Amazing pics show WWI heroes with lost limbs and holes in their faces fighting back to fitness more than 100 years ago
Fascinating collection documents how wounded troops adapted to life with prosthetic limbs and the results of pioneering facial surgery
THE end of the First World War proved just the start of a battle for many of those injured in the conflict.
And these extraordinary photos show how troops fought back to health after serving their countries so selflessly.
The collection documents wounded troops adapting to life with prosthetic limbs and the results of pioneering reconstructive surgery on horror facial wounds.
They form part of the Seven Men, One Leg exhibition from the Europeana.eu collection.
From the outbreak of the war, special schools were set up across Europe where disabled soldiers were trained to use prosthetic limbs.
There they received training for a wide range of roles ahead of their return to society. They included accountants, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters cabinet makers, horticulturists and that of manufacturers of wooden toys.
The apprenticeship period tended to last between six and eight months.
The exhibition also demonstrates how many World War I soldiers suffered severe facial injuries.
The trenches protected the bodies of soldiers, but in doing so it left their heads vulnerable to enemy fire. Soldiers would frequently stick their heads up above the trenches, exposing them to all manner of weapons.
Wounds were inflicted to the face by gunshots or shrapnel. Where bullets normally produce straight-line injuries, twisted-metal shards, from shrapnel blasts, could rip-off a face, or damage it so badly that it made a person unrecognisable.
Facial injuries were often so horrific that living with the disfigurements sometimes kept people from returning to their families and victims suffered extreme psychological damage.
Pioneering plastic surgery helped to reconstruct the faces of badly injured soldiers who needed extensive bone, muscle and skin grafting to restore their appearance. Nevertheless, the home front had great difficulties in getting used to the reconstructed faces.
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