A book I was given for Christmas. This is the story of Harold Gillies, a man born in New Zealand of Scottish parents. He became a surgeon and worked in London. Like many people at the outbreak of WW1 he offered his services for war work, and gravitated to maxillofacial plastic surgery, dealing especially with facial wounds. He was pioneering in this respect and the hospital he worked in had to be transferred to Sidcup to deal with the increasing numbers of casualties. Where teeth and bone had been smashed or blown away these still had to be reconstructed using bone grafts and artificial replacements. Gillies was related to Archie McIndoe, a man who did much to further plastic surgery in WW2. If you think of the film "Battle of Britain" there was a man in that film who was an actual Battle of Britain pilot who had been burned and had to have plastic surgery. Think also of Simon Weston, the Welsh guardsman who was so badly burned in the Falklands War. My father grew up in a small village where there was a man who was missing his nose. He remarked how the man was viewed with a mixture of horror, revulsion, and pity. Your face is your identity and most are lost without it.
