npr:
Some photos of WWI veterans with their tin masks, some surviving pieces, and a couple WWI plastic surgery photographs. Sorry if this offends you somehow; I find it fascinating.
Because of advances made in medicine, in WWI far more soldiers were surviving disfiguring facial injuries than ever before; this led to the rise in cosmetic surgery and prosthetics- the masks, though more aesthetically appealing than the early plastic surgery, were unsettling because they obviously didn’t move with the wearer’s face, creating a dead-eyed, doll like look. They fell out of favor by WWII, but many men who had received tin masks kept and used them for life.
I appreciate that they incorporated this bit of history into “Boardwalk Empire” via the Richard Harrow character.
Horror of war manifests itself in different forms, but it always leads to an inevitable fear of humanity.
