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Showing posts with label ww2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ww2. Show all posts

They say that 'looks aren't everything' but tell that to a man who returns from war without a face.

 Dennis 'Eyes Higher' Neale. Photograph: Lucinda Marland

"We were coming into land after completing a night mission." explains Dennis 'Eyes Higher' Neale; "Enemy planes had followed us back to base, so the runway lights were switched off. Our plane landed safely but the next one got it wrong and landed on top of ours; the propeller sliced through the aircraft and my face. It almost took away the whole of my face - my cheekbone and right eye socket were smashed. My nasal bone went through the roof of my mouth; both jaws were broken. I was in a coma for a month.
When I was well enough, Archie had me transferred to the hospital at East Grinstead, where he carried out nine operations over two years to rebuild my face."
The RAF was always one of the more devastating branches of the army, specially when it reached its height in World War 2. The complex machines - with their lifeblood of fuel and cargo of bombs, their spinning blades and dizzying heights - were death traps when a mission turned wrong. For the man lucky enough to survive disaster often the injuries were horrific.

 Sir Archibald Monroe established the 'Guinea Pig Club' primarily out of burn victims, choosing them to undertake revolutionary new procedures in plastic surgery and psychological care. Many of the treatments had not been tried before or were in their infancy: for example, Monroe pioneered the 'tubed pedacle' method of growing tubes of flesh on his patients faces that, once long enough, provided a vital resource of integrated skin that could be moulded into new noses and replacement skin for burns.
Tubed Pedicle procedure for Mr Foxley

 These men often had little to lose so gladly took on the roles of Monroe's 'Guinea Pigs': for many of them, they were either too ashamed to return to their families or had already been shunned by fearful lovers. Monroe and his staff created a community for them to fit into once again, and encouraged them to go out into the world. The town they resided in soon was known as 'the town that didn't stare'. monroe encouraged the men to stay in uniform rather than confining them to hospital gowns, turned a blind eye to some rowdiness and even the relationships some of the men developed with their nurses and fostered a thriving black humor in his patients. They were not mollycoddled and were respected and some men even went out in public to stay in the homes of kind village people who encouraged them to lead as normal a life as possible in their recovery. In the Guinea pig club the men were men, not simply patients.

 At its height in the 40s the guinea pig club had 649 patients, and the members still meet every year in remembrance of Archibald Monroe and what he did for his ragtag bunch of soldiers from around the world.
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Stay curious!

Sources

A lot can change in almost 1,000 years, but there is always a comforting familiarity about the lives of people throughout history.

 A photographic survey of military uniforms throughout history brings this to light by using the trendy fashion-blogger presentation of laying it all out neatly for us. In doing so the clothes take on their own aesthetic that we seldom appreciate when we see these pieces in museums.
As time goes on and warfare changes the kit grows along with the growing complexity of more and more modern technology.

I've never been a huge military history fan, but for me this is an emotive set of pictures. By laying everything out ready for dressing you can feel the presence of the man behind the clothes taking stock of his life.












Make sure to check out the Daily Telegraph article for detailed descriptions of each item in the kit. For more detailed descriptions of the individual soliders of each period, check out the photographer Thom Atkinson's comments in the 'Inventories of war' article.
 

Sources:
-Pinterest (via 9gag)
- The Daily Telegraph full article
-'Inventories of War'
-Photos by Thom Atkinson

We've never been a family that had that much ritual in our lives. 


We never went to church on a Sunday, nor were we the types to swarm around the crucible when snooker came to show off there under the monolith of the outdoor television screen. But we always, without fail, attended the Remembrance Sunday display at the war memorial in the centre of town.


Remembrance Sunday in Sheffield 2014
When we were very little it was always a strange, exciting event to see our dad don a blazer for once instead of his usual oil speckled jumpers. As we headed downstairs into our grandparents’ part of the house Nannan and Granddad’s bedroom would reek of Chanel No 5 and hairspray harsh enough to infect our tongues. The poppies would be lined up on the hall table in a neat row and, carefully, Granddad and Mum would pin them to our posh coats.


We didn't really have ties to the great wars apart from the dim notion that Granddad’s father had died long after from oil-soaked lungs in the wake of a sinking submarine. But such images were distant and legendary, tinged with the doubt that joined any stories of domestic drama or marvel: like the rumour of elephants in Sheffield's old brick yards; like the legend that Granddad’s hair had not always been white. Instead, as children, it was the event of it all that sought to mark the date.


Every eleventh of the eleventh (or thereabouts) we would join the swollen crowd around the memorial in the freezing cold. We witnessed the lines of soldiers and the brass band march with grim discipline through fenced off roads, joined by the surreal jolly tinkling of a xylophone played by a line of sailors. But the show grew smaller every year.

Even the 'cannon' has been removed. As kids, It was the loudest sound that we had ever heard.

But the veterans with their stiff white gloves and giant flags remain.



In our family, we too - like the performers in this communion with the dead - grow fewer in number. And with each subtracted poppy from the table the expressions on the bronze martyrs' faces of the memorial become more imperceptible. Just as we no longer taste perfume and hairspray as we walk down to put on our coats, so too does the history dim away from our senses. But we still wait in the cold and press against the railings. We mime to half remembered hymns and wait through the echoing unintelligible audio that bounces off the buildings. We fall silent and we remember how that canon fired so loud to announce so many lives lost. How the pigeons scattered into the sky. 
And we feel like we have done something right.

This year - in the wake of the 100th anniversary  - the event is growing larger again. The horses are back, the marching and music have swelled, and the city hall square is packed to the brim with bustling people and children on shoulders. Two minutes' silence rings out and a man in front of us, built like an oak tree, removes his hat. Far away in the capital city, the Tower of London bleeds with 886,246 ceramic poppies.

The sun shines and Sheffield says thank you.

There are countless social media sites out there for the picking.
And as sure as you'll be able to pick up 87,000 pictures of One Direction in very slightly different poses, you can also find yourself some pretty awesome history posts too. This week, I wanted to share some of the fascinating, emotional and occasionally creepy history posts that I've found on Pinterest.
One in a billion....
From The Meta Picture via Erin McGuire
Not just the Egyptians..


From The Meta Picture via Eizabeth Hough


A US soldier mocks Hitler...
From Flickr.com via Talyn McFarlane


Tallest man and shortest man in the world, with an average lady...

From Buzzfeed.com via Hailea Reign





Graffiti in the Tower on London...

From Flickr.com via Charlie Haynes



 Intolerable Cruelty: In 1901 a woman in Poiters, France was found having been confined to her room for 24 years by her mother...
From imigur.com via Bridgette LaShae
Damage to the Ribcage from Corset in 19thc London...

From fuckyeahforensics on Tumblr, via Bridgette LaShae


 Horses are for sissies....

From Buzzfeed.com via Erika Cucci

Native American mother and child...


From Nikon David via Melanie Adamd

St.Valentius (Wasselden, Germany). The town's church hold's the world's largest collection of fully articulated and bejewelled skeletons...

From Buzzfeed via NoGames216
Plan of Nippur. Perhaps one of the most ancient urban images at reduced scale. From the mid-2nd millennium BC

From Hilprecht Collection, Friedrich Schiller Universitat, Jena. History of Cartography, Vol.I, fig 6.7, via Marcy Ganow


The Fallen of Mount Everest...

 
From Buzzfeed.com, via Carmen Elliott


 "Llullaillaco Maiden": a 15 year old girl who was sacrificed during the Inca Empire. It is thought as a mix of religious rite and social control. She was chosen a year prior to her death, fed a ritualistic diet to help her gain weight, drugged and left at the shine at the Volcano Llullaillaco where she died of exposure. Her body was preserved at 82 ft for 500 years and she is thought to be the best preserved Andean mummy ever found...

From TheLadyGoogle via Rebecca Lacey

1900s Mother and Child...

from Flickr.com via Meredith Moran Coronato


Daredevil...

Via Kris DayVincent

I hope that you've enjoyed this instalment. Needless to say, we've barely even scratched the surface of what you can find on Pinterest, so why not take a look for yourself and share your favourite posts in the comments?