Australian soldier William Kearsey was on the Ypres battlefront for only 16 days in 1917 before he suffered horrific facial injuries from shell fragments. He had trained for 18 months for the war, but his recovery took far longer, and included 29 operations.
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New research has found that the high incidence of facial injuries such as those suffered by Private Kearsey were responsible for massive advances in plastic surgery and anaesthesia techniques that remain today as core practice.
PhD candidate Kelly Neale spent several years researching Kearsey, whose wounds were so severe, soldiers around him first believed him dead. His story is one of eight told in detail at Melbourne Museum's big new exhibition World War I: Love & Sorrow, marking the centenary of that world-shattering conflict.
Exhibition curator Deborah Tout-Smith said Ms Neale's research is at the forefront of shifting the focus of WW1 away from heroism and battles to acknowledging that war ''is a very violent and unpleasant experience'' with massive effects on the human body and psyche. ''There is nothing as powerful and poignant as seeing a violent facial injury to see what war does to the human form,'' she said.
The museum has borrowed three facial casts from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons that were used in Kearsey's treatment. Ms Neale, an Australian War Memorial researcher, found files on Kearsey at England's Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, where Kearsey, then 24, was transferred after his injury. The hospital specialised in treating facial injuries and made the casts as part of the operations Kearsey had during 18 months there.
New techniques Kearsey endured included gradually grafting a three-sided flap of chest skin onto the wound. Kearsey was also subject to new anaesthetic procedures. While it was tragic, the ravages of war provided surgeons with so many facial-injury patients they were able to refine treatments. Ms Neale said it meant plastic surgery simply leapt ahead.
Her research also revealed that some veterans such as Kearsey managed to go on to live positive, productive lives, despite severe physical and mental trauma from the war, in which more than 16 million people died and 21 million were injured.
Many veterans suffered from alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder or were extremely bitter about their experiences, Ms Neale said, especially with cases of severe disfigurement. "But there were also many stories of resilience and people like William Kearsey who were able to reconstruct their lives, as much as their faces had been reconstructed. They put their lives back together as well.”
Kearsey returned to Australia in 1921 but his pregnant fiance called off the engagement and Kearsey never met their child. Ms Neale said medical files and family interviews revealed Kearsey’s facial wounds caused great grief - they were still weeping pus in the 1930s and he had no tear ducts, which caused repeated infections. Yet he became a successful wool farmer and wool-classer, met and married, and the couple adopted a son, Peter, who has been involved with the Love & Sorrow exhibition.
World War 1: Love & Sorrow opens at Melbourne Museum on August 30