Mobilising the Red Cross Journal: a charity’s periodical in wartime

The first issue of the Red Cross Journal was published in January 1914, only eight months before the outbreak of the First World War. This article explores the impact of the war on this publication, as the work of the charity it represented dramatically expanded over the course of the conflict. How did the Journal survive the war, at a time when the Red Cross was deeply involved in supporting soldiers? This article examines the genesis of this publication and its evolving role during the war. This periodical, we argue, not only helped raise awareness of the work carried out by the Red Cross, but it also served practical purposes in the areas of training and funding. This publication reveals an increasingly critical stance towards the British Empire’s enemies in the war, as well as the need for the British Red Cross Society to foster a sense of unity amongst members posted around the world

Losing face, finding love?: The fate of facially disfigured soldiers in narratives of the First World War

Changes in warfare, new weaponry and the absence of protective equipment meant that facial injuries were common during the First World War. The negative perceptions surrounding such wounds, described as ‘the worst loss of all’ (Anon. 1918), and the widespread expectation that facially disfigured combatants would be outcast from society, partly explain why facially injured combatants are rarely represented in wartime and interwar literature. This article however shows that the way in which the wounded combatants’ fates are portrayed in fiction differs significantly from these bleak predictions. This article examines the figure of the facially disfigured veteran in British narratives published during the First World War and its immediate aftermath. Drawing upon popular fiction such as Florence Ethel Mills Young’s Beatrice Ashleigh (1918) and Muriel Hine’s The Flight (1922), this article explores literary representations of disfigurement and depictions of the physical, psychological and social consequences of disfiguring injuries. In a context in which anxieties over the masculinity of disabled veterans were increasing, the depictions of fictional mutilated ex-servicemen’s reintegration into society are discussed with special emphasis on the agency of women, who appear to have the power, in Macdonald’s words, to make men ‘whole’ again (Macdonald 2016: 54)

La greffe générale: the voice of French facially injured soldiers

Like the combatants on the frontline, the wounded soldiers of the First World War wrote and published newspapers during the sometimes lengthy periods of time they spent in hospital. La Greffe Générale is the journal written by and for facially injured combatants treated at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. Throughout the eight issues released between December 1917 and July 1918, the voices of these men can be heard. Whilst the surgeons’ perspective prevails in most remaining documents to do with French maxillofacial wards, La Greffe Générale gives an insight into the experiences of injury and treatment from the point of view of the wounded and convalescent combatants. The specific challenges faced by facially injured men are reflected in their writings, as this article shows. At the same time, their newspaper is in itself an attempt to respond to some of these issues. Ultimately, the patients’ publication reveals how gueules cassées, as French disfigured veterans came to be known, tried to collectively cope with their changed lives. The ethos reflected in, and fuelled by, La Greffe Générale played, this article argues, a significant part in the later constitution of the facially disfigured men’s organization, the Association des Gueules Cassées

Frederick Coates: First World War 'facial architect'

The role of artists in the First World War is often understood only in terms of their artistic response to the conflict in paint, music, sculpture or photography. In fact, artists’ contributions were also engaged at an applied level, in the areas of propaganda, camouflage, map-making and many other trades. Beyond this, a small number actively participated as artists in repairing the damage caused by the conflict. Frederick Coates, a British-born sculptor who emigrated to Canada in 1913, was one of these artists. After enlisting with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, he worked for three years alongside surgeons and other artists in England to try and help give new features to facially injured combatants. Drawing upon unpublished photographs and Coates’s own scrapbooks, this article investigates the young artist’s experience of the war and his contribution to the reconstruction of broken faces. Through a close examination of this ‘facial architect’, as Coates was called, this article gives a fresh insight into the work performed in maxillofacial hospitals during the First World War, especially with regard to Allied practitioners and patients. It also underlines the newly developed concept of, and importance of, cross-national, multi-disciplinary collaboration in plastic surgery wards, and the effects working in this environment had on the staff

The Destiny and Representations of Facially Disfigured Soldiers during the First World War and the Interwar Period in France, Germany and Great Britain

The frequency and seriousness of facial injuries during the First World War account for the presence of disfigured men in significant numbers in European interwar society. Physical reconstruction, psychological and social consequences had long-term consequences for experts and lay people alike. Despite the number of wounded men and the impact of disfigurement, the facially injured soldiers of the First World War have rarely been the focus of academic research. This thesis aims to bridge this gap through a careful investigation of the lives and representations of gueules cassées, as they came to be known in France. It examines the experience and perceptions of facial disfigurement from the moment of the injury and throughout the years following, thereby setting the parameters for a study of the real and the mediated presence of disfigured veterans in interwar society. The chronological frame of this study begins in 1914 and ends in 1939, since the perception and representations of facial disfigurement were of particular significance during the First World War and its aftermath. Using a comparative approach to explore the experience and representations of disfigurement, this study investigates the presence of facially injured combatants and veterans in 1920s and 1930s society. With an interdisciplinary perspective, literary and artistic depictions as well as historical documents are examined in order to complement contemporary descriptions with the voices of the men themselves. This study sheds new light on the history of wounded soldiers of the First World War through in-depth analysis of original documents from France, Germany and Great Britain. This thesis provides the first detailed comparative study of British, French and German disfigured men. It emphasises the at times paradoxical situation of veterans who sought to lead ordinary lives but also became symbols of the war. All five chapters highlight the visibility of facially injured men and explore different responses to their presence whilst also interrogating their role and image in wartime and interwar societies. As such it aims to make a contribution to the cultural history of the First World War and its aftermath.University of Exeter (PhD studentship-lectorship

"Sourire quand même": la reconstruction des Gueules Cassées de la Grande Guerre en France et en Grande-Bretagne

Durant la Première Guerre mondiale, la fréquence et la sévérité des blessures de la face rendent nécessaire la mise au point de traitements spécialisés pour ‘‘reconstruire des hommes’’, pour reprendre les mots du chirurgien Frederick Albee. Au-delà de la prise en charge de l’atteinte physique, la défiguration appelle une approche holistique des soins et du patient, que les soignants tentent de mettre en place malgré les pressions des autorités militaires pour renvoyer les soldats au combat dès que possible. S’appuyant sur des archives médicales, journalistiques et personnelles françaises et britanniques, cet article explore différentes facettes de la reconstruction physique, morale et symbolique des Gueules Cassées dans une perspective comparative. En effet, si les défis auxquels font face soignants et patients sont similaires dans ces deux pays alliés, les réponses apportées varient. Leur étude offre un angle d’approche original sur l’évolution des façons de ‘‘panser’’ et de ‘‘penser’’ les blessures de la face, blessures dont les implications soulignent l’importance du visage comme ‘‘miroir de l’âme’’ qui renvoie à soi, et comme ‘‘interface’’ ou ouverture sur le monde