only stay connected to his family, but also to have something to look forward too, in his world of almost total despair. This article did indeed lead me to look at this period of history differently, as it made the event much more real. It is always hard to feel connected to parts of history, as they are either too far past or too extraordinary to truly comprehend. This blog gave me a small bit of insight into what the soldiers of this time must have gone through, although no one; except those involved, will ever know the true horrors of WWI.
The second piece I chose to read was "Faces of War." I had originally chosen this piece to learn more about the medical aspect of the rapidly evolving plastic surgeries of the time, but it ended up giving me insight into the extreme emotional affects of war. I had never previously thought that plastic surgery was becoming widely used during WWI, as I had always felt the medical technology wasn't advanced enough at that time to be experimenting in such a field. This article made me look at the 20th century differently, as it opened my eyes to how truly advanced the world was becoming in respects to war technology. I felt that this article showed me a lot about how plastic surgery was more than just making an irreversibly damaged face new again, but it gave the soldiers a whole new lease on life. These advancements in science were truly giving the soldiers hope to a new life, so that they could appreciate their survivals, and not just mourn over their disfigurements. I found this article to be greatly moving, as it helped me understand the incredibly traumatic things soldiers had to go through in order to serve their countries, and come back home the same man; mentally and physically.
The article that I first chose to read was entitled “Shell Shock during WWI” from BBC. The concept of shell shock is very interesting to me. The article describes how men who suffered from this disease would develop twitches or shakes in the same part of the body where they had shot a man. For example, a man who had stabbed a man in the abdomen will experience stomach cramps or if a soldier hit bayoneted a man in the face, his face would twitch because of the impact that hurting that man had on him. It also amazed me that shell shock was not something that affected the common soldiers; many of the officers were affected by shell shock as well. Many men were executed for cowardice by their commanding officers. Yet some of the commanding officers probably suffered from shell shock and they were not shot. All of the cases of shell shock seem to affect the lower class soldiers, but now I learned that the officers were affected by shell shock. Another part of the article that was interesting was when the author on one of the foremost books on shell shock said that, “a soldier who suffered a neurosis (shell shock) had not lost his reason but was labouring under the weight of too much reason: his senses were 'functioning with painful efficiency'.” This made a lot of sense to me. Instead of being labeled as being insane, men who suffered from shell shock were using their brains to the fullest extent. They believed that killing was wrong and that they should not be fighting.
The second article that I chose to read was “Faces of War”. This article was very interesting since I did not know that plastic surgery had its roots all the way back in WWI. It surprised me that many artists found their calling with plastic surgery and the making of masks. Artists have the artistic skill but they would also need a doctor to help with the medical aspect of the wounds and the masks. I also found it very interesting to learn that the techniques used by Sir Harold Gillies, are still very important to the plastic surgery of today. There were two ways of dealing with facial deformities: plastic surgery if a surgery would be able to fix the damage or a mask, if the damage was too extensive. I found it odd to think that men would be walking around in masks like it was Halloween, yet that was now their new face. WWI increased the advancements that were made in medicine, like the development of plastic surgery. As advancements were made in weaponry, advancements had to be made in the medical field to treat the wounds that came from this type of weaponry. All of the aspects of this war can be connected back together, which is what I believe is the most interesting aspect of it all.
The articles I read were “Military Lessons of the Great War” and “Balance of the Power Paradox”, both of which discussed the tactics and strategies used during World War 1 and why many of them failed horribly leading to the war. Before these articles or even Speilvogel my knowledge of WWI was minimal. The most I knew about the war was the basic details like who fought in the war and a basic understanding of the trench fighting, other than that though I really just knew it as the war before World War II. Once I had read Speilvogel however and began to see what the tactics were actually and how they constantly used human wave tactics and trench warfare, both of which were constantly defeated by use of the machine gun. My initial reaction was to question the sanity of the generals and wonder how they could have ever fallen into tactics so stupid that they repeatedly killed people in pointless human waves. These articles however have changed how I looked at the set up of the war because they pointed out the events before hand and explained the reasoning of why the war formed in the way it did. For example the article “Balance of the Power Paradox” talked about the fact that the French did originally expect a German assault to come through Belgium, in fact a general had earlier on designed a plan that would have done a better job than what the French actually ended up using in the war. His plan ended up being rejected however due to valid reasons like a lack of training on the part of French reserves that would have been necessary in the plan and the high risks of leaving the Alsace-Lorraine area low on troops. These reasons lead to the dismissal of the plan and the ascension of Joffre, who suggested Plan XVII that was actually used during the war. This article reminded me that while the war plans seemed horrible to me they were formed on the ideas that had occurred from before the war. This is a reminder that we have an overarching view that causes us to forget how while the ideas may seem bad to us now the people organizing did not have the knowledge base we do. Intelligence and espionage are important factors in waging war for this reason and a funny part from that article was the French got false info which actually predicted pointed towards the correct idea. The other article used the example of how many of the most important factors in World War I came about not through military work but through public works. The first example of used was that of the railway which became extremely important in shuttling troops and supplies to and from the war front. A study of the Civil War would show how railways were important to the war effort but in WWI the railways were important to the entire war basis since they allowed for the transportation of a lot of supplies, especially food. Napoleon stated that armies ran by their bellies which the authors and the generals of WWI completely agreed with as the railways allowed for more food supplies to be shipped allowing for more men to be sent to the front lines. These great influxes of men in the army lead to the human wave tactics that were used to overrun the trenches, which usually ended up unsuccessful. It was this tactic that is responsible for the high death tolls however the article also pointed out that the creation of better medicines, which lessened the amount of disease among the men, fighting also led to high death tolls. Now that there were better medicinal and surgery processes the soldiers could live to fight another day even after injuries or getting ill but this usually meant that they just ended up dying on the battle field. That lead to the extremely high death rates in battle since now disease was only a minor killer instead of a major one. I did happen to know about the effects of disease on an army but the fact is I had no idea to look at the commercial world when it came to looking at what could have the next great effect on war. Medicine and railways had not been made specifically to help the war effort but they quickly became as important as the tanks and airplanes in the war and just as weapon technology evolved to stay ahead of the game so did forms of health and transportation. These documents really did change my view of the period by pointing out these subtle intricacies to help me realize how much history and military strategy can be affected by these tiny changes. In my eyes this conflict is no longer a war before WWII but a separate conflict that had powerful effects on the world.
While I am not new to the concepts and ideas presented in “Faces of War,” I was quite surprised to discover their prominence in times of the First World War. Until quite recently, I had assumed that technology during the World War I was not developed enough to create any sort of prosthetic or facial replacement for those soldiers who were grossly malformed due to wartime injuries. It was interesting to learn of how plastic surgeons, including the ranks of Francis Derwent Wood and Anna Coleman Watts, began to pilot the field of facial reconstruction. I would imagine that the need for procedures such as these were a product of an advancement in medical technology during this time period. In previous wars, severe wounds suffered by soldiers would almost always result in death; in World War I, the wounds which one may recover from greatly increased in number. While more soldiers survived, their quality of life was put into question due to the massive amounts of scaring and deformity they were now faced with. The masks, which covered the deformed portion of the patient’s face, although they were certainly an improvement from having to life with their scars exposed to the world, were at the same still quite primitive. One could tell with ease that the soldiers who wore these masks were grossly deformed. While they did cover the wounds, they still left the wearer’s face looking cold and emotionless. In one case, a soldier who had been facially disfigured in battle arrived home only to terrify his children with the lifeless stare of his mask. Overall, these masks were a kindly gesture intent on solving a prominent issue which arose from advancements in medical technology. However, they were the first of their kind and thus, quite primitive. I found it interesting to see how humankind’s creativity and ingenuity can truly be displayed when the need arises.
This article made me see that while WWI was a period of great military advancements, there were also advances made in other fields based upon necessity created from the war itself. It is easy to get lost in the destructive nature of the time surrounding the war; I find it refreshing to learn of an advancement which did not result in a more brutal way to increase loss of life but in fact worked to rebuild the broken lives of those who participated in the bloodshed. As the saying goes, anyone can destroy, but how many can create?
When examining a war, it is often quite easy to only analyze the big picture, to examine the views and ideals of each country participating, critique their military prowess, and ponder over causes and effects. Often in war study, the life of the individual soldier, those men who actually fought on the front lines and experienced the horrors of war, may be put aside. “ANOTHER WELCOME LETTER: SOLDIERS' LETTERS FROM THE GREAT WAR” provides a direct analysis upon the life of the individual soldiers of World War I through examining the many letters sent from the ranks of the front lines back to their families. While most of the ideas portrayed through the letters in this article were of no surprise to me, there were those that presented information that I had not thought of before. For example, one soldier, Edward Thomas, relied heavily upon an affinity with Nature to survive the grueling mental toll the war had upon him. In a letter sent to his wife, after discussing a heavy shelling upon his post, he described the beauty of the day. Another soldier, Lieutenant Bernard Pitt, discussed a connection he had to the spring season. I would not think that in such horrid and fearful conditions that a soldier would want to spend or even think to spend time looking at the scenery around him. However, it does not surprise me, given the sense of peace a connection with nature may bring someone. Relying upon nature during such dismal times would allow some soldiers to attain at least a small bit of peace.
Another idea presented in some letters was the idea of some soldiers actually enjoying the war. For example, soldier Julian Grenfell described his time in the trenches as fun and enjoyable, and expressed his wishes for the war to continue. Given the descriptions I have been given of the conditions, hazards, and life expectancy of a soldier on the front lines, I found it quite surprising to find that there were men who actually enjoyed their stay in battle. Then again, there are all types of people on this earth, and given the sheer number of men who fought in the First World War, it is only natural for there to be at least a minor portion of them to enjoy it.
While I greatly enjoyed this article, it did not do a great deal in altering my views upon World War I. Having already learned and examined the plight of the individual soldier, this reading merely enforced the views and ideas I had already discovered. Yet, this reading allowed me to learn of new views of men on the front lines that I had not imagined of before.
Andras
"Military Lessons of the Great War" and "France and the Outbreak of the World War" provided a number of intriguing insights into the geopolitical and military conditions associated with the Great War. The former, "Military Lessons of the Great War", contained a number of highly compelling facts. Firstly, I was not aware of the degree of strategic mis-approximation and inflexibility present among many of the combatants. The extent to which the French underestimated the size of the German military and the scale of German strategic plans or the egregious degree to which the German military ignored the British Expeditionary Force in the opening days of its involvement in the war is certainly shocking, especially considering how, according to the article itself, significantly national intelligence services expanded during the pre-war era, as well as the manner in which the development of the telegraph, the dirigible, and the aeroplane vastly enhanced the range and rapidity of intelligence gathering and transmission. This is especially true considering the enormous sizes of the military forces involved relative to those present in previous conflict. The article cites a mere few hundred thousand on each side of the conflict during the Franco-Prussian War, and certainly previous conflicts never experienced much more in the way of manpower. Yet in the Great War, millions of men fought for the German, French, and Russian militaries from the very outset (the Austro-Hungarian military and British Expeditionary Force were significantly more modest if memory serves). That such numbers could be transported and supplied without extensive observation by the enemy is rather peculiar, to say the least. I was also significantly surprised by the revelations as to the nature of this drastic increase in the concentrations and numbers of military men and assets employed found within the article. I had always believed that considerable increases in population must necessarily have coincided with the formidable increases in military manpower witnessed during the First World War. Yet, apparently, the use of millions rather than hundreds of thousands is largely attributable not to increases in population, but rather merely the expansion of transportation networks (rendering logistically feasible a far greater general mobilization) as well as the development of new means of sanitation and disease control (enabling the maintenance of far greater concentrations of men in filthy and rough conditions). That the developments in those fields witnessed over a course of forty or so years could have enabled the powers of Europe to increase their active military manpower by orders of magnitude is astounding, especially when taking into account that, as stated by the article itself, the military forces involved were in constant conflict due to the nature of trench warfare and the stratification of military lines and zones. Ultimately, the article has permitted me to develop a better conception of the degree to which the military thought of the era failed to conform to new logistical and martial realities through the illustration of the flaws and inaccuracies inherent with the strategic approaches of the Germans and the French as well as through elucidation on the major technical differences between the First World War and the major European conflicts predating.
"France and the Outbreak of the World War" likewise presented a number of interesting pieces of data. Notably, I was not aware of the extent to which the publishing of diplomatic "books" employed to justify and absolve the publishing nation and its role in the relevant conflict was commonplace. I suppose that, given perspective on the brutality and treachery of conflicts across European history, such pretensions seem quaint and laughable (not to mention the fact that it is the victors whom write history regardless). However, the degree to which such diplomatic publications were altered to support the case of the relevant nation was, of course, entirely unsurprising and expected. However, what was notable was the restraint and apparent inconsistency of the French in their actual diplomatic dealings during the era. Providing Russia reasonable reign in which to conduct its own affairs but at the same time discouraging attempts by their ally to overtly attempt mobilization prior to the Germans and Austrians, the French appear to have pursued a surprisingly moderate course. This comes as a surprise largely because of the lingering wounds to French national pride left by the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent ostracization of France by the Austrians and Germans under Bismarck. Instead, the French were so insecure in their own capacity to deal with the Germans and so fixated on maintaining the diplomatic high ground that, according to the article at any rate, they deliberately positioned their forces ten kilometres from the Belgian border and utterly abandoned any attempt at maintaining the strategic initiative. I found this a rather absurd strategy, given France's diplomatic position and the likelihood of British alignment following any modification of the Belgian neutrality which the British desired to maintain, perhaps forcibly. I also found it odd that critical diplomatic correspondences, such as the message to France relaying the commencement and cancellation of full Russian mobilization, could be delayed in their arrival by almost a dozen hours- surely the transcription and transmission of the message along multiple telegraph junctions could not have taken that long? The sheer degree of confusion, contradiction, and deception regarding the commencement of the mobilization of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia was also somewhat amusing and alarming, and certainly illustrated the degree of imprecision which attended complex diplomatic procedures and exchanges. It certainly provides a new perspective on why the diplomatic crises of the era compounded in the manners in which they did, as well as the thought processes of the French, German, Russian, etc. governments in the face of flawed or limited information. Ultimately, the article provided an enlightening and intriguing perspective on the nature of pre-war and early war diplomacy and deployment, and certainly helped to expand my understanding of the underlying diplomatic logic associated with many aspects of the pre- and early war eras and the role of France in producing the First World War.
Before the reading, just about all my knowledge about WWI came from Speilvogel, and was therefore quite limited in detail. The first article I read, “Balance of the Power Paradox,” which spoke of the tactics used during World War I, greatly deepened my perspective on the mentality of tactical planning. For instance, the event where Joffre’s Plan XVII was put into place over the potentially more successful plan that expected a German attack by traveling through Belgium because of the potential hazards of low troop density in the Alsace-Lorraine area and a lack of training in the reserves from which people would be required. Such a decision demonstrated the limitations the commanders had to deal with. Without the retrospective view, it was almost impossible to know with any form of certainty what the enemy’s plans were and because of that, most plans, no matter how much they were supposed to be geared toward offensive measures, still were backed heavily by widespread defensive measures. Although the secondary plan would actually have been better for the French, Plan XVII seemed to be the best measure for the time because the commanders could not know with certainty that the Germans were truly planning on marching through neutral Belgium. With such a realization, I can see much more clearly why military officials would choose less successful plans over those with far greater potential.
“Military Lessons of the Great War” also spoke of military tactics, but offered me a completely different perspective of the decisions made by the military officials. The strategy of sending “human waves” out into no-man’s land in the grim hopes that they would beat the nearly impossible odds and overtake the enemy’s trenches seems completely pointless to me. From experience in African imperialism, the European countries knew that the machine gun could mow down an unlimited number of warriors who were simply running toward them in hopes of a single attack, yet still sent their own men out in the same fashion. I don’t care if they claimed it to be the best form of action; it was still completely pointless and every person on the battlefield knew it. Such an example of meaningless slaughter only proves that trench warfare was fueled, not by patriotism, but by commanding ego, as the commanders persistently sought after a fight just for the sake of not looking as if they were backing down.
Overall, the articles definitely deepened my scope of the planning behind WWI, but it did not change my overall perspective on the period. Before the reading, I condemned the war as sinister and evil, fueled by ambition and greed. As far as I am concerned, one man should not be able to kill an innocent man and walk away without repercussions, nor should a man be forced into a decision between killing and being killed; yet that is exactly what war entails. People are brainwashed into the opposing mentality where killing is to be congratulated while a refusal to do so was a form of treason deserving of execution via firing squad or simply a bullet to the head by a commanding officer. Although the first article explained the tactics behind the warfare, it still did not exonerate such facts while the second article even confirmed them. Therefore, my opinions and views over the era remain grim.
One of the articles that I read was called Faces of War. I found this article to present a lot of new ideas about World War I that I had never thought of before and helped me to see the war in a different way. One idea that this article was based around that was a new idea for me was that plastic surgery was used at this time period. I had always assumed that plastic surgery was something that had been invented and perfected over the last couple of decades. Never before had I imagined that it was used at the time during World War I. While these doctors were the, “pioneer(s) in the art of facial reconstruction and modern plastic surgery” it was still impressive that they were trying new procedures to help better their patents lives. The doctors at this time were clearly up for a challenge seeing as they had to reconstruct some of their patient’s faces, and the patients would have to undergo these operations that were usually, “crudely practiced, with little real attention given to aesthetics”. This article also helped to show how everyone was trying to use their traits to help out with the war efforts on the home front. Anna Coleman Watts Ladd, was original a sculptor before the war. However, in 1917 she opened up a Studio for Portrait Mask in France for soldiers whose faces were damaged in the war and could not be fixed with plastic surgery. This shows how people were willing to do whatever they could in order to help the war efforts. Ladd was able to use her artistic abilities that she had as a sculptor to make beautiful life like masks for the veterans who were injured in the war. Also I was shocked to hear that people would sculpt mask for soldiers to wear if their face was damaged to greatly to be repaired by plastic surgery. I never really saw this as a possibility before, mainly because I see it as being slightly pointless. Before this article I had always just assumed that if they could not reconstructed faces with surgery that people would just be forced to live their lives the best that they could with their face half destroyed. From this article I was able to learn a lot about the time period and it helped to shape how I view it. For one thing the technology was far more advanced then I thought it had been. The machines that they were using in the war at this time were, “large-caliber guns of artillery warfare with their power to atomize bodies into unrecoverable fragments”. Also the advanced in medicine were of a higher quality then what I had expected. Also it showed how everyone tried to pit in and do their part on the home front, even if that meant trying to find a new career path.
The second article that I read was Another Welcome Letter. This article was very beneficial because it really gave a good idea of what it was like to be in the war. It is really hard to be able to get a sense of what it is like to be in a war by just reading facts and figures about the different battles that were fought. I felt that by reading what the soldiers were experiencing first hand it allowed me to get a better idea of what they were going thought. Many of the soldiers wrote letters to their mothers about their war accounts. This idea was not a new one for me because I assumed that most people would write letters to their mothers when they were at war. What was a new idea for me though was how frank some people were in what they were writing to their mothers. I always thought that soldiers would try and sugar coat how the war was to their mothers so that they would not be so afraid that their son was off risking his life. Instead some people, such as Wilfred Owen simple stated, “I have suffered the seventh hell”. Also how while some people focused on the fear that they felt others took their mind off of the war by writing about the woods and scenery around me. This article allowed me to be able to look at how the war effected each soldier and its family differently and how they each took something different out of it.
I chose to examine the correspondences that existed between the soldiers of the Great War and their loved ones.
I can't really say that what I read was new to me. I was already aware that the most common communication medium was by letter. But I've never really read actual parts of letters between soldier and family/friend. I feel sympathetic towards the families who currently have a son, daughter, father, and mother in Iraq or in the Middle East. Even though the wars occurred during different times, the connection between soldier and family still continues.
It's interesting to speculate about the countless numbers of letters that could have been lost during the war. The ones that we still keep in archives are well known and are essential artificats of the past, but I still wonder about the ones that could have had different stories--ones that we have yet to find. Somewhere, in an old attic, forgotten, there could be a letter dated during the time of WWI.
The article that I had read talked about the emotional impact that WWI had on the young soldiers. During the war, there were many things that could have affected them greatly. The deaths of their comrades brought grief and revenge. The winning of a battle brought a sense of triumph and nationalism. Homesickness lingered among all of the boy-man soldiers. As the article says, "every human emotion was shared and evoked". And the fact that these emotions were written in letters to their loved ones said that even if some were not at the frontlines but back at the home front, everyone was connected in one way or another. The efforts in the war were true universal participations.
This article led me to view the WWI through a more personal and emotional perspective and not just political. I think in the past, I've only read official reports released by the government, informing the public about the war. But many of soldiers sounded really heartfelt in their letters. Loneliness was a common feeling, as apparent from one letter. 'I wish I had a friend here', reflected Edward Thomas, "long it will be before I can be quite frank & natural with anyone."
The second article also focused on how World War I had changed the lives of soldiers. I find that I like these types of reports better than long, stiff reports released by the government. It's called "Faces of War" and it talks about the facial reconstruction that was performed on those who needed it.
I was a bit disturbed when the article discussed how people viewed facial reconstruction as art, though I have to admit that it is true. It requires a skilled artist to reconstruct a ghastly wound caused by raining bullets/shrapnel. Learning about the mask paintings was interesting, how they used certain.
The article made me see that it was difficult for men who had war wounds to adjust back to society. They were readily accepted if they had wounds so they were forced to use these masks to had their disfiguration. Even so, the masks did not completely hide the permanent impact of WWI.
I chose to read the article “Art From the Front, Death Imagined and the Neglected Majority”. Before reading this article, I had assumed that art that used the war as its subject had been created by artists back at the homefront or by veterans- not by soldiers during their term.
“French artists continued to believe that making art out of war was not only possible, it was a necessity.”French propaganda argued for people to contribute to the political, but also the cultural, salvation of the nation. They believed that spending your time creating artwork was as valuable as spending time in the trenches. Before this, I had almost viewed artists as living as outcasts from mainstream society, especially during wartime- like creating art instead of answering to a commander was somehow selfish. But to the French people, brushstrokes on a canvas were a display of their nationalism.
The face of portraiture changed to show people battered by war: insane asylum inmates, suffering musicians, and soldiers. But it was not a simple task for an artist to portray humanity in the faces of his subjects. Moreau was able to paint the bleak landscape of a battlefield, but when he was not able to paint soldiers as well when he attempted a personalized focus. This contributed to the cubist movement: geometric shapes, the contrast of light and dark, thick lines, indistinct faces, all connecting to the bravery and strength of the soldiers.
This article helped me to view the artwork created during WWI with a deeper understanding of the driving forces behind it. This period inspired several artistic movements, including dadaism: the rejection of established artistic techniques for completely illogical and chaotic ones. Reading this article has helped me to view the artwork produced during the period with more reverence. The artists had to struggle with finding meaning in the chaos of the times (hence dadaism) and with facing the reality of who the soldiers had become (hence cubism).
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There were several ideas in the article “faces of war” that surprised me. The first was that I had known medical techniques had improved during World War 1 due to the new assortment and multitude of injuries medics had to face along with technological advancements. I was also aware that the injuries medics dealt with were so severe. However, I was not aware of how common facial injuries were. I did not realize that doctors received patients with injuries that were so terrible to the facial regions that the soldiers who had attained them were left totally disfigured despite the surgeon’s best efforts. I was also unaware that the number of such cases required an artist and sculptor named Francis Derwent Wood to mass produce customized masks to hide the soldier’s disfigurement. In addition to the severity and large number of facial injuries I also never truly understood how they affected the soldiers. The article’s information on the importance of the face masks to hide horrible injuries made me realize that “grimly accepted… as the most traumatic of the multitude of horrific damages the war inflicted.” I did not realize that such injuries affected not just the soldier physically, but emotionally and mentally as well as the soldiers friends and families who must see their loved one come home horribly disfigured and suffering in every way because of it. This article has lead me to readjust my thoughts about this time period. I had first believed that world war 1 was simply a time of advancement both technologically and medically; however it was much more than that. It was a time of desperation; a time of two sides desperately fighting to invent a newer and more efficient technology to one-up the opposition; a time of soldiers being gunned down by the millions in battle with officers scrambling to find replacements; and especially a time of medical practitioners scrambling to repair the thousands of patients who walked through their door and constantly find new medical techniques to keep up with the constantly changing technology. The masks in themselves were a sheer sign of desperation. When facial surgery fell short of true reparation of a soldier’s face, the masks were the last true desperate measure the soldier had to even come close to looking as he had before the war and retaining some form of a normal life.
There were several ideas in the article “another welcome letter: soldier’s letters from the great war” that I had not quite known or truly appreciated until after reading the article. I was particularly struck by the moods the letters were said to have. According to the article there was a general consensus of “nostalgia for the way of life he [the soldier] once knew, love of his family, revulsion of violence, and anticipation of death. Apart from the war scenario which haunted every letter, numerous every-day domestic details, anecdotes and trivial incidents were recounted; literature, music, family and friends were discussed and requests made for warm socks, vests and other clothing, chocolate, cigarettes and food.” This in particular made me realize how terrible conditions were that they were asking for things such as clothes, socks, and chocolate (all things that we take advantage of having now, but would be a true luxury for a soldier at this time). I was also shocked by the degree of emotional stress the soldiers felt. I had known and assumed that war would definitely leave a soldier emotionally damaged. However I was unaware and did not truly understand until after reading it how truly horrid the conditions were and how deeply affected each soldier was by the war. I was also particularly moved by the section that discussed that the majority of letters were sent to mothers and were either brutally honest about the conditions or grossly under exaggerated them for the mother’s protection: “A large proportion of letters were written to parents -- particularly to mothers. Many were protective and underplayed the horror. Others made no attempt to disguise the carnage and the suffering experienced during specific actions…In a letter to his mother, John Crombie…vividly described the 'sheer desolation' he found in the town of Arras in March 1917 but spared her the grim details he gave a friend the following day: '. . . for "mopping up" a captured trench i.e. bombing out the remaining inhabitants, you have parties of nine men specially equipped. When you come to a dug-out, you throw some smoke bombs down . . . so that they must either choke or come out. Now when they come out they are half blinded and choked with poisonous smoke, and you station a man at the entrance to receive them, but as you have only got a party of nine, it would be difficult to spare men if you took them prisoners, so the instructions are that these poor half-blinded devils should be bayoneted as the come up . . .'. This article did not particularly change my views about this period of time. Instead it deepened my understanding and comprehension of the emotional struggle soldiers went through on a daily basis while fighting in the war. This article made me realize how truly important the simple things such as clothes, warm socks, chocolate, letters to and from their family (showing family support and love) were to the soldiers. It made me realize that things we would normally take for granted today would have been considered true gifts and luxuries by a World War 1 soldier. It also opened my eyes to the mental state of the soldiers. I had never thought that the soldiers would be happy or having fun while fighting in the war, however this article impressed upon the reader the bleak and hopeless feelings that characterized the psychological state of the average soldier in the war.
The first article I read was “Faces of War,” along with the Project Façade and Operation Mend links. Before studying World War I, I didn’t have much background knowledge other than a brief summary of events from U.S. History and the Spielvogel readings. Looking at these readings, I was able to learn a great deal more about the lives of individual soldiers and specifically how they war affected them. One of the major themes I learned from this article about World War I was the large number of people affected by the war after the fighting was over. While the number of people killed in battle during the war was a surprising statistic to me, I found that the challenges surviving soldiers faced when returning to a normal life were even more shocking. For example, the article mentions children running from seeing the faces of their fathers even after masks improved their appearance, as well as park benches being marked so that citizens would be warned of soldiers with hideous faces. The mention of men being afraid of their own faces upon looking in a mirror was something else I had never considered when looking at the effects of World War I or war in general. The article also focuses on facial reconstruction of soldiers injured by explosions and shrapnel or bullets through the creation of masks that were perfectly molded for their faces, which was surprising to me. Because these procedures were extremely new for the time, the “mask-makers” were only able to help a few hundred soldiers out of the thousands that were in need. The article about Operation Mend shows how far medical advancements have come, but also how peoples’ concern for veteran soldiers injured during war has increased dramatically. The determination of the hospitals to provide the best treatment for injured soldiers greatly contrasted those during WWI, where the “Faces of War” article explains people would just avoid looking at injured men with disfigured faces.
The second article I read was “Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers’ Letters From The Great War.” This article made it more clear how different war was than people had expected. Reading the experiences of some of the soldiers was very surprising, because it seems like most of the extremely terrible parts of war were always covered up in some way, either by the government or misleading letters home. Most of the soldiers before entering the war perceived it as “doing a right and reasonable thing,” but their views were almost always changed after a short time on the battlefield. Many of the letters home underplayed the horrors that the soldiers were experiencing, such as living in rat-infested mud holes, deprived of food and sleep. This shielding their families from seeing the true horrors they were living through. This article especially made me look at World War I differently. In comparing it to World War II, it had always seemed like a much shorter and less brutal war with fewer casualties. However, reading more in depth about the trench warfare, and specific experiences of soldiers fighting on the front lines definitely led me to see this period in history and this war much differently.
The first article I read was “Faces of War”. I was entirely unaware of the practice of plastic surgery during WWI, and at the beginning of the article I thought of the practice as very unimportant compared to other negative aspects of the war. Almost all readings from WWI discuss the psychological impact that the war had on its soldiers; the most commonly stated disability being post-traumatic stress disorder. These articles had also discussed the physical injuries of the soldiers, but never had I thought about the psychological effect of these injuries. When a soldier returned from war, it is likely that they would have liked to continue on with their normal lives; with a deformed face as many soldiers had once they returned, it was impossible to forget about the war for a second, or to have anyone around the soldier forget about the war. Sir Harold Gillies, the “pioneer” of plastic surgery, was truly remarkable for his findings, especially when physical injuries were at such a large scale; “unlike the student today, who is weaned on small scar excisions and graduates to harelips, we were suddenly asked to produce a half face.” I also found it very surprising that some soldiers used masks to cover their deformities. Francis Derwent Wood created metallic, lightweight masks that soldiers who could not be “fixed” by plastic surgery could use. These masks still had a tremendous impact on the injured soldiers; “My cases are generally extreme cases that plastic surgery has had to abandon; but, as in plastic surgery, the psychological effect is the same. The patient acquires his old self-respect, self-assurance, self-reliance.”
This article gave me a different outlook on the lives of soldiers once they returned home. After the situations the soldiers were put it through their time in the trenches, they certainly needed self-confidence to carry themselves through the day. The plastic surgery methods used and the masks that some soldiers wore gave them more of a will to live than they may have had while living with their severe deformity; these practices, therefore, were exceedingly important to the happiness of the soldiers.
The second article I read was “Another Welcome Letter”. This article discussed the importance of the letters that soldiers would send to their loved ones. The letters they wrote were their way of reaching out to the outside world, their way of feeling almost human again. I found it interesting that the topics of the letters were all very similar as men in the trenches shared a common way of thinking, “for the way of life he once knew, love of his family, revulsion of violence, and anticipation of death. The similarities of these letters, as well, showed the common bond that all soldiers held; not only with their comrades, but with the soldiers fighting against them. For this reason, I believe that the letters that the soldiers wrote are the most important source of information about the war; only these letters can describe the true mental and physical agony that the soldiers went through every day.
The first article I read was the one called "Faces of War". I found this article very interesting. It dealt with an aspect of the war that I had never thought about before--what happened to soldiers who got horribly facially disfigured in the war. I learned about how people like Anna Coleman Ladd made masks to help those who had suffered terrible disfigurements transition back into society. There was a lot of new information that surprised me. I always assumed they operated on the soldiers to rebuild the faces; it never crossed my mind that they would wear a mask. It seems rather primitive; a mask would still stick out greatly and have a similar effect as a giant neon sign over your head saying, "I AM BADLY DISFIGURED." I can only imagine the social stigma that it would create. The effect would be lessened, of course, as the mask would cover up the worst of it. However, they would never fully blend into a crowd again, and the mask would rob them of all their facial expressions of emotion. While wearing the mask, their "face" would be permanently displayed with one expression, and would look cold and lifeless. In fact, one veteran's children fled in shock after seeing the expressionless mask.
This article led me to view this piece of history differently. It gave me a look at what horrors war can actually produce, and how it can affect people's lives for as long as they live. It would really suck to be one of those people who lose their face and have to deal with that their whole life. It was a huge challenge for them. It ruined their relationships, for some, as their wives and children might run from them. It would have a similar effect on them. Mirrors were banned for good reason in the wards, but sometimes a veteran would sneak a peek, and collapse in shock. As one doctor said, "The psychological effect on a man who must go through life, an object of horror to himself as well as to others, is beyond description. . . It is a fairly common experience for the maladjusted person to feel like a stranger to his world. It must be unmitigated hell to feel like a stranger to yourself." This quote sums it up perfectly. For those soldiers that survived with those injuries, life would never be the same again.
The second article I read was "Another welcome letter: Soldiers' letters from the great war". I also found this article interesting. It revealed a lot about what the attitudes and views of the soldiers were. Many of the soldiers were against the war and despised having to fight in it. There were always exceptions such as Julian Grenfell, who wrote: '. . . It is all the most wonderful fun; better fun than one could ever imagine. I hope it goes on a nice long time; pig-sticking will be the only possible pursuit after this, or one will die of sheer ennui . . .'., but for the most part, reactions were more like those of Wilfred Owen, who wrote that he had suffered "seventh hell". Many of the soldiers resented how they had it so bad and were fighting a fight that was not theirs. Harold Parry wrote, " If these dignitaries could only be set in the trenches for a wee short space, and made to carry heavy coils of wire for long distances up long communication trenches --blasted by the incessant force of the guns -- I could guarantee that the war would not last longer than time to fix up provisional peace terms made it necessary". Many soldiers shared this sentiment, resenting the policy makers up above. The soldiers endured many horrors in the trenches, and some wrote about it, while others refrained from sharing everything so as not to distress loved ones. Some people such as Owen or Kettle, who wrote about "Ratavia", preferred to be brutally honest. Others downplayed the war's brutalities. Overall, this source led me to view history a little differently. It gave me a glimpse into not only what life was like for soldiers, but what their views and feelings were and how they dealt with it. I feel I learned a great deal by reading this source.
In the "Faces of War" article, I was very intrigued to discover some of the processes that were involved in reconstructing the faces of those that were injured. From the stories of World War I that are more commonly discussed, it is rarely touched upon the nature of some of these injuries and ailments in the way of the face. I was unaware that medical advancements had come far enough to the point where any true means of facial reconstruction were possible at this time. Obviously medicine had not advanced far enough, because the art of making specially designed masks for those wounded was widely used throughout the war. Nonetheless, I was impressed by what could be done at this time, especially when there are such mass amounts of patients requiring treatment. Lightweight masks could be created to allow the wearer to rejoin society. When life for those injured went as far as segregating them from society, there was a clear issue. These men fought a war for their country, and for what they believed in, and society can shun them because of their appearance due to a war injury. The article definitely changed some of my views about the war, not only in how advanced the medical practices were, but in how serious the effect was on those who were subjected to this horror.
In the "Soldier's letters" article, I was very interested in the sort of information that was being relayed to family members. World War I can be considered one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever known, and it can be seen through some of the accounts of the soldiers that fought. It did not surprise me how letters to parents, especially mothers, emphasized that they should not worry. Many of these soldiers were afraid of what was to lie ahead, and that was expected. The soldiers needed this connection with the family though, because it was one of the few things that could keep them going. Some of the soldiers were not as keen on lying about their dreadful experiences in war. Some would admit to fears of killing other men, or the horrid life in the trenches that soldiers were subjected to. These letters definitely create a different view of the era, which cannot be seen from a simple retelling of the war. In letters, you can see the fear in the writing, and really get a sense of why life was so miserable, instead of just assuming that it was. Without these documents, our knowledge of this horrific time in history could not be truly comprehended.
I read the article “Faces of War”, and I was really surprised as to the content of the article. I had no idea the trauma that was done to the body by simply sticking your head above the trench for only a second. As Dr. Fred Albee said of British soldiers, “They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets". The fact that these soldiers on the front line were constantly staring into the end of a machine gun is appalling. How could a government continually send men “over the top”, to run to their death, with their bodies mangles by the constant gunfire? Over 8 million men died, and 24 million were wounded. You would think at some point that government officials would discover that the men they were losing did not fit with how much territory they were gaining in the war. I had no idea that these men were just getting mowed down, then had to go back to their previous lives and try to survive while missing half of their face. The gruesome images are illustrated in the primary World War I footage, where men were suffering from all types of facial deformities. It was hospitals for these soldiers that miracles were made. Some of the same techniques seen in modern facial reconstruction were used in these hospitals. Men were given a new chance on life with prosthetic pieces for their face. This was simply amazing given the rugged technology of the time.
This made me look at the Great War much differently than I did before. Sure I have seen renditions of early European wars in the cinema, with the blood and guts seemingly exaggerated for effect. Watching the videos and reading the articles pointed out that the gruesome reality of war was that most soldiers came back mangled in some kind of way. As well, when I read about WWI, there were only revelations about the new weaponry used and a slight overview of the death tolls contributed to trench warfare. It never told of the gruesome effects that these new weapons had on the soldiers that were fighting directly on the front line. There were never any pictures of a man with a slightly reconstructed jaw posing for a camera after invasive facial reconstruction. This reading has shed a new light on the horrors of trench warfare, and the brilliant measures that were taken to give soldiers a new take on life with new prosthetic pieces for their brutally mangle faces.
The first article I read was “Military Lessons of the Great War.” It helped to explain why things happened during the war due both to events occurring during the war and before the war. The article focused primarily on the new type of warfare never seen prior to the Great War. The massive size of armies, spread of information, and medical advances all accounted to this. An apparent example of how the Great War was different to wars in the past was when the Germans invaded France, the French had greatly underestimated the power of the Germans because in years earlier they would not have believed that invasion on so huge of a scale would have been possible. Another key point in “Military Lessons of the Great War” was that the developments of warfare were not primarily made for the cause of war as Maurice put it, “transportation, motor vehicles, roads, and the progress of medical science had not been brought about with a view of war”. Thus stating that these changes within the war were not brought on with the circumstances of war, but were created for and in ordinary life. This caused me to think differently about history and the nature of war because the advancements in war are truly not based on war but the events that occur in ordinary life.
The second article that I chose to read was “Faces of War.” This was really new information to me for I always believed that plastic surgery was only used in the past couple of decades. This article obviously proved me wrong. Being interested in medicine I was really intrigued by this article. As I read through the article I realized that plastic surgery during the Great War had just as much to do with repairing physical deformities, as mental ones. The fact that benches had to be painted to warn people that the sight of a man may be unbearable, or that these men could not even look themselves in the mirror just adds to the psychological effects of the war that they had to deal with upon returning home. While the masks given to the men helped somewhat in returning their lives to normalcy, it is apparent that these masks would never hide the true horrors of the Great War. The plastic surgery during the Great War was obviously one of the major medical advances that would carry on into the twenty-first century. What shocked me a little was how one artist referred to a man without a nose as “very beautiful, like antique marbles." I mean I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t have a nose. This article definitely put into perspective for me how horrible the horrors of the Great War truly were.
Although initially entranced by the story behind the creation of the veteran masks in “Faces of War,” the story behind the actual war veterans stuck to me. This article, more so than any other articles I’ve read, forced me to understand just how gruesome World War I and World War II were. Statistics have a tendency to dehumanize the realities of war. Upon hearing that two soldiers died in active duty in Iraq on the evening news, very few people take the time to think about the weight of two lost lives. These two men or women were people with parents, siblings, friends, dreams, and aspirations. They were people who effected others, people who from this day forward would not be able to experience the joys and pains of life as the rest of us know it. I, admittedly, had been among the group of men and women who heard statistics and didn’t so much as flinch. The humanization of victims of war struck me and caused me to look on history differently.
“Those patients who could be successfully treated were, after lengthy convalescence, sent on their way; the less fortunate remained in hospitals and convalescent units nursing the broken faces with which they were unprepared to confront the world--or with which the world was unprepared to confront them.” This passage within “Faces of War” left me dumbfounded. I had never seen this issue in this light before. Many war veterans were unable to be helped. Entering back into main stream life was an insurmountable task. To add insult to injury however, the world did not welcome these victims who set their life on their line for the cause of the war. Further on in the article, Gillies’ special face hospital was mentioned. Within this hospital, certain benches were painted blue to warn townspeople that any man sitting on one “would be distressful to view.” The fact that such little respect had been paid to these men made my head spin. Dr Albee stated it well when he wrote, "The psychological effect on a man who must go through life, an object of horror to himself as well as to others, is beyond description.. . It is a fairly common experience for the maladjusted person to feel like a stranger to his world. It must be unmitigated hell to feel like a stranger to yourself."
Additionally, I was struck by how far medicine had come and how far it had yet to go. The first attempts at creating new faces for disfigured war veterans came in the form of masks held on by spectacles. Though these masks positively changed the lives of their recipients, they were often lacking. These masks often lacked a realistic skin tone, did not last very long, remained expressionless, and did not aid in lost functions of chewing or swallowing. These masks however were a giant step up from having to face the world with permanently disfiguring injuries. As one soldier wrote, "Thanks to you, I will have a home. . . The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do." Even today, despite advancements in research and practice, modern reconstructive surgery can still not adequately treat the kinds of injuries seen during World War I.
Within the second article “Another welcome letter: Soldiers' letters from the great war,” I was struck once again not by the war itself but by the men who fought within it. The number of soldier casualties changed from being simply a number to an overwhelming illustration of the number of sons, grandsons, parents, uncles, and friends lost during the war.
Within the article, various short firsthand accounts of life on the battle front were given. Some were humorous, some were disheartening, and some were gruesome. Subject matter spanned from descriptions of nature, to mourning about lost friends, to descriptions of the large rats that “increased as the men died.”
According to the article, many of the letters that have been collected throughout the years were written to parents. Although this is not new knowledge, this passage made me think about what it would be like to have my college aged brother on the opposite end of a letter from the war front. Would he be protective and underplay the atrocities of war? Or would he blatantly expose his sufferings?
The humanization of soldiers was brought to focus for me after reading this article. Quotes such as, “Common to almost every man was a nostalgia for the way of life he once knew, love of his family, revulsion of violence, and anticipation of death” forced me to realize just how genuine the realities of war were. World War II wasn’t simply about a series of battles that were won and lost. Often lost within the broad view of the war are the stories of each lost and living soldier.
For this assignment I read two articles, “Faces of War” and “Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers’ Letters from the Great War”, however the “Faces of War” (FOW) was more interesting to me. This is because it discussed a rarely discussed aspect of the war- the effects on the soldiers afterwards. I do not mean the fanfare, awards, and praise for bravery. I mean the deformities from flying shrapnel, missing body parts, and the lack of self-confidence that developed from both.
A main idea of the reading new to me was the technological achievements that came about as a result of a war. New battle machinery that caused new injuries forced doctors to devise better methods for treating them. The article exemplified one type of achievement, the face mask. The masks were used to cover up the gruesome scars and expressions that battle wounds had left on soldiers. Face masks were initiated by Sir Harold Gillies but the article focused more upon Francis Derwent Wood who started a program for facial reconstruction. The theme of the article that was new to me was that society shunned the deformed soldiers. A line from the reading showed that park benches were painted different colors to indicate where the men who would be “distressful to view” should sit. This clearly shows how civilians were disgusted by the soldiers and were not even kind enough to disguise it. The last idea of the reading that was new to me was that soldiers also lost self-confidence after being injured. I also knew about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Shell Shock but I never understood that there were other things that could mentally destroy veterans. From the article, I learned that upon seeing their destroyed faces some soldiers would faint because the image was so gruesome. As a result, great pains were taken in facial reconstruction clinics to keep patients away from mirrors until after they healed a bit. The masks, though good for disguising the distortions, would scare the veterans’ children away because the masks were so rigid and expressionless. These two things would definitely take an emotional toll on anyone.
The article did lead me to look at this period differently. I had always thought that civilians would be proud of returning soldiers. I thought that injuries and wounds were (painful) badges of pride instead of something ones neighbors could use to make one think less of oneself. Overall, the article made me feel sad for the kind of world that veterans had to exist in. The thank-you letter to Ladd that stated “. . . The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do” particularly exemplifies this point. The soldier’s woman, instead of being proud of him and thankful for his safe return, is incredibly shallow and makes him feel worse for being unattractive. This is incredibly unfair but does show how some veterans did not get the respect they deserved as I used to think they did.
The first article that I read was called Faces of War which thoroughly depicted the traumatic effects of facial destruction and the pros and cons of facial reconstruction. Before reading this article I never realized how awful facial destruction could be; I felt that the soldiers must have been just happy to be alive, and that they didn’t care about what they looked like. Yet this article made it very clear how truly devastating it was and how awful it was to be unrecognizable and embarrassed to be who you are. As stated in the article, “…It is a fairly common experience for the maladjusted person to feel like a stranger to his world. It must be unmitigated hell to feel like a stranger to yourself.” Soldiers who caught sight of themselves in mirrors, which were mostly forbidden, were known to collapse in pure shock that the monster they saw was actually themselves. Two famous facial reconstructors, Francis Derwent Wood and Anna Watts, had a tremendous impact on thousands of soldier’s lives. They would spend weeks making a perfect mold of what was nearly the face the soldier had before the destruction and create a mask. Before reading this article I also didn’t realize that the men who received facial reconstruction didn’t actually have surgery to fix it, but rather put a metal mask on. It must have been such a strange feeling hiding under a mask for the rest of your life. This article definitely led me to have more respect for the soldiers who did undergo facial destruction and the embarrassment and trauma they must have endured.
The second article that I read was called Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers’ Letters from the Great War. This article described the various letters that soldiers would send home to their friends and loved ones. Some soldiers would try to hide the gruesome details where as others spared nothing. One thing that I found particularly interesting that I did not know of before reading this article was that there were actually soldier-poets. These poets conveyed powerful messages. “Every human emotion was shared and evoked. Common to almost every man was a nostalgia for the way of life he once knew, love of his family, revulsion of violence, and anticipation of death.” The poets would sum up the emotions of most soldiers. This article also described how some soldiers would admit to their fear, where as others would lie and speak of the ‘fun’ they were having. The letters were quite often cynical of the government and people around them in general. Both of these articles really just helped me to gain the uttermost respect for all soldiers who were willing to put their life on the line for their country.
The first article I read was “Faces of War”, which I found particularly interesting. A certainly new idea that was introduced to me in this article was the use of plastic surgery used for facial injuries during World War I. Any kind of medical treatment for wounds, like plastic surgery, was obviously much less advanced than it is today. However, this description of plastic surgery completely differed from the normal association I have with it today. This is because the extents of the facial wounds in trench warfare were much more serious than we associate the problems that are overcome by facial surgery today. As the article says “"Every fracture in this war is a huge open wound with a not merely broken but shattered bone at the bottom of it." The brutality of the war led to extremely severe facial wounds. These were not your average plastic surgeries were maybe scars or burns were being covered up. Major reconstruction was necessary to make these faces even resemble a face anymore. They were so bad, that reconstructing facing had almost become an art form. This idea was probably the most unheard of for me. People, as facial wounds had become devastating, made masks to cover up there injuries. The article talks about how masks to cover the face and make it resemble the victim’s face before the injury, were made by “artists”. This idea of hiding and reconstructing wounds in plastic surgery as an art form surprised me and certainly reinforced the violent and horrific nature of the war.
The second article I read was “Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers’ Letters from the Great War”. This article gave me many new perspectives and themes of World War I. In the article were several examples of the types of letters soldiers would write home to their family and friends with. One major theme about all these accounts of the war were the various ways that soldiers coped with the terrible, deadly conditions, and how they presented this to the people back home. Some decided to downplay the day to day horrors of the war to their love ones in there writings. Others told the complete truth and acknowledged that fighting in this war involved terribly bad conditions and was close to suicide. However, for the most part specific details of these horrors were omitted. Others display their distain about the war through cynical satire, commenting on how ridiculous the war itself was. The article also mentions how loneliness and despair is indirectly represented in these letters. An example of this is soldier Edward Thomas who wrote about the nature and landscapes him because he “found solace in the wild life and world of nature around him”. His way of dealing with the sorrow of the brutality of the war was to detach himself from it and write about nature, as he was lonely. These contrasting styles of writing in letters home all have one connecting theme, which is they all had ways or mechanisms of coping with the devastating toll the war takes on soldiers. These perspectives of soldiers were new to me and certainly gave me a more full picture of the war. Also, I am now able to better understand what was going through the mind of an average soldier in World War I.
The first article I read, “Faces of War” which explained the idea of plastic surgery being prevalent during World War I. I was unaware of plastic surgery in WWI until I saw the video that Mr. Kirby showed us. I was under the assumption the plastic surgery and facial reconstruction were a much newer technology, perhaps invented in the last twenty tears. However, this is obviously not the case. This article showed me the emotional affect that the war had on the young men. Men were losing their facial features, effectively taking away their identity. It amazed me that doctors like Derwent Wood essentially pioneered the modern art of reconstructive surgery during such violent and extreme times. In the midst of WWI these doctors reconstructed thousands of faces, by either repairing the damage or by giving the man a mask. These masks, which covered the scars on the victims face, helped give them some semblance of a normal appearance. These methods as a whole were no doubt crude but the fundamentals “are still important to modern plastic surgery.” This article really explained to me the pain and suffering that the victims went through, the emotional ride they took and the great steps the medical personnel took to give these men their lives back.
The second article I read was “Another welcome letter: Soldiers' letters from the Great War.” The one thing that jumped out at me from the article was the soldier’s fascination with nature, most of the soldiers (from both sides) talked about their close connection to nature and their surroundings. Soldiers were even writing bout the beauty of the landscape around them, “larks & partridges & magpies & hedge-sparrows made love…” This surprised me greatly since the first thing that comes to mind from WWI is the horrendous battlefield conditions. These letters really allowed me to see into the hearts and minds of soldiers from all ages and backgrounds, giving me a perspective of the “big picture” and allowing me to truly understand how the majority of soldiers felt about the war. One of the main ideas of the article was the censorship of the true violence and terror of the war. In the article it talks about men being “protective and underplayed the horror” however not all were so protecting, others were blunt with the atrocities they witnessed.
I personally enjoyed the first article more, “Faces of War.” I felt that it was more interesting to read, it gave me more knowledge on a topic that I was not familiar with while the second article really just elaborated on points that were already known to me. The two of these articles did alter my view on the time period slightly but not drastically. I was not aware of the type of medical technology available at that time although I was aware that men were suffering from such wounds. And the letters from the soldiers really just allowed me to see the war from a somewhat different point of view. It allowed me to feel what they felt and to see how they were conveying their situation to their loved ones.
The first article I read was “Art from the front, death imagined, and the neglected majority” This article was about the art depicted by French soldiers in the front lines. This article surprised me more than anything I have previously read or heard about WWI and almost every idea presented in this article was new to me. This is because I had thought, like the article indicated, that the only art during wars and especially war of such a large scale is the anti-bourgeois protestors and the government propaganda posters. Never had I thought that soldiers, these men of immense courage, also had a need to express their creativity and often use it to get through daily life. As the article progresses, it talks about how the French government and collectors truly wanted some of the works of life in the trenches and often promoted artistic expression of courage. But to this flipside, the article also mentions that all of these art works have some sort of political dilemma to them. How there is a lack of depictions of the fear of death, the destruction of the war, and even the Russian Revolution is surprising to me. This article also goes into detail about the styles of the works from the front which surprised me greatly. The fact that some artists goes for abstraction and Van Gogh’s idea of capturing the portraiture’s soul to some who go for true definitions of portraiture. This article did change my perception not of the war, but rather the men who served in the war. It showed me that France, one of the biggest art cultures during this time period, could not and didn’t want to get rid of its creativity during the great war. And what surprised me the most was the type of art that came out of the front and the insight they give to the mind if the soldiers.
The second article, Another Welcome letter: soldier’s letters from the great war, was also of a similar nature compared to the first article. This article was about American soldier’s letters and what it says about these men who served in the war. Indeed, like the first one there were many themes and ideas that were new to me. And to explain why so many things are new to me in these articles is that I have always viewed conflicts between nations politically and militarily. Often times, like most historians, I overlook the personal struggle of each and every individual human lives which was shed during times of conflict, and just look at the overall nature of the conflict. The first thing that surprised me in this article is some of the common themes of the soldier’s letters. Topics such as nostalgia of the life they have once lived and the trivial anecdotes of life in the trenches reminded me that these soldiers in the war are ,beyond anything, human. Their responses to the war were often optimistic and showed how they loved the life they had before the war and how they now appreciate what they had. Another thing which was not surprising, but truly mad me sad, was the letters to the mothers. The letters which talked about the horrors of war and the conditions their boys are living in must’ve made them so disturbed and sad. Another specific letter I found particularly interesting was the letter of Charles Sorley. His description about how the men no longer wait years while playing chess and feel no care for their pawns and either jus wait to be killed or queened speaks deeply about what he felt was the true nature of this conflict and the value of a human soldier as just a pawn in this game. This article made me look at the period through a more human and specific aspect instead of a 2 page description of all soldiers in Spielvogal. Through the studies of several works of the soldiers, I was able to grasp a great deal of information about how it must’ve been like for them.
After finishing the readings I was completely shocked and flabbergasted to find out the effects the soldiers felt during and after the war. In the article “Faces of war”, the author talks about plastic surgery and other practices. I was not aware of that at all. I had no idea that plastic surgery was even present at that time. The worst parts about the war according to me were men continuously shaking and fidgeting. Posttraumatic stress was also one of the most prominent effects of WWI. The article also talked about many other forms of physical injuries that the soldiers faced. As we also saw in the clips in class, some soldiers were even using masks hide their scars, and deformities. They were in utter shock, and not in the right state of mind. They need psychologists with them constantly who analyzed them and recorded them for research. I felt like the soldiers after their surgeries almost lost their self confidence and self resilience. At the same time I think there were some soldiers who did feel better once they were given masks, because they felt they could live their lives better and become somewhat normal.
The other article that left a hounding impression on me was the article that talked about how important and necessary it is for soldiers to write home and let their loved ones know that they are fine. I think writing letters was one way they dealt with the stress of the war and the conditions they lived in. I felt that when writing those letters they almost felt like they were escaping to a different world and were free from their worries. One thing that I found really intriguing was the fact that most soldiers wrote about the same things with same emotions. I also feel that the letters written by them are extremely precious and valuable because they let us know about the true experience and heartaches of being in a war.
I read the faces of war and found it to be quit unsettling. The reason for this is the fact that many of the soldiers who severed their country in ww1 would face a shallow life for the rest of their time alive. People always think of the horrible death toll of ww1 and the pain of being injured in such a manner. However the long-term effects as well as the psychological effects don’t really come to mind. The increased killing power of the weapons in ww1 is often talked about in class as well as the development of trench warfare. However one can not grasp the true horrors of this without thinking about the fact that the medicine at this time had not advanced enough with weapons technology to handle everything that doctors were forced to face during ww1.
However I am happy to see that medical advancements took place during this time period and that the facial reconstruction was formed. I never would have thought that such things were taking place during ww1 and I feel very happy for the soldiers who could be given prosthetic features. There lives would have been greatly improved by gaining virtually a piece of themselves back. It helped both visually for the soldiers’ appearance but could also help in function sometimes. I have heard of this in ww2 but I didn’t think it existed before that.
Yet I can’t begin to express how sadden I am for the soldiers who could receive nothing more than a mask. Although made with the greatest skill and had incredible human like appearance it lacked in a number of ways. First it was unable to show emotion and left the person with a blank face for the rest of their life. The mask also wore out in a couple of years and then what. Plus the mask did not have the same effect as surgeon because the masked could always be removed it was only a cover up. It lacked the effect of being apart of you merely a mask something to hide you from the rest of the world with.
The first article I read was “Military Lessons of the Great War” by Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice. First of all the themes that I encountered in this article is the one of a complete and utter failure. It was sort of funny to think about in a way. The author talked about all the flaws both sides of the struggle had in terms of leadership’s decisions, tactical planning or lack thereof, and also of the “assumptions of war”. Although not directly mentioning any assumptions per say, by this I mean that there are many examples of assumptions by commanders, such as: The French did not think that the Germans could field a large army, and planned for a frontal attack and a left flank by the Germans that would be weak because of the length of the proposed line. Well then, the French must have been surprised that their center counter attack and left side counter attacks stalled, and then were enveloped as the left side with a much larger force overran the French. It must be simply safe to say that this general theme of the article was HUGE mistakes were made. It is now most definitely looking as though the article is poking fun and the stupidity and ignorance of high command and also military intelligence. If it was even intelligent that is.
This article led me to believe that the commanders did NOT take the lessons of the previous minor scale engagements with the more modern technology at the time (such as the Franco-German war, and the Russo-Japanese war). This major sort coming was even still overshadowed by general ignorance of the higher ups, with an example being the British army was not followed for their movements by the Germans because of its smaller size. Didn’t they realize that the threat of a rogue agent in their supply convoys and rear echelons could very well starve the front? The possibility could be very real, so greater attention should have been kept to make sure France stayed isolated from others support.
The second article I read was “Faces of War”. After reading something as pathetic as the incompetence of military thought from the first article, I wanted to know more about what the consequences were of those leaders, but more importantly about the advancement of medicine. This is because during the civil war I knew that medical treatment was very crude, with just amputations of extremities that were wounded and dirty surgery equipment. The theme that this article radiates is hope, advancement, and accomplishments. Many facial injuries due to trench fighting were first of all terrible, but on a lighter note the advancement of medicine was saving many more wounded then could possibly have been before. I was actually unaware that during World War One they even attempted or had plastic surgery. Until you showed us that video and gave some background I’m sure I speak for the majority of the class in saying that we had no clue. It is too bad, because from the article, the advancement made is a large leap in medicine from what they had 20-30 years prior. However it is also a very important stepping stone forward and I now understand why so many more horrendous wounds in WWII men were able to survive.
This article should make everyone alter their perception of medicine, the First World War, and also later wars and plastic surgery. The pioneering work done in the first war was monumental in establishing the practices in plastic surgery today, and in general the medical advancement made more men survive wounds that they couldn’t if it happened in the American Civil War.
The first article I read was “Another Welcome letter: Soldier’s letters from the great war.” This article presented several new ideas to me. Before, my main information on World War I had been from textbooks and review books, which tended to look at the war as a whole, not at the situations of individual men. However, the letters in the article forced me to see the soldiers who fought in WWI as individuals. For instance, it hadn’t occurred to me before that many of the men ended up fighting and dying in a war that they didn’t believe in. For example, the correspondence between Arthur West and Bertrand Russell illustrates the distaste many of the men had for what they perceived as senseless killing. Also, the letters made me think more deeply about the psychological impact the war had on many soldiers. Letters exhibiting incredible cynicism showed me that many of the men’s entire outlook on life had changed. Letters describing some men’s new affinities for the natural world also made me think about how men reacted and dealt with the carnage.
The second article I read was “Faces of War,”which described the attempts of plastic surgeons and mask-makers to help disfigured veterans resume a normal life. This article brought several new ideas to my attention. For instance, it introduced to me the fact that increased technology in both weaponry and medical science had resulted in a greater number of survivors of traumatic and debilitating injuries. Soldiers who had had literally half of their faces blown off were able to survive due to new medical technology and had to learn to live with their disfigurement. Also, though much of my previous reading had dealt with the war itself, there was little mention of what happened to soldiers who returned from war. This article, describing the procedures that many men went through in order to help lessen the impact of their injuries, forced me to think about the life soldiers faced when they returned to civilian life. The accounts of men with noses missing or faces disfigured beyond any recognition trying to resume their previous lives lead me to think about the enormous impact the war had on their families and communities. It lead me to realize that the war didn’t just affect soldiers, but everyone they knew.
Overall, the articles made me look at the World War I era more in terms of the impact the war had on individuals and their families. Before, I mostly thought of the war in terms of political maneuvering and statistics. Now I think of it in terms of the psychological impact the war had on huge numbers of individual soldiers and the effect that traumatic injury had on other individuals. I also now see that the war had a huge and far reaching impact on many people’s lives, from the lives of soldiers to the lives of their families and communities.
I read the article "The Balance of Power Paradox". It gave me a new idea of what the underlying causes of World War I and the lead up to it were. It exposes a different perspective in which the various powers act not in accordance with their best interests due to an improper understanding of both the coming conflict and their own relative military strengths. For example, France is shown to have acted in a manner that attempted to save face after and embarrassing concession in the Moroccan Crisis. They took too much note of this isolated event while ignoring important events of the time like the Russo-Japanese War that would have given them a better idea of what the coming conflict would be like. Germany, though stronger than France, also considered itself a weaker power due to the powerful bloc of alliances that France had in its defense. As both looked for a quick, stunning victory to rally the home front and demoralize the enemy, neither was prepared for a bogged-down trench war that would last for years. It was the continuation of this outdated mode of thinking that continued throughout the war that resulted in countless suicidal attempts to break through the lines and take “important” positions. The article examines how each player at the world stage in fact made decisions that directly countered their own best plays, leading to a longer and bigger war. Nobody had understood the impact that the defensive advances of the turn of the Century had brought: nearly unassailable machine gun embankments, fortified trenches with concertina wire, and dense artillery bombardment. The combination of these advances with the lack of understanding of modern war and diplomacy enabled a buildup of military might before the war and a useless, destructive culmination in the trenches of northern France.
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I read“Another welcome letter: Soldiers’ letters from the great war.”. The article discussed the different aspects of letters that were written by soldiers during WWI that were sent back home. Most of what the article focused on was the different tones of the letters, from realistic to optimistic, and to plain cynical at times. She was able to illustrate her different points by using different examples from different soldiers and using excerpts from the letters that were written.
First, she introduces how, despite the harshness of the trenches, most soldiers wrote back to their families with favorable accounts of the conditions there. Yet, what was interesting was that she did not focus on those people. Rather, she focused on those who did not try to hide the fact that the trenches were indeed miserable For example, Wilfred Owen wrote gruesome accounts of his conditions.
What was also interesting was how much prose and poetry can be found in these letters. Especially from the excerpt of the poem by Charles Sorey, Wilfred Owen and others, the excerpts from their poems were thoughtful and though the language was eloquent, the things described were extremely realistic. This sense of realism can also be found by the description of the trenches by John Crombie, who did not hide the fact that the trenches were horrible places to stay in from his parents.
I think by looking at these letters and the trends from these letters observed, it gave me somewhat of a different view at soldiers at the time. What I think reading this article was able to give is a sense of human connection. These letters no matter how different, were all written by boys witnessing the same horrendous scenes and experiencing the same kind of loneliness and pain. Yet, the ways in which they express these experiences was completely different from one soldier to another. I think these letters offer a window into the psyche of these soldiers and offer such a better, more personal look at what it was like to fight during WWI.
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