Injury and Triage
David Bye signed up with the Royal Fusiliers in 1939 aged just 22, being deployed first in North Africa followed by was then known as Palestine. By the time he had reached Italy with Allied invasion forces in September 1944, David Bye had risen to the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Norfolk regiment.
David went on to Athens in November that year, right into the centre of a civil war, which was raging within the main conflict. Surrounded by communist separatist forces, the British became, in David’s words, “sitting ducks”. David Bye received his life-changing injury on December 16th when a mortar exploded near to him. It destroyed his lower face, the soft and hard tissues of the lower jaw. It nearly cost his life. Evacuated to Barletta in Italy, he was received by the Number 1 Maxillo-facial unit, one of a number of mobile plastic surgery field hospitals sent with expeditionary forces to Europe and North Africa during the war. Number 1 was commanded by plastic surgeon and future president of BAPS, Major Richard Battle. Overwhelmed by injured soldiers, Battle’s small team, including another future President, Raoul Sandon, would have provided emergency care to stabilise the patients with more significant wounds, giving them the best chance of later reconstruction.
David Bye had lost the skin and soft tissues overlying and including the central section of lower jaw bone (mandible) and oral cavity. He also lost part of his tongue. Speaking, and more importantly eating, were very difficult. Unable to close his mouth, David would have suffered with the constant dribble of saliva. Finally, there were the devastating consequences to his appearance.
David spent Christmas that year in Barletta before being sent on to Naples by hospital train. He spent almost one month there in 65BGH before being put on board hospital ship No.54 “Empire Clyde”, for the hazardous journey back to Britain. The journey took 10 days with David extremely thin, no doubt malnourished by an inability to eat properly.
The “Empire Clyde” hospital ship eventually docked in Glasgow on 26th February 1945. David was met on the dock side by Plastic Surgeon Archibald McIndoe, there to triage the men and organise their onward destination for reconstruction. David recalled McIndoe saying “We can do something for this chap”. And with that, he was sent by train to the 26 bedded Albert Ward of the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary in Stoke on Trent, arriving the following day. The unit and its director of plastic surgery, John Grocott, were already well-known to both McIndoe and Sir Harold Gillies. They trained Grocott pre-war and designated the Infirmary part of the Emergency Medical Services plastic surgical effort during World War Two.
Read more about David Bye’s Reconstruction
Image on this page: IWM (NA 20862) Fighting in Athens: Reproduced from the Collection of the Imperial War Museum under creative commons licence