Danny tells a heartwarming Story
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Half way between London and Brighton lies the small Sussex town of East Grinstead. Apart fromthe heavy "Through" traffic, it is a fairly quiet place now. Few folk outside the area will have heard of it, but 75 years ago it was a byword in the Empire (and other) air forces, and well known throughout the land. For it had a small Cottage Hospital, and that was the centre of attraction.
There must be something in the air of New Zealand which breeds brilliant plastic surgeons, for in 1940 two in particular were earning a growing reputation in the profession: Archibald McIndoe and Harold Gillies (Knighted, both died 1960) - how the Highland Clearances cast a long shadow ! The first of these was the Consultant Plastic Surgeon for (among several others) at the Queen Victoria Hospital (QVH), for that was the name of our little town's hospital.
The summer and autumn of 1940 in Sussex were providing ample materials for McIndoe to ply his trade. Wiki tells me that we suffered 422 "wounded" in the BoB; many of these would have been brought in with severe burns to the face and hands, for these are the exposed areas. As a result, even as their burns healed, the victims were left with hideously distorted faces and "hands" which were only blackened and useless claws.
McIndoe's forte was reconstructive surgery, and he became very good at it. This came to the ears of the RAF; they started transferring their worst cases from RAF and other civil hospitals to the QVH for McIndoe's attention, with excellent results. Then they tried to get exclusive rights to his services with the offer of an AVM's Commission, but he shrewdly turned this down, fearing that he would be prevented from introducing the new regimes he had in mind. *
For the prospects for these badly disfigured creatures were in those days grim. The policy was to hide them away from sight in institutions, to "maintain public morale", and leave them there, hopeless, indefinitely. McIndoe determined to change all this. He knew that he had the responsibility, besides healing their burns, of restoring to them their self-respect. He demanded to have the first choice of the most attractive nurses for his wards. These then had drilled into them that they must never say a word or betray any sign of shock, revulsion,or (worst of all) pity for their cruelly scarred patients, but treat them just the same as any other. As women have the unique faculty of being able to see the man behind the face, this soon became second nature; a number of happy marriages resulted. *
He threw out all the old "red, white and blue" hospital garb for military ambulant cases, telling them to wear uniform or "mufti" for their forays into town (and further) for he ran his wards like an hotel. Beer in reasonable quantity was brought in for them, they were encouraged to go into pubs for a pint or two if they so wished. In short, in the intervals between the long series of operations which reconstructive plastic surgery requires, they could do what they liked (within reason).*
You may wonder how the townspeople reacted to the appearance in their midst of these (often) frightening visitors from the QVH. Now comes the best part of the story. By one of those strange processes of "mass osmosis", quite unbidden #, they all decided they treat them in exactly the same way as McIndoe had instructed his nurses to behave. The barman at the pub, the girl in the cinema ticket kiosk, the "clippie" on the bus, the taxi-driver, anyone they met in the street or in a shop or pub, made no reference to their appearance but chatted to them as if they could notice nothing wrong with them. The children took the cue from their parents, if they could see nothing wrong with them, it must be all right. The patients banded together, called themselves "McIndoe's Guinea Pigs", formed a (rankless) club (Prince Philip is the current President): this endures, and has annual reunions at the QVH in East Grinstead to this day.
I have a personal interest: my daughter (a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Burns and Plastic Surgery) spent twenty years of her nursing career at the QVH, and has met many of the "guinea pigs" in the years she was there.
Goodnight, all. Danny42C.
Note *: my authority is Edward Bishop's "
McIndoe's Army" (Edward Bishop 2004, ISBN 1 904393 02 0).
PS: Note #: A similar thing happened in recent times, when the townspeople of Wootton Bassett (Oxforshire) spontaneously appointed themselves the surrogate mourners for the nation as the coffins of our dead soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan passed through on their way home. For this service, the town has been granted, by the Queen, the prefix "Royal" to its name: the first time for over a hundred years that a town has received this honour.