At 1100 hours the guns went silent,
but for many men (and their families)
the Great War would carry on.
They had come to face a sneaky guest
that dug into them by surprise,
scraping skin and flesh and bone.
Shrapnel took their faces away,
digging ***** holes into their ears, eyes,
noses, cheeks, jaws, lips and teeth.
It took a pioneer of plastic surgery
to ****** it all back for them, not just the flesh
or just the bone but face, true face, their face.
Their faces finally looked back at them.
Now they found new friends, they stepped
through the mirror between two worlds.
On September 10th 1960 Sir Harold Gillies died. During WWI he invented plastic surgery as we basically know it, thus offering severely mutilated men a second life.