Click HERE to link to weekly readings.
Read the following:
Faces of War
Another Welcome Letter
Military Lessons
Respond to the following prompts on one article:
- 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 5/11.
42 comments:
The reading “Another Welcome Letter” includes various aspects of World War I shown from different viewpoints. The reading contains excerpts from actual letters form soldiers in World War I. One theme I discovered from this reading was actually that there was not one specific theme related to World War I. The soldiers each had their own way of thinking. Some soldiers, such as Arthur Graeme West, thought of participating in the war as forceful and unnecessary. He thought that if you were not dedicated and had no yearn for serving in the war, then you should not be forced to. Other soldiers, such as Julian Grenfell, thought of serving in the war as a nice distraction because there would not be much to do once they all got back home and the war was over. The soldiers’ outlooks upon participating in the war were either positive or negative. I was previously under the impression that all soldiers though of war as negatively. Contrary to this belief, in many letters there were even flashes of humor and cynicism”. Others spared no grimy detail in their letter home because they thought they could “see no excuse for deceiving you if I have suffered from seventh hell.” Through the infestations of rats, horrific experiences in the trenches and frequent stays in the hospital beds, some soldiers still made it possible to keep a positive attitude. For example, even when thinking of death, Edward Wyndham tried to be optimistic. He thought of death with a light heart and because of that he did not live in fear like many other soldiers did. Another aspect of participating in the war that was viewed differently was being away from home. I thought everyone would be extremely homesick but that was actually not true. Some found it very easy to form comradeships with fellow soldiers while others were so homesick that they could only make friends with animals. This idea that everyone had different opinions of World War I was new to me. Another idea that was new to me was how the public viewed the government. Maybe it was naïve of me to believe that people were somewhat happy with the government but I did not realize how displeased they really were. In many of the letters the loved ones at home spoke very cynically and critically of the government policy and military chaos. They believed that the “real evil in the conflict is not in the individual as much as the powers”. They also stated that if the government had walked a day in the shoes of a soldier the war would be over a lot faster. Before reading this I was not aware of the harsh opinion of the public towards the government at that time.
This article did not lead me to look at this period of history any differently. Everything that the article stated seemed rather typical for a soldier and the public to believe at the time. It described the harsh conditions of the war and how brave the men must be to serve their country. To me these ideas are no different than I thought prior to reading this article. I have always thought of the men that served our country as brave soldiers who have experienced horrific conditions that I will never come close to experiencing. The article brought out the sentimental side of the war with excerpts from letters to loved ones. I have never thought for a second that it would be easy to be away from a loved one overseas for such a long period of time, so this sentiment was not a new idea for me. Most of the ideas that were brought up in the article have been stated in many history books and novels that describe the harsh conditions of the life of a soldier.
The article “Faces of War,” by Caroline Alexander, takes a look at an aspect of World War I that is not often seen. Many sources study the devastating effects the World Wars had on its veterans, both physical and mental. But “Faces of War” takes a look at a specific type of injury that has often gone unnoticed; the mental affects of facial injuries. Ms. Alexander explains how devastating the extreme facial disfigurements caused by the war were to victims, quoting how some men, upon seeing their own faces in the mirror, fainted in shock. All injuries, and especially facial ones, reached a new level of severity in the first World War, due to improved war technology such as bombs and machine guns. “Mankind’s military technology wildly outpaced its medical,” (Alexander), and it left doctors frantically trying to catch up.
This leads into Ms. Alexander’s primary focus; the works of those who fought to bring war veteran’s back their dignity, and their faces. Comparing the work of Sir Harold Gillies, a pioneer in plastic surgery, to that of Francis Derwent Wood and Anna Coleman Ladd, sculptors who created masks for disfigured soldiers, Ms. Alexander reveals the huge contributions made to the war effort by those off the front lines. She also reveals some of the more surprising aspects of the war era: the ingenuity that made what these people did possible, and the humanitarian spirits that made it happen. In response to the horrific injuries soldiers of WWI faced, Sir Gillies developed and commercialized skin grafting and other plastic surgery techniques that are still essential to the field. And when he and his fellow surgeons reached their limit, sculptors like Mr. Wood and Ms. Ladd took over, developing techniques to make masks as lifelike as possible.
War is not often seen as touching, but the effort which these men and women put in for their patients, and the gratitude they received in return, is striking. A quote from Ms. Ladd states, “The letters of gratitude from the soldiers and their families hurt, they are so grateful.” Ms. Ladd in particular showcased the personal, human touch she and her comrades tried to provide soldiers, with a studio made as open and beautiful as possible with sunlight and bright flowers.
Overall, Ms. Alexander’s article paints a far different picture of the war than many are used to. Bringing out the ingeniousness and resourcefulness of those who fought the crippling effects of the War on its survivors, as well as the surprisingly human touch with which they fought it, World War I is transformed in her article from a period smothered by death and destruction to a period also touched by creativity and perseverance, and even hope.
The article “Faces of War,” written by Caroline Alexander, showed the problems faced by soldiers even when they were off of the frontline. While I did know that some soldiers survived extremely violent injuries, I had never really considered the life-altering effects of the injuries themselves. For example, Men who lost the use of their mouths were able to be treated in hospitals and had their wounds treated, but there was no way to restore the use of their mouth. These men were forced to live the rest of their lives in that state, and many were unable to look at themselves in the mirror after their accidents. By reading this article, I learned that, while the physical destruction to the face could not be repaired, it was possible to give these men back their self-respect. Artists and doctors like Sir Harold Gillies and Kathleen Scott were able to help these men move on with their lives.
Even at the start of World War I, it was clear to doctors throughout Europe that the fighting would result in horrible injuries to soldiers on both sides. The invention of new and more accurate weapons led to new types of injuries that doctors had to treat. Some of the most difficult were injuries to the face. From reading this article I learned that doctors worked with artists to help these men move on with their lives. By constructing masks bearing images of the injured soldier’s face prior to the injury, the doctors and artists were able to open new doors in the field of plastic surgery. The masks were made of thin metal, meaning they weighed nearly nothing. The face painted on the mask was usually based on pre-war photos of the injured soldier. The masks gave numerous men the courage to face their families or go into public, tasks that were nearly impossible for most of them before. Children who had previously run from their father’s deformities were able to look at their fathers with respect and pride once again. The work of these doctors and artists allowed many soldiers to be given the respect they deserved, as opposed to the scorn and fear they were given after their injuries.
Reading this article changed my view of World War I. I had previously viewed the period as a time of neglect and disrespect for injured soldiers. Most people looked down upon injured soldiers or viewed them as monsters. I never expected to hear of people fighting against the normal views of these men who had given their countries enormous sacrifices. The doctors that wanted to better the lives of injured soldiers paved the way for programs today which help injured war vets assimilate into everyday life. Without people like Harold Gillies and Kathleen Scott, many of these programs may not exist. “Faces of War” definitely changed my views of this time period. I am glad that these soldiers were given the help they deserved, because a sacrifices like theirs deserve respect and admiration, not scorn and fear.
After reading the article called, “Faces of War” written by Alexander Caroline, the ideas or themes presented in the article that were new to me was the fact that masks were made for the injured, World War I soldiers. Even though I knew that plastic surgery was one way to reconstruct a soldier’s face, I never distinguished the fact that masks were sculpted based on photographs of the soldier's faces before it was destroyed. After they sculpted their faces into a mask, they were then placed on their heads. It is devastating to say, but many soldiers lost almost half their faces, including a loss in their ear, nose or eye. Due to the fact that soldiers during the war were injured severely, and many of them had lost different parts of their facial features, there were two surgeons who attempted to restore their facial wounds by, “plastic surgery” or by creating sculptures and masks. For example, Dr. Fred Albee, at the time was a surgeon who reconstructed damaged faces by using “plastic surgery,” while Sir Harold Gillies, “worked with artists who created likenesses and sculptures of what wounded soldiers looked like before their injuries, to restore mutilated men's faces.” Another example of an injured and damaged face that a British journalist explains is, "The squeeze, as it stands, is a literal portrait of the patient, with his eyeless socket, his cheek partly gone, the bridge of the nose missing, and also with his good eye and a portion of his good cheek." Even though this was a challenge for the surgeons and still did not “restore the ability to chew or swallow,” the soldiers were still thankful for having their mouth’s repaired. Not only were the masks a challenge to construct, but they also took a while for the artists to make. First, “the patient was wholly healed from both the original injury and the restorative operations, plaster casts were taken of his face, in itself a suffocating ordeal, from which clay or plasticine squeezes were made.”
This article led me to look at this period of history differently, because many soldiers were injured and did not have the same qualities that other people had. Having to loose an eye or an ear can change your life because you would not be able to hear or see well anymore. Moreover, I also believe the idea of sculpting an injured face, has changed history because soldiers were given the appropriate treatment that was needed.
Anne Powell’s “Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers’ Letters From the Great War” provides a very unique viewpoint with respect to the experiences of the victims of World War I. Detailing excerpts of letters from the suffering soldiers, the article presents the horrifying themes of the war from the eyes of the soldiers. Loneliness, fear of death, and hatred of war are among these painful themes. Edward Thomas wrote, “I wish I had a friend here,” and wondered sadly at 'how long it will be before I can be quite frank & natural with anyone'. To think that people suffered through the pain and terror of the war alone is horrifying.
Other men complained of the terrible conditions experienced in the trenches. Though I was familiar with the idea that the trenches offered an absolutely atrocious lifestyle, I was amazed by the specific personal accounts of the men. This new viewpoint made the horror more real to me. One recurring complaint seems to have been the constant presence of rats. Tom Kettle painted an especially disturbing picture: “You lie in your dug-out famished, not for food (that goes without saying), but for sleep, and hear them scurrying up and down their shafts, nibbling at what they find, dragging scraps of old newspapers along, with intolerable cracklings, to bed themselves. They scurry across your blankets and your very face... Men die and rats increase”. It is easy to recognize the horror that must have come with charging into battle and meeting with painful death and injury, but to realize that even in times of quiet, the conditions were appalling.
Naturally, the theme of death and injury is also present in the letters of the soldiers. This theme was not new to me, but its extent was certainly appalling. Some were saddened by the losses of friends and by the sheer quantity of dead soldiers surrounding them. Lieutenant Bernard Pitt explained that “The ground round about is poisoned with human relics, limbs and bundles of clothes filled with rotten flesh”. Likewise, Patrick Shaw-Stewart lamented that ‘Nowadays we who are alive have the sense of being old, old survivors . . .”. It is difficult to imagine such an experience. To have death so wholly pervade your life must have been unbearable. Undoubtedly, it forced soldiers to come to terms with death, as Arthur Graeme West demonstrated in writing, “Yet what do I fear? I mind being killed because I am fond of the other life, but I know I should not miss it in annihilation. It is not that I fear. I don't definitely feel able to say I fear the infliction of pain or wound. I cannot bind the fear down to anything definite. I think it resolves itself simply into the realisation of the fact that being hit by a shell with produce a new set of circumstances so strange that one does not know how one will find oneself in them . . .”.
Men were struck by the war in many ways. Some came to deplore the very foundation of the concept, which is interesting to me because it proves that the soldiers were more than pawns. They were logical, intelligent, and thoughtful men. West explained that “The maddening thing is the sight of men of fairly goodwill accepting it all as necessary; this angers me, that men must go on. Why? Who wants to?”. Others directed anger towards the leaders of the war effort, as Harold Parry explained that “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.”
In general, this article demonstrates that the horrors of the war cannot simply be explained by a numerical detail of casualties. For me, the article presented themes that I was familiar with, but that had never truly become personal. Reading about the discomfort, loneliness, confusion, pain, and hopelessness of the soldiers from their own words in letters addressed to their loved ones made the war seem real to me. To think that people went through such misery is shocking. I think it is easy to look at the number of casualties and declare that a war was a disaster, but to read individual testimonies of the misery emphasized that young people, even the age of my peers, and older people alike left families, friends, and lives behind to suffer an incomparable agony in the World War. Thus, this article did force me to look at history in a new way. Though the themes themselves were not brand new, the reality was painfully unique.
“Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander reveals the gruesome truth about World War I. The article focuses on cringing facial injuries that affected World War I soldiers. The article opened my eyes to a whole new perspective on World War I. I now realize how gruesome and horrid the war was for the soldiers that fought in it.
One horrifying aspect of the war was how many soldiers left war with disfigured faces. There was one part of the article that truly made me disgusted by the war: ‘"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."’ Many soldiers, despite the attempts by the plastic surgeons to fix their faces, had permanent damage to their faces. Not all disfigured soldiers could be helped out by the surgeons, so the thought of living with a torn up face for the rest of your life really gives me chills. Every time somebody would meet you, they would cringe. It is a horrifying thought and a sad way to live.
Although many soldiers went home with facial injuries, many people stepped up to aid some wounded men. Surgeons such as Wood and Ladd brought progressive results to many soldiers with facial injuries. (Whether or not the soldier’s face would recover depended on the seriousness of the injury). In the article, Ladd was described as one who produced “artistic results” in his studio. Masks designed by Ladd and others weighed only four to nine ounces and designed with copper.
While these masks seemed beneficial, they had several drawbacks. Men with masks often struggled to chew and swallow food. They also had little expressions, especially if the mask covered the majority of their face. In conclusion, “Faces of War” portrayed horrifying aspects of World War I.
In "Faces of War" written by Caroline Alexander, one major theme that was previously uknown to myself personally (perhaps to due naivety) was presented: the facial deformities that many soldiers had to go through. Alexander writes mainly about the agency known as the Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department and the procedures that many plastic surgeons performed to create masks for deformed soliders or attempt to repair their face. Many men who saw themselves after the effects of the war were utterly frightened by the sight. One nun told her nurses "Always look a man straight in the face, remember he's watching your face to see how you're going to react." This quote gives a sense of realism of the severity of many of the wounds that the soldiers maintained. This caused me to think about not only the mental and physical effects of the war such as lost limbs, but the sheer loss of identity that many of the soldiers in the war faced (no pun intended).
Anne Powell, author of "Another Welcome Letter", referenced the communication or lack thereof in some situation between soldiers and their family back home. What I did not realize was that a majority of soldiers heavily censored their letters back home as to not arouse any sort of worry from their loved ones. For example, 17-year-old Edward Wyndham 'Bim' Tennant was fond of writing to his mother, and he did almost every day. He did not want to stir any sort of negative news up for her so he always tried to reassure her saying "there is nothing concerning me you need worry about at all." Other soldiers were very open about the topic of war and exposed the variety of indecencies each and every soldier had to deal with. John Crombie, a potential politician following in his father's footsteps, wrote to his mother describing how they "mopped out" captured trenches: "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...the instructions are that these poor half-blinded devils should be bayoneted as the come up." This article did lead me to realize the censorship that occurred very often to prevent any further damage to the population back on the homefront, and to visualize the terrors of the war through personal accounts.
“Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander made me realize that the impacts of war go far beyond the battle zone for many people. I think many people, myself included are unaware of the severities of this specific type of injury on World War I and World War II vets. Not only do facial injuries require a victim to learn how to do basic activities again but they also carry devastating mental side affects. According to the article, some men fainted upon seeing their reflections for the first time. Not only did these men have to deal with the stress of adjusting to everyday life after the war, they also had to deal with a major facial disfigurement that caused people to gawk at them everywhere they went. This is probably the worst thing to do for one’s self-confidence and self-image.
The reason many of these injuries were so severe was because of the increased war technologies of this period. Prior to this war, the bomb as well as the machine gun had not been introduced thus these types of injuries had not exsisted, and the ability to fix these types of problems was not developed. Thus many victims of these types of accidents prior to WWI didn’t survive so the mental problems associated with them weren’t studied prior to this.
This article made me consider this period in history from a different perspective. It made me realize that in addition to the soldiers and officers in the war, the doctors were also vitally important. Although they weren’t as important up until this time period due to limited knowledge and technology in the field of medicine, this was certainly the war were they became paramount to the success of the overall war effort.
The article “Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander provides an extraordinary depiction of the gruesome and horrendous side of war that affects the individual infantryman. In countless text books and resources, many authors focus on discussing a famous battle, or perhaps the plans for that famous battle… But they rarely show the more personal consequences war has on those unfortunate enough to be caught in its grasp. Something as fundamental to our existence as our face for instance, can be cruelly taken away just as easily as a life. It was fascinating to read how the “lucky ones” that survived their close encounters with death were forever ridiculed, fainted at the mere sight of their disfigurement, and most unsettling of all it was “a fairly common experience for the maladjusted person to feel like a stranger to his world (Alexander)”. The description of these horrors wasn’t portrayed as romantic or as damage from an act of valor; rather, it showcased war as what it really was.
With the sudden use of deadly new technologies, Alexander points out that the groundbreaking role of creating masks for veterans gave new life to those who believed there was nothing else to live for. I had the impression ingrained in my head of war being something to definitely be feared, but not on such an immense scale. Countless men blindly charged into no-man’s land only to find their lives either ended or severely crippled by the modern weaponry in a matter of mere seconds. Despite these horrors, I had never imagined the amount of bravery possessed by these soldiers. To sacrifice something as horrible as a face, and yet do their best to attempt to cope with their wounds is simply stunning to say the least. Despite the mockery they received and the agonizing recovery process, many veterans merely moved on as best they could. Of course the masks had their flaws, such as suffocating sensation achieved during the plastering process of making the mask, and even chewing food, but this led to “enormous advances in most branches of medicine (Alexander). Without the tremendous sacrifice by these men, modern procedures would be impossible and perhaps unheard of.
The article on plastic surgery has really changed my view of World War One. I used to believe it was a war of men just being mowed down by machine-gun fire with no chance of surviving. This article changed this by showing how more men were horrifically injured than there were men dying. It said that eight million men were killed while a much larger amount of 21 million were wounded. This was very different from my thoughts I had before. These men had to live the rest of their lives. The new medicines and medical technologies were very advanced for the time and helped these men live. The only problem was that they were scarred physically and emotionally. The article on the letters said that Wilfred Owen described the battlefield through poems. One of them says, “carnage incomparable.” This has to be emotionally tolling for anyone. The Shell Shock that devastated many men has changed my view of war entirely. These articles have changed mine mind about War and the World War One era.
The article on plastic surgery has really changed my view of World War One. I used to believe it was a war of men just being mowed down by machine-gun fire with no chance of surviving. This article changed this by showing how more men were horrifically injured than there were men dying. It said that eight million men were killed while a much larger amount of 21 million were wounded. This was very different from my thoughts I had before. These men had to live the rest of their lives. The new medicines and medical technologies were very advanced for the time and helped these men live. The only problem was that they were scarred physically and emotionally. The article on the letters said that Wilfred Owen described the battlefield through poems. One of them says, “carnage incomparable.” This has to be emotionally tolling for anyone. The Shell Shock that devastated many men has changed my view of war entirely. These articles have changed mine mind about War and the World War One era.
In the article "Faces of War" by Caroline Alexander explained alot that to me that I was previously unaware of. Out of everything I learned the topic that caught my attention was the crude skills of the plastic surgeons. In some cases they had to make entire faces for people and previously had never come even close to that. These faces would be extremely difficult to produce by someone who has no previous experience in plastic surgeries of that caliber.
Another topic that was very interesting but sad to me was the unimaginable facial deformities that soldiers would end up with for the rest of their lives. As Alexander said, "mankind's military technology wildly outpaced its medical." This quote is clearly shown in the injuries that these men would receive. Because of this men would end up with terrible deformities that affected their everyday life in nearly every way. These men would not be able to look in a mirror because they would essentially freak out at the sight of their own terrible image. Within the community, some park benches were painted blue to signal that there was a man with a deformity sitting their that would be "distressful to view."
Overall this made me view the time period of World War I with much more emotion because of the horrible things that happened to soldiers. The article "Faces of War" made me much more aware of all the unfortunate and awful things that were caused as a result of machine guns, mustard gas, and many other different “modern” military technologies that were new to the soldiers. In addition to doing this it created a different depiction of the time period that intervened with one of pain and suffering. Caroline Alexander wrote an article that showed how mankind was able to adapt to the needs of all the injured men and create and execute a new idea and process. This instills hope in the minds of nearly everyone because it is a perfect example of our ability to adapt and help keep our country alive, literally.
I read Faces of War by Caroline Alexander. This article discussed the difficulties in repairing the damaged faces of wounded soldiers during World War I. After reading I realized that World War I was a period of great medical advancements that involved skin grafting and facial reconstruction. I never knew anything about the medical techniques during this era, but I found it extremely interesting.
Harold Gillies deserves a lot of credit for all of his accomplishments. He was one of the found fathers of facial reconstruction. Mr. Gillies was responsible for modern plastic surgery techniques. Harold Gillies was thrown into developing a process for reconstructing a face as he stated, “We were suddenly asked to produce half a face.” He was dedicated to his work and worked with artists to develop something that was very similar in appearance to the soldier’s face. Gillies was also responsible for new procedures involving skin grafts.
In order to make a mask perfect mask it took about a month. He masks was made of metal was light weight and permanent unlike rubber prosthetics. However, these masks were far from flawless. The children of these soldiers were afraid of their dads because half of their face was missing or not made of skin. I admire soldiers and veterans a lot more after reading this article. Until now I never realized the hardships the men and women endure long after the fighting is over, for some even looking in the mirror is painful and upsetting.
After reading "Faces of War" I have learned a lot about the time period of World War I and now have a different view point. One of the many things I learned from this article was the true severity of some of the injuries that occured during the war and how they occured. As the article says, the men didn't understand that they couldn't avoid a machine gun's bullets. This made me feel bad for the soldiers because they had no understanding of the advanced technology of war. This article also shed a light on the medical side of war, and how far behind medical technology was compared to military technology. I found it interesting that many of the people responsible for beginning the use of masks on facially injured patients were origanlly artists, mainly sculptors. I also gained new insight on not just the physical effects of war, but the mental effects as well. One part of the article discusses how many of the patients fainted at the sight of their own faces and for this reason mirrors were removed from the institutes. It was also brought to my attention that these heroes who gave everything for their country were ridiculed by others and embarassed. This is no way for a veteran to feel. They should be proud of the work they did for the country, not be worried about how people are going to look at their distorted faces. This harsh judgement and embarassment lead to depression and a lack in self confidence.
Reading "Faces of War" has changed the way I look at the World War I era. It made me realize that people back then did not truely respect their veterans. Instead of supporting them and helping them through their hard times as they tried to readjust to life, the people just gawked or avoided eye contact entirely. This is shameful because these soldiers just wanted to live normal lives and because of the sacrafices they made, they can't. Not everyone failed to support the soldiers though, the artists, scientists, and doctors that worked to start the mask movement all worked to try and better the lives of these soldiers.
In the passage "Another Welcome Letter" One underlying idea that surprised me was that officers would censor their soldgers letters home. This idea fathomed me because it was also said in this passage that a soldgers true and only intimate connection with his family back home was throught the communication of letters and writing. So why would an officer such as Charles Sorey in this case alter or change what a fellow soldger of his wrote home?
Another idea that came across generally new was the creation and dramatization of war through poetry. As opposed to today where now everything seems to be on television or on video in some way electronically, the famouse poets during this era used the war as a way to promote their core beliefs and values as an "old communication" compared to modern day society. An example of this was also from the passage "Another Welcome Home Letter." It depicts the poets of Francis Lewidge and irish poet who collobarated with Katherine Tynan another famous poet about war in 1917.
The article "Faces of War" did infact make me look at this period in history differently than before. It made see how brutal this time period really was and how it did have importance on the evolution of modern day warfare. The brutality and lack of medical treatments altered my opinion on the severity of war in the early 20th century. An example was of how a mans children were scared to look at their fathers disfigured face after the war and to see now human emotions. It made me realize the despicable injuries and damage warfare took place during this war and that the treatment isnt even close to the treatment today. In addition the evolution or change the first world war brought us surpised me also. It described in great detail how the first new automatic weapons and new avation tactics were established as well during world war one.
Both articles did indeed change my mind on this time period and presented new ideas and themes i was not aware of before. As an end result i learned that war during this time was even more brutal due to the lack of treatment and supplies. In addition the severity or control officers had on soldgers by censoring their letters and even excuting hundreds of men due to the "disease of cowardice" from the video. Both the brutality physicall due to the lack of technology and the cruelty that soldgers were treated by officers, defintely altered my opinion.
War is known to cause large amounts of damage- high death tolls, torn families, and post-war psychological issues like shell shock, however some issues associated with war go unnoticed. Caroline Alexander's "Faces of War," highlights a part of the first World War that many people seemingly were unaware of. Trench warfare was often conducive to facial injury. Soldiers would frequently pop their heads up over the top of the trench, hopeful that they could dodge a bullet if necessary, however many times they were not able to do so. Caroline Alexander discusses these horrific injuries, in addition to the psychological effects that came with them, and the road to recovery for the soldiers who fell victim to facial injuries.
Throughout the article, Alexander focuses on the work of several plastic surgeons and sculptors who were able to create processes in which injured soldiers could eventually regain what they had a lost- a face. The advancement of war weapons lead to an influx of patients for these plastic surgery pioneers. First off, she discusses the efforts of Sir Harold Gillies, a plastic surgeon. Gillies was presented with the challenge of reconstructing the human face after parts of it had been destroyed. He did this by working alongside artists to create a result that closely resembled the face prior to the injury. Gillies also refined the technique of skin grafting-which is still used frequently in todays medical world. Next, Alexander highlights the works of Francis Wood and Anna Ladd. Both of these individuals toiled to create masks for soldiers who were missing parts of their faces, or needed reconstruction that was not possible through plastic surgery. These sculptors took over after the plastic surgeons had done all that they could do to help the victim. The goals of all three of these individuals were to help disfigured soldiers to regain their self respect, and self assurance. Caroline Alexander clearly illustrates how grateful the patients were after receiving surgery or a mask. She quotes Anna Ladd, saying "The letters of gratitude from the soldiers and their families hurt, they are so grateful." She continues to discuss one soldier's appreciation because now the woman he loves no longer finds him repulsive. The effort given to their patients by Gillies, Wood, and Ladd represent a positive aspect of such a dark and sorrowful time period.
In Alexander's article, she takes a different perspective on the war that is very different than many would agree with. She takes a negative aspect of trench warfare- facial deconstruction, and uses it to highlight positive steps taken by individuals to better the lives of injured soldiers. This approach to discussing the war seems to be very uncommon. Throughout her writing, Caroline Alexander changes the war from a horrible loss of lives in our country, to an opportunity for success on the home front.
I read “Military Lessons of the Great War” by Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice, and article that both educated and changed my original perception of war and in particular, the Fist World War. Before reading the article I somewhat understood what made this war so unlike preceding ones, but not to the extent that I do now. This article highlighted the role that science had to industry and manufacture and other, perhaps more pivotal concepts. Reading this article, I had been under the perception that the weapons had been the most influential factor in this war, but the author changed my perception completely. It made me think of the tactical side of war and careful planning and vital decisions that are constantly being made. It made a point that no matter how strong a military force is, such as Germany, can be led off course due to miscalculations or inaccurate predictions. What stood out as new to me is the fact that this war was completely unprecedented from nearly all aspects form the quantity of men who took up arms and the weapons they yielded, to the ability to implement numerous aspects of advancement into war.
The author put the scale of this war into context by explaining the history of conscription, or law that establishes a right of the state to call upon every capable and able bodied man to serve. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War triggered Germany to lead an army of 380,00 troops to the frontiers of Alsace-Lorraine and France opposed them with a force of 275,000 troops. By the time of World War I, 1,500,000 German troops were drawn up along the frontiers of Belgium and France and this time France had 1,000,000 troops. Despite this dramatic increase, both armies, as well as the armies of other nations, continued to grow and became numbered not by the hundreds of thousands, but rather, by the millions. It must not be forgotten, however, that this was the Great War not only because of the mass quantities of troops brought forth by nations, but because of the mass destruction of human life and a new type of war. Sir Frederick Maurice brought to light the fact that in no other war had opposing sides been in constant contact where men were being wounded and killed nearly continually and this was in large part due to trench warfare and how it locked troops into particular locations for extended periods of time. Yet another factor of the war that played a tremendous war that I was not fully aware was the role of of developing railways and other modes of transportation. Previous to the internal combustion engine and motor vehicles, the transportation of troops and ammunition would have impossible via animal drawn transport, especially because new weapons, like the machine guns of the First World War, required substantially more rounds than single shot rifles and other single shot weapons. The influx of troops, furthermore, would have been difficult to transport without developments in the field of transportation. The article also makes a point that whereas disease was often as deadly as the rounds protruding from opposing weapons, and that sanitation measures and other techniques were implemented in an effort to keep troops healthy so that it was, “no longer necessary to calculate how many men could be fed and kept healthy…the question became how many men capable of bearing arms were available”. He closes by saying that, “it seems certain that changes will take the form of reliance upon other and better machines rather than the developments of man power”, but proper coordination of strategy as well as stagecraft is the actual successful component of war.
"Faces of War" by Caroline Alexander presented a few ideas that were previously unheard of to me. For example, I did not have the slightest clue that facial masks were constructed to attempt to hide the unfortunate disfigurements that soldiers acquired during World War I. I had assumed that the veterans continued with their lives or died early, not once did the thought occur to me that maybe they attempted to cover up their faces.
It is interesting how towards the beginning of the reading, Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France, says "The... soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun... They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets." Dr. Albee says that it is essentially the soldiers' lack of common sense that put them into the unfortunate state of permanent facial deformity. It can be inferred that most superior infantry members did not warn soldiers about the dangers of peeking over the trench, or perhaps warnings were ignored. I find it quite strange that many soldiers did not know better than to stick their heads into open fire, assuming they could dodge the bullets. This, of course, was not the only cause for severe facial defects, any type of injury could take place on the battlefield or in "no man's land."
Another idea that I find interesting is related to what I previously mentioned about the construction of facial masks. The fact that artist/socialite Anna Coleman Watts and artist/founder of Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department, Francis Derwin Wood, could collaborate in the meticulous assembly of masks is a fantastic historical feat. They were attempting to ease the lives of war veterans that were coming home from an experience filled with unimaginable pain and suffering. After enduring a long and horrific journey starting in the trenches or on the field to lying before the surgeons, the wounded soldiers were tired and weak, dreading to see what they could possibly look like. Watts's masks were custom made to fit each patient she had, and even before that she had to spend a month studying the soldier's facial structure. According to the reading, the greatest artistic challenge was painting the ever-shifting skin color on the masks. Grace Harper describes Watts's challenge, "That artist has to pitch her tone for both bright and cloudy weather, and has to imitate the bluish tinge of shaven cheeks." The face is not like a foot or hand where an artist like Watts could get away with using a standard collection of colors. The challenges presented to the mask makers truly exhibits the struggle of the war, in and out of the trenches.
This article has lead me to look at this time period as a time of innovation in the field of plastic surgery. Previous to reading, when I thought of the World War I, my general thoughts include fighter pilots, tanks, and trench warfare. After studying the reading, I can now add plastic surgery to the list. In terms of innovation I always regarded World War I to be a period of technological progress, but it is evident that the medical and artistic methods of plastic surgery were progressing also.
After reading “Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander many new ideas were presented and brought to my attention. As with any war there is bloodshed and fighting is not a pretty thing, yet I was not completely aware of the magnitude of how terrifying and destructive this war was. This article was a good change from the usual side of war that we learn about in school. The true nature of war is rarely taught by teachers or assigned in reading a textbook, but Alexander clued us into a side that we do not usually see. With the introduction of the machine gun into warfare, these soldiers were up against a weapon that they could not even comprehend. "[T]he . . . soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun," recalled Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France (Alexander). This new weapon literally ripped these men to shreds all the while they thought it was possible to be able to avoid the bullets from this death machine. Because of the trench fighting, many soldiers would be forced to pop their heads out and once this was done, they would be torn apart by the machine guns. It is extremely sad to think that first off this amount of damage was inflicted upon soldiers, but it is also sad to think that these soldiers actually believed they could escape the impending massacre that would reign down on them from the machine gun's ammunition. Because of this ignorance, there were many facial injuries sustained by these soldiers.
With the amount of non-fatal facial injuries increasing,there was a growing need for plastic surgeons, which I did not know existed at this time. These plastic surgeons were quite successful in their job. These facial reconstruction specialists worked to help the victims of facial injuries regain the pieces of themselves that were lost in war. By helping these soldiers regain some normality of their looks, they also were able to regain a piece of themselves. After a seriously scarring injury, it can be difficult to be the same person you are before the traumatic event. They could regain a sense of confidence they had previously lost because as in one case, the woman of an injured man thought he was repulsive due to his facial injuries, however once he received these reconstructive procedures she loved him again and although that is an extremely shallow response, it made this one man feel significantly better. He along with countless other soldiers receiving these procedures were forever gracious that they got these treatments. Many soldiers and their families sent letters to the doctors responsible for helping them out through these monumentally difficult times professing their utter gratitude. Thanks to these doctors, what was a low point in these soldier's lives, was able to be returned to a somewhat normal existence.
Caroline Alexander's article illustrate points that are not normally highlighted in traditional learning in schools. She gave an in depth look at how machine guns negatively impacted the lives of trench fighters and how because of the injuries handed out by this weapon, it was necessary for plastic surgeons to come and help fix the physical wounds of battle.
Maggie Kulpa
After reading “Faces of War” I was brought to realization of the extensive effects that war can have on a man. Not only do the traumatic experiences affect many soldiers’ ability to think and function in society afterward, but their wounds diminish their self-confidence and self-respect. Before reading this article it never crossed my mind as to not only how physically harmful these wounds could be to soldiers, but how harmfully they can be emotionally and psychologically. This is shown in Wood’s article in The Lancet where he states “’I endeavour by means of the skill I happen to possess as a sculptor to make a man's face as near as possible to what it looked like before he was wounded,’ Wood wrote. ‘My cases are generally extreme cases that plastic surgery has, perforce, 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, . . . takes once more to a pride in his personal appearance. His presence is no longer a source of melancholy to himself nor of sadness to his relatives and friends.’”
Not only did the article bring the aspect of the harm of the wounds into focus, but also the good of humans and their efforts to make those around them feel more comfortable with themselves. Before reading this, I would have never thought that masks were made to help soldiers return to life normally, but rather that soldiers were just sent home and forced to deal with their injuries themselves. This article shows that humans have a natural instinct to be helpful towards others, which was not one of the main focuses after the war. A result of the war was the largely spread idea of humans being hostile and living in the world alone, but this article touches upon the nice things that others did for each other at the time. For someone to want to help soldiers that lived with troubles because of what the war did for them, it is truly inspiring to others and disproves the standard ideas of the time period.
After reading “Faces of War” many ideas were brought to my attention. First off, I had no idea the magnitude of how destructive the war was. No one is under the impression that war is safe thing, however the focus is put primarily on the casualties. People focus on how many people die in the war yet the ones who suffer the most are the ones who have to live through it. One quote stuck out to me while reading this passage. An American doctor stated "with a not merely broken but shattered bone at the bottom of it." I pictured a solider being shot and his bone ultimately shattering inside him. This quote proved that war injuries are unlike any other injuries. They are much more intense and tragic.
Another new idea presented in this article was the idea of facial reconstruction. This was ultimately the beginning of plastic surgery. I never realized that soldiers actually tried to correct their disfigurements after the war; I thought they were just forced to live with them. However the first sentence in the article referred to a local London’s doctor’s office as the “Tin Nose Shop”. Upon reading this I pictured a wounded veteran with a metal face, an utterly frightening sight. However as I read on I was interested to learn about skin graphs and how doctors learned to recreate the human face in order to help the wounded soldiers. What stuck out the most to me was when the article discussed sculpting. The doctors actually began to work with sculptors to help reconstruct the human face, it shows how medicine had to advance rapidly in order to aid in the war effort.
My view on World War I has definitely changed after reading this article. I have so much more compassion and appreciation for the doctors who helped the suffering victims of the war. It opened my eyes to the extent of the injuries that the soldiers had to suffer through. When you have half your face blasted off death might have seemed like a blessing, however they continued to fight. Not just for their country but for their life. Eventually thanks to advancements in medicine they were able to return to a semi-normal life, however it would never be the same. I was amazed by what doctors were able to accomplish for these courageous people.
The article that I found to be the most interesting was Another Welcome Home Letter. What surprised me the most about this article was the letters from the soldiers that always kept a positive attitude and even made some of their letters humourous. After being put through so much hell they still aren't giving up. This really opened my eyes and made me realize how brave some of these soldiers must have been. Not even the death of war could bring their spirits down. The article that moved me the most was the one written from a 17 year old on the front line to his mother. Edward Wyndham 'Bim' Tennant wrote letters to his mother up until the day he died explaining that he was feeling very brave and very strong. He is the same age as I am and I can’t imagine myself being this positive after so much hardship. These men were truly hero’s. Another article I read, Faces of War, also opened up some new insights about the war that I have not considered previously. When someone is wounded in battle I simply write them off, concluding that they were lucky enough to escape with their lives, but I failed to acknowledge the difficulties they would face in their civilian life. It was truly sad to read about, how at these facial reconstruction centers they would remove all mirrors because the soldiers could not look at themselves. When you think of a war you often dismiss the wounded as lucky and the deaths as the only tragic statistic, but we forget the hardships that the wounded also have to deal with.
There were a couple of letters in the article that gave me different insights of the war but did not necessarily change my perspective; the letters merely taught me how some people felt about the war. Some letters written by these soldiers were more positive, than others, which was surprising such as the letters written by Edward Wyndham ‘Bim’ to his mother. Most letters however weren’t as positive and often described the horrors of war, which I was so used to hearing about. Reading these letters is a much more effective way of learning history because it is a first hand account of what was happening. It did not change my opinions on the war but supported what I had already believed with new eye witness accounts. It was interesting to hear what people used as coping devices to get through the wars hardest stages or what people thought about death. Patrick Shaw-Stuart and others soldiers understood the soothing power of nature and wildlife to calm your nerves. Some men feared death and others didn’t. There was no consistent opinion about anything in the war. There was even one letter written by Julian Grenfell who was a professional soldier describing how much fun he was having and hoping that the war wouldn’t end anytime soon (not sure however is this letter was sarcastic or not. Everyone had different attitudes and opinions about the war, that helped shape my vision about the actual events of the war, but my perspective of the brutality of war has stayed the same.
The article, “Another Welcome Letter” shows the more personal side of the war. Not many people think of the soldiers as individuals, but rather as a unit. The letters are ones sent home to the families when they had free time away from the fighting. Often they are sent to the families and as the article stated, usually to the mothers of the soldiers. One thing that really showed what the soldiers were feeling was what they said, or rather, didn’t say. Most soldiers tried to shield their mothers from what they were going through. However, some did not. One particular letter, a boy told his mother that he felt as if he was going through hell. This showed more than any of the others’ what the war was really like.
One thing that really made me look at this period differently was the obvious youngness of the soldiers. Their countries sent them off to fight, when if they lived now, they would still be in high school. Some of the letters were from 17-year-olds to their mothers. The things that they were recounting were things that no high schooler should have to go through. Reading this article, you could see the more personal, individual look at the solders. The age of the people fighting for their nation surprised me and gave me a completely different view on the war. These weren’t seasoned fighters who had already lived their lives, they were children.
At first I was surprised that many of the soldiers were censoring their letters when this was their only form of communication with their families. Wouldn’t they want to be able to vent and say how they are feeling to the people they love the most? I realized, however, that they wrote home mostly for the comfort of their families, not for the sympathy. They probably didn’t want their parents (particularly mothers) to worry about them. By the time many of these letters were written, you could tell that much of the pride and nationalism of fighting in the war had completely worn off. Now, all the soldiers wanted was to go home, not serve their country by dying. That is why they wrote home. They wrote home to feel the comfort of a place that was so far from all they were going through.
"Faces of War" by Caroline Alexander vividly displayed the hardships and problems faced soldiers throughout World War 1. It described the certain types of injuries sustained and how new advancements in medicine helped save lives and heal injuries. There were many psychological and mental effects that had previously gone unnoticed, but during World War 1 the effects began to be brought to light. It is a very eye-opening article that really changed my view on World War 1.
First, the psychological effects on the human brain as a result of war, was traumatizing. The syndrome known commonly as shellshock or Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder was initially brought into the view of doctors. The large cases of this effect are widely responsible due to the various new forms of weaponry developed for World War 1. Tanks were first being manufacturing, along with automatic machine-guns, mustard gas, and flamethrowers all reigned terror on infantries physically, and psychologically.
Along with the profound advancements in the field of weaponry, the medical and surgical advancements also helped in World War 1. These doctors became the first plastic-surgeons in ways, often having to reconstruct faces and limbs to look like they did before a brutal accident. The powerful weapons and explosions often killed most with mutilating blasts, however, developments in medicine allowed people to stay alive with conditions that they would have died from in earlier wars. These saved lives came at a heavy price, the survivors often woke up with disfiguring contusions and burns. Doctors, along with a before-injury photo, could reconstruct a face and make the victim feel somewhat normal again.
This was very eye-opening to me, because in this article Caroline Alexander really speaks true about issues that are so rarely talked about. She discusses traumas from World War 1 that I personally had never known. Along with the injuries, I also learned about the life-controlling effects of war on individuals from the the early 20th century.
If one were to pursue exposure to a more personal, human side to war, a good place to start is the article, “Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers’ Letters from the Great War.” Traditionally - and perhaps intentionally by military institutions - the idea of being a part of a unit, a cog in a machine, has been emphasized to soldiers, certainly not individuality. In this article, the reader is reminded that these men were not merely components of a war machine, they were all fellow humans. This epiphany is induced through the examination of letters written from soldiers to their families, their mothers, in particular. To me, like undoubtedly many others, these ideas were not necessarily new, but still relatively unconsidered. Of course, the idea had crossed my mind occasionally but generally it was not focused on much in whatever it was that triggered the thought, perhaps a movie or passage of a textbook. As a result, any realization of the humanity of soldiers was rather fleeting; this was not the case in “Another Welcome Letter,” it lead me into much deeper contemplation of this idea. The article forces the reader to not just think of soldiers as another name on a list or cog in a machine, but rather an actual young man with a family and similar aspirations, desires, and feelings to yourself. Among the excerpts of handwritten letters back home, one that struck me as particularly moving and indicative of humanity and vulnerability came from seventeen year old Edward Wyndham 'Bim' Tennant: “I always carry four photos of you when we go into action, one is in my pocket-book, two in that little leather book, and one round my neck, and I have kept my little medal of the Blessed Virgin. Your love for me and my love for you, have made my whole life one of the happiest there has ever been.” He speaks of personal additions to his uniform that distinguish him from his comrades and prevent him from becoming clone-like. He also speaks of love and religion, very humanizing elements. I would not argue that this article altered my perception of the World War I era; I would argue, however, that it has transformed my conceptualization of war. Because it forced me to take the time to focus on the human side of war and soldiers, I believe my perception of them has improved and became much more well-rounded.
The article entitled “Faces of War”, written by Caroline Alexander opened my eyes to the horrors that really did happen to soldiers fighting in the first World War. Many were stricken with horrible facial deformities, even to the point where some would faint after looking in the mirror for the first time. Nurses were instructed to “Always look a man straight in the face, remember he's watching your face to see how you're going to react." This is very telling as to the extreme injuries that took place during this time period due to the recently-advanced military technologies and weapons. What we now know as plastic surgery was in its beginning stages after World War I, mainly because of all these deformities occurring. Doctors and artists would work together to make very thin metal masks of the soldiers’ faces from pictures that they took before the war. The missing part of the face was covered with the mask, and often would make soldiers feel better about themselves, and their families less horrified at the sight of them. There were obviously some drawbacks to these masks, including difficulty with eating, talking, swallowing, and limited facial expressions, especially if the injury was extreme enough to require a mask covering the majority of the face. However, the masks were the beginning of the developing technology of plastic surgery, and were a higher-level treatment than what had previously been seen and used on patients by doctors. Overall, the soldiers fighting in World War I had to deal with many painful, nightmarish tragedies that often included disfiguration of the face and head. The treatments that doctors came up with for these injuries could not quite repair them, but could at least restore some normalcy to these soldiers who fought for the United States of America.
“Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander exposed another side of World War I that is normally forgotten by all but the soldiers. This article exposed the facial disfiguring that affected many soldiers during the war. Previous to reading this article, I was aware of the trench warfare and the high casualty rates commonly associated with the First World War. However, I had not given much thought about the survivors and how they had to live with their handicaps. Many of the soldiers who were facially disfigured had to learn how to do essential tasks such as eating all over again. Mirrors had to be banned in hospitals that treated patients with injured faces because the patients were known to pass out from shock.
This was due to the fact that the pace of technological advancement was much faster than medical advancement. The soldiers of World War I received horrific wounds that the doctors could sometimes only partially treat. However, the medical treatments were also advancing. The injured soldiers could survive wounds that were much worse than what used to be survivable. Doctors then had to find ways to help the now physically disfigured or handicapped people deal with their new appearance. If plastic surgery could not be used because the disfigurement was too extreme, masks could be made in a likeness to the person’s “pre-war” face.
This article made me looks at this period of time differently. I did not realize the extent to how the war affected veterans. It also is sad that people were inventing new technology to kill people with more ease or seriously maim each other but had not developed medicine to treat the wounds that these new machines could inflict. People also did not respect veterans by avoiding eye contact when they saw a seriously maimed veteran. There were even blue benches in a city that housed a hospital for veterans for veterans to sit on so people would know not to look there. Reading “Faces of War” caused me to have a new look at the World War I time period.
“Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander introduced me to the great changes brought about during the Great War. This article talks about the struggles of facial plastic surgery, and how quickly doctors had to make changes during this war. World War One provided an opportunity for plastic surgeons to further their skill, leading to big advancements in different fields, specifically facial reconstruction.
There were many extreme consequences of the war. One being the new technology used was so great that the medical knowledge was not advanced enough to keep up. This led to soldiers being somewhat naïve about their surroundings leading to serious injury. These injuries often resulted in deformities, commonly found on the face. Doctors would be able to save the soldiers life but when it came to repairing and restoring their faces, it was a much harder task. Harold Gilles is responsible for many of the advancements made in this subject. He worked with artists to develop a technique that could reproduce a product very similar to the look of the soldier’s original face.
This article provided me with a whole new lookout on this war. I have gained much greater respect for soldiers, especially the soldiers of this time period knowing the extreme, constant danger they were faced with. The injuries many people faced were terrible, and it was a difficult time because for most these injuries could not be fully repaired. Often the injury would be “healed” but the deformity would be there forever greatly affecting and altering the soldiers life. Often these men could not even look at themselves in the mirror because of their horrible image. Overall this essay gave me a whole new outlook and showed me the repercussions of war injuries and the lasting affects they could have on the rest of a person’s life.
“Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander was particularly interesting because it further explained the impact that World War I had on individuals. Prior to reading this article, I had not thought about the deformities of some soldiers, or how they may have impacted them in their post-war life. Plastic surgery was performed on several veterans for severe facial defects. These plastic surgeons had a much more important job than the typical plastic surgeon in modern society, who modify people’s faces who simply dislike their natural appearance. Harold Gillies was the “pineer in the art of facial reconstruction and modern pastic surgery.” He worked with several artists to create looks as similar to what the men looked like before their injuries. It is noted in the article that several of these injuries were caused during the time traveling from the field to a trench.
“Those patients who could be successfully treated were, after lengthy covalescence, sent on their way; the less fortunate remained in hospitals and covalescent unit nursing the broken fces with which they were uprepared to confront the world—or with which the world was unprepared to confront them.” This line aroused the most emotion from me, while reading. This quote shows how great the physical damage to the soldiers was. Their deformities and injuries had lowered their self-confidence to the point where they did not want to go into public. This article has showed the emotional side of the war, which I found very interesting. The War to the soldiers continues on for the rest of their lives through their scars and memories.
Upon reading this heartfelt description of several letters sent from the soldiers of World War One, I have come to learn many different aspects of this war and the soldiers that I had never known before.
My pre-conceived notion of what a soldier was, was someone who was extremely stern and unfeeling, or at least, if they were feeling they never showed it. In my mind, a soldier was one with whom I always associated machine like abilities, skills and the cold indifference that allowed them to kill. To me, soldiers in older wars were simply numbers. But after reading “Another welcome letter: Soldiers' letters from the great war” by Anne Powell, I have come to learn that just because these men carried the title of soldier, does not mean that they lost all sense of humanity. In many of the letters, the “every human emotion was shared and evoked” (Powell). One soldier in particular really stood out to me was Edward Wyndham 'Bim' Tennant. This seventeen year old, although assuring his mother that he felt as though death was not soon upon him, wrote a very heartfelt ending to his letter which, I’ll admit, brought some tears to my eyes. The final line in his letter is one that I was not expecting; it made Tennant seem very vulnerable and completely open with his mother, which I was not expecting after reading the first few lines of his letter. It read: “Your love for me and my love for you, have made my whole life one of the happiest there has ever been” (Powell).
Another viewpoint of the soldiers of this Great War that I had not previously considered was the aging that this war did to not only the men’s spirits, but also their physical bodies. The war had an extremely aging effect on them; they have seen things that men should never in their lifetime have seen and experiences things that no man should ever experience. Boys of a mere seventeen years old were being thrust into the front line, having no option but to grow up fast, because in the line of fire, there’s no room for child’s play. Patrick Shaw-Stewart puts it this way, “The fact is that this generation of mine is suffering in their twenties what most men get in their seventies, the gradual thinning out of their contemporaries . . . Nowadays we who are alive have the sense of being old, old survivors . . .” (Powell). Not only were the soldiers expected to jump over the trench in a matter of seconds or be shot, but they were exposed to horrors within the trenches themselves. These trenches were “rat infested places of filth” (Powell). I cannot imagine not being able to sleep because I was too afraid that a rat would come up and begin to nibble on my flesh. But alas, thus was the fear that constantly kept these soldiers up at night and caused them to hunger for sleep, according to Theodore Cameron Wilson.
This article in particular helped me to develop a new sense of respect for the complexity of the soldiers during world war one. They were not simply men of action that could be ordered into the line of fire without fear. Rather, they were men of many different personalities who handled the war in a various amount of methods. Some treated it with cynicism, while others laughed in the face of death to make it seem less of a reality. While still, others opened their hearts and could not hide the naked fear that pulsed through their veins. Contrary to my prior beliefs, these men were complex and diverse men who experienced true horrors and reacted in very different ways.
To begin, I believe it was a very interesting and thought-provoking assertion to say in Faces of War that “mankind’s military technology wildly outpaced its medical.” I found it incredibly surprising that facial reconstruction surgeries were even performed this early in history. I considered such an operation as a modern achievement. I understand now why living men in the video from class were holding up what looked like death masks, and this is because the surgeon would have artists recreated what the soldier’s face would look like before his injury. Something I found particularly surprising was that, “In Sidcup, England, the town that was home to Gillies' special facial hospital, some park benches were painted blue; a code that warned townspeople that any man sitting on one would be distressful to view.” This seems counterproductive in the healing process. And, likewise, it was striking, but reasonable, that mirrors were banned in the hospitals and that if ever a man saw his disfigured face he would often collapse in shock. I knew that rats ate the corpses of the dead (as it says in Another Welcome Letter, “Men die and rats increase”) but I wasn’t aware that they were so ubiquitous, running over the men as they slept. I do view this war differently now, because it’s become personalized. The way that we assume that men from the early nineteen-hundreds would speak or act is a certain way that is very formal and different, almost foreign. But, the accounts of the war given by the soldiers is entirely relatable and their actions don’t seem to differ much from how some one day would have acted in their situation. People don’t seem to talk about WWI anymore, probably due to WWII overshadowing it. There are hardly any WWI survivors alive today and the implications of the Great War are no longer so obvious to the uninformed. Nevertheless, I realize now that the carnage and sacrifices of WWI should never be forgotten.
“Faces of War” by Caroline Alexander brings attention to one of the most horrific aspects of war: facial disfiguration. This article gives me a new view on war and just how devastating it can be. The damage many people took to their faces was severe and very damaging; they would never look the same again.
In response to these horrible disfiguring injuries people began to use plastic surgery much more. Francis Derwent Wood created masks to cover up the facial injuries that came as a result of war so that people could once again live a relatively normal life. These masks were almost an essential part of the lives of the injured, preventing them and others from seeing the disfiguring scars left behind by war. These injuries changed the soldiers’ faces so radically that “men who somehow managed an illicit peek had been known to collapse in shock”. After reading this sentence the extent of these injuries became clear. These were not just scars on someone’s face; these injuries included people missing sections of their cheeks, nose, mouth, and other sections of their faces. There were benches outside of clinics for the injured that were painted blue so that people would be aware of the possibility that a disfigured person could be sitting there.
Despite the fact that these men were horribly injured people like Francis Wood stepped forth to provide them with a happier life in which they could feel relatively normal. The masks that Wood provided for people were a blessing, providing them with as normal of a life as possible.
This article led me to view this period of history in a different way. I once viewed it as just another time in the past, but now I can see how it was a very influential time. Plastic surgery is much more common place nowadays and it was greatly affected by the work of Francis D. Wood.
After reading this I view war in a significantly different way. I view it as a very negative thing and I believe the soldiers deserve the utmost respect of everyone.
While reading the article "Faces of War" by Caroline Alexander, I was presented with new information I hadn't previously known about what sort of effects the first World War had on the soldiers fighting it. With the advent of high caliber weaponry and the use of artillery guns and machine guns, millions of soldiers who didn't fully understand the power of these new technologies ended up wounded or killed. "They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets." said Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France. However this was rarely the case and many soldiers as a result found themselves with facial wounds caused by shrapnel from exploding shells or bullets themselves.
Many of the soldiers, being only wounded lived to see another day. However it would be near impossible to live a normal life with half their jaw or face missing. So plastic surgery pioneers like Sir Harold Gillies constructed masks for these wounded soldiers faces to hide their disfigurement. They looked very much like their old selves with the mask on. I had never known such methods were used to hide these soldier's wounds nor had I fully realized the extent of them. Some faces were too disfigured even for the masks to fix, with noses, cheeks, jaws and eyes blown off by explosions. It was interesting to me that they used masks because that's something I had never heard of happening before. I didn't know it was really possible back then or that it happened at least to have such effective plastic surgery as well as synthetic face and eye masks.
This article has changed my view on the war because it seems like with the new technologies of machine guns no one really knew what to expect or how powerful they really were, and that caused millions of men to be killed and wounded such as the men mentioned in the article.
Caroline Alexander's article, "Faces of War" highlights how the capability to inflict destructive damage through improved military technology had far surpassed the ability of the medical field to treat the wounds and damage they caused. In particular, how the introduction of advanced technology such as the the machine gun and mustard on such a massive scale could mutilate millions of men in a frighteningly effortless manner. It was because of the war's unprecedented amount of destruction and death that the medical field was forced to make at least some sort of advances, which would come in the earliest form of plastic-surgery. While I was of course aware of the potential for soldiers to be burdened with grotesque wounds prior to reading this article, the actual suffering and emotional distraught that soldiers must suffer through shockingly did not occur to me nor did it probably occur to the vast majority of the public during the Great War.
The unimaginable extent of the injuries was what convinced the sculptor Francis Derwent Wood serving in Britain's Royal Army Medical Corps to construct facial masks for soldiers who were suffering from irreparable facial defects. It was because of these masks that children who fled from their warring fathers due to their horrific facial issues were now able to face their fathers without fear and with some degree of admiration. This likewise applies to the public as well, who had previously looked down upon these brave and tragic soldiers with disregard and even contempt.
Although Francis isn't nearly as renowned or famous as leaders who condemned millions of men to indescribable pain and suffering all relaxing behind the battlelines, he should undoubtedly be respected for aiding these suffering men to such a great extent despite there being no immediate reward awaiting him.
This article had reminded me of the unfortunate truth that the idea of how wars psychologically and physically affect the soldiers who actual fight them is usually cast aside in favor of the ambitious countries and leaders who wage them for whatever motivation. Sadly, this fact seems to hold true in every era of history and has no intention of changing.
This article, “The Faces of War”, forced me to look at the First World War differently. So often, we are only told to look at the deaths, to mourn for those valiant martyrs, that when presented with the unluckiest of survivors, it causes a bit of a shock. Never had I given much thought to what happened to the vast amount of soldiers wounded in battle. I assumed they healed and went on with their lives- rather naive, I see now. I had no idea that their lives could change so greatly due to disfigurations. I never realized the effort that went into the mending of faces. After facial reconstruction, 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." It just shows how radically different the lives of these soldiers were, and not in just the traditional ways often mentioned.
To lose one’s face is to lose one’s identity. As Dr. Albee. wrote ". . . 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 is what these soldiers had to go through. They felt useless and lost, as if they could no longer face the world, let alone their family; they weren’t allowed mirrors to see themselves, for fear of the shock. The world was not ready for this totalitarian warfare, and the extreme casualties that came out of trench warfare.
Yet, the powers of human compassion always amaze me. The fact there were people out there like Ladd and Wood, who would devote so much time and effort to accurately fix soldiers faces, as close to their original likeness as possible. These masks changed the men’s lives, allowed them to reenter the world, to sit where they’d like in the parks, not on the blue benches that designated them as ‘disturbing to look at’. Sadly, the artisanship of these masks has not survived. The pictures of them, in only black and white, do not show the masterful effect of mental made to skin tone. Yet, the sheer fact they ‘saved’ these men’s lives, allowed them to renter society, is amazing enough. These masks had become these soldiers lives, and, "Surely they were buried with their owners,” sates Wood affectionately.
"Faces of War" really changed enhanced my view about the stereotypes of war. Many people during this time, and still now today, and a glorified few of what war is like. Some people brag about their loved one being in the armed forces and see it as a romantic charm. Others see it as an honor to be serving and take great pride. Throughout the history of America people have had a few of war that no man serving would have afterwards.
War was horrific as Caroline Alexander wrote in "Faces of War". In World War I men came back with disfigured faces due to war injuries. She wrote, "Within the surgical and convalescent wards, it was grimly accepted that facial disfigurement was the most traumatic of the multitude of horrific damages the war inflicted. '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.'" When people started coming back with these horrible injuries to their face plastic surgery was born. Doctors worked hard to try to repair the damage done to one's face. They did the best they could to bring them back to normal, but usually it never came close.
She wrote that on the first day on engagement they had over 2000 patients with damage to their face and that waited for plastic surgery. The author attributes this to the use of strong artillery such as the machine gun. The men had no idea how much damage these machines could do and really had to learn the hard way. Most people if they were not killed had severe injuries to their bodies and faces.
When these men came back from war there was nothing glamorous about what happened to them, what they went through, and what they looked like. War is nothing to be celebrated and should not be so exciting. Its horrible what people had to go through and still go through today. Caroline Alexander did a great job strengthening my view on war.
Largely overshadowed by World War II, many people read and know little about the First World War. In Caroline Alexander’s “Faces of War”, she implores the experiences of soldiers with horrid facial disfigurements as a result of the battles as well as the achievements in plastic surgery that help many regain a sense of normality.
With the advent of high caliber machine guns as well as new artillery, World War I became a rude awakening for the world. Trenches no longer became safe havens and as a result European nations suffered tremendous casualties. I found incredibly interesting the advancement in medicine to treat victims of the war. Many men suffered horrific injuries, often time losing large portions of their face due to gunfire. Back in the hospitals, these men would be so traumatized by their experience that even mirrors were forbidden for many time they would faint from the shock of seeing their disfigurements. However, Doctor Gillies, a pioneer in the field of plastic surgery, found a way to relieve them. Creating and providing masks for the patients, many of them were able to live a fairly normal life again; at least without the torment of being a “freak of society”
After reading Alexander’s piece, I gained a more personal sense of the war. Until now, I had never had much of an opinion on World War I, mainly due to my lack of knowledge on it. It has been widely known that the Second World War was one of catastrophic events and brutality but I was not aware of those things from the former. Now I fully understand the horrors of World War I and I’ve gained a new sense of respect for the men who fought in it.
"Faces of War" drastically changed my perspective on the moral and physical consequences of the first world war, and possibly of all wars. Much of the literature about World War I and its veterans focus on the mental and physical disabilities (i.e. limb loss, shell shock) and almost totally ignores the extensive and gruesome injuries that veterans "faced" (pun). Some would come back from France and Belgium unrecognizable because of bullets and artillery shells, that, as some would say, unfortunately didn't kill them. This article focuses on the mental toll these types of injuries took on veterans, who would sometimes apparently faint in shock after seeing their maimed faces in mirrors. The new weapons of World War I, combined with the old attitudes of behavior in battle, created a whole new class and severity of injuries, ones that soldiers would have died from in the Napoleonic Wars. One American doctor, Dr. Fred Albee, recalled "[T]he . . . soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun," recalled Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France. "They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets." This idea seems ridiculous to me, because the soldiers in movies like Saving Private Ryan, and Green Zone (both great Matt Damon movies) are obvious moving quickly to avoid getting shot, and never go out of cover when there are bullets flying. With the idea of how I think soldiers would react to getting shot at apparently is much different than the reality that doctors faced during World War I. Another idea that is very new to me is the idea that thousands of people can die in less than a day of fighting. Alexander examined the explosion of patients sent to the facial reconstruction clinic; "Following the first engagement of the Battle of the Somme--a day for which the London Times casualty list covered not columns, but pages--Gillies and his colleagues were sent some 2,000 patients." How upwards of two thousand people can be injured in one day of fighting escapes me. We must also bear in mind that those two thousand were only a fraction of the wounded, and probably paled in comparison to the number of fatalities during the one day of fighting. The attitude of the soldiers, and the extent of survivable injuries, had drastically changed since the last time Europeans picked up their rifles, a little-known tragedy of the Great War.
Having read Caroline Alexander’s Faces of War my opinion of the technological state of the early twentieth century has dramatically changed. Prior to reading this article, I was aware of the massive popularity of the automobile and the birth of many new technologies. However, I never would have known that plastic surgery, and facial reconstruction procedures were occurring. Alexander openly states in her article that, while many procedures produced incredible results, most displayed the limitations of the newly developed reconstruction techniques. The article describes procedures and techniques of reconstruction that are fantastically similar to those described within the “Operation Mend” film. Though the methods of today allow for the usage of bone and composite materials to re-create a hero’s original face, it is clear that even during the early twentieth century, medical technology was a force to be reckoned with.
The article also highlighted an aspect that I had always assumed had no place in World War I. This aspect is the social impact of war. Never before had I heard of concern for the well-being of soldiers returning from war in a social sense. I had previously thought that such concern was present solely from World War II and beyond. Alexander describes how the new weaponry absolutely mutilates those who are unfortunate enough to simply be maimed. The gasses and shrapnel from artillery either shredded skin, or caused it to simply slough off. The resulting injuries, specifically to the facial region, were genuinely shocking. The use of plastic surgery and other facial reconstruction techniques reflects a genuine concern for how the soldiers felt about themselves, and how they were to be viewed when they returned to the world. To learn that, even during the early twentieth century, how a soldier would be able to function socially was a genuine, and warmly welcomed surprise found within Alexander’s article.
"Faces of War" by Caroline Alexander, was presented with new information that I previously was unaware of what sort of effects World War I had on the soldiers. With the introduction of even more dangerous weaponry and the use of artillery guns and machine guns, millions of soldiers ended up wounded or killed. Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France said that the soldiers would think they can peer their head over a trench and move it back down fat enough to miss a bullet. This though was rarely the case and many soldiers as a result found themselves with facial wounds caused by shrapnel from exploding shells or bullets themselves. However it would be near impossible to live a normal life with half their jaw or face missing. Some soldiers couldn’t even look at themselves after their injury because of the memories of war. So plastic surgery explorers like Sir Harold Gillies constructed masks for these wounded soldiers so they can hide their faces. They looked very much like their old selves with the mask on. I was utterly surprised that these methods were used to hide these soldier's wounds or I hadn’t completely realized the extent of them. Some faces though were too disfigured even for the masks to fix, with noses, cheeks, jaws and eyes blown off by explosions. It was interesting to me that they used masks because that's something I had never learned of veterans using masks to cover their wounded faces before. I thought they lived with their wounds. I was also shocked that there was plastic surgery during the time. Whenever I think of plastic surgery I don’t think of WWI and soldiers. This article completely changed my view on WWI because with the new technologies of machine guns a lot of people didn’t really know what to expect or how powerful they really were. This obviously caused millions of unnecessary wounds or even deaths.
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