Mother’s Hero: Arthur Rainsford Mowlem

Posted on June 11, 2022 by johnshortlandwriter

When I published my article on ‘The Man Who Never Was’, the story of Operation Mincemeat, a year ago, I hadn’t realised that a film was to be released in May 2022. Perhaps, if I had I would have delayed the publication by a few months! In it, I described the rather tenuous connection with my father’s cousin, HAL Fisher. The interest and comments I received made me explore deception used as a weapon during World War II. It was this that led me to learn about the use of plastic surgery to change people’s appearance for the purpose of espionage.

Although surgery to alter appearance has been carried out to a limited extent throughout history it was during the Second World War that it began to be developed in earnest. A popular reason given for this was the desire to treat badly injured pilots who had survived their aircraft being shot down. However, there was a far more secret purpose being carried out too – to assist the SOE (the UK’s Special Operations Executive) in their missions behind enemy lines. In released official documents, the procedures – known euphemistically as ‘permanent make-up’ – are listed as casually as one might write a shopping list: ‘plastic operations to forehead’, ‘surgical operations to ears’, and so on. Once war was over some of the recipients began to talk about their treatment which, although disapproved of by the Government, were not silenced.

*“An excellent agent and a dependable officer” – before and after surgery*

Arthur Rainsford Mowlem, born in New Zealand in 1902, came to England in the late ‘20s to further his development as a medic. In 1936 he joined the practice of Sir Harold Gillies, also a New Zealander and described as ‘the father of modern plastic surgery’. Here they worked alongside pioneering new methods of treatment. It is unknown when or how Mowlem and other surgeons were enlisted to help the SOE and Mowlem never spoke of it during his lifetime. However, in correspondence between him and the SOE he discusses the prospect of surgery to alter the appearance of a French agent. How Mowlem felt about operating on these healthy men is unknown but an un-named surgeon tells of how the work now required of them “was a mockery of all that they had trained for”.

*My mother, Rachel Oberzanek: 21st birthday portrait*

My mother’s career with Odeon Cinemas had progressed rapidly throughout the war and by 1944 she was heading the Licencing Department with a team of assistants. Odeon had, by then, evacuated their offices from London to the small, riverside town of Marlow in Buckinghamshire. She was accommodated in a lovely and old country house in the nearby village of Well End. Living at the Old Malt House must have seemed a different world from the London’s West End where she had been brought up and she would tell of how she would lean out of her bedroom window to pick fruit from the grapevine that grew on the house walls. With extensive grounds, a cook and a housekeeper and the use of a chauffeured car it must have been a life of relative luxury that she would have been unused to. It was here that she also met her future husband – my father – so a very happy and untroubled time for her. All that changed in an instance when, on the first day of December 1945 during the black-out, her car was involved in a head-on accident.

*The Old Malt House, Well End* *– grapevines cover the front of the building – c1943*

In those days of cars with no seat belts, my mother had taken the full force of the crash and had been catapulted through the windscreen. Unconscious, she was taken by ambulance to Wycombe Hospital and with multiple facial and head injuries unexpected to survive the night. Fortunately, Odeon proved to be excellent and supportive employers, driving her parents down from London and accommodating them so that they were able to visit her regularly. On Christmas Day she came out of the coma unaware of what had happened over the past month. She would tell of how she had first heard singing and, opening her eyes, saw a blurred vision of people dressed in white that she though must be angels. They were, of course, her nurses singing a carol! Badly scarred and with broken nose and cheekbones she was finally released from hospital unable to work and embarrassed about being seen in public. In her memoir, she described the first day she had to enter a crowded room and how it fell silent when she appeared, a humiliating and distressing moment.

*My mother, in the grounds of The Old Malt House, and looking so happy, just before the accident that changed her life – and her appearance*

Six months after her accident, Odeon who had been caring for her as well as paying her salary all this time arranged for her to be taken to London to see a doctor at The London Clinic in Harley Street. The doctor was surgeon Arthur Rainsford Mowlem; in mother’s words, “a charming man who promised me he would do all he could.” There followed a series of operations over many weeks where he reconstructed the badly damaged side of her face, repaired the cheekbones, and rebuilt her badly broken nose using part of her hipbone. Looking at her wedding photograph, taken such a short time after in the autumn of 1946, his skilful work is quite extraordinary although my mother kept the picture hidden away; all she could see was a face that didn’t quite belong to her. Nowadays, I imagine, she would have received some sort of counselling but then it was just a case of ‘getting on with it’.

*My parents on their wedding day – just weeks after her face had been reconstructed*

Living well into her 90s, mother’s issues with discomfort in her neck and head waned over time only to be replaced by a later source of (bemused) irritation. When visiting hospitals there would be a succession of doctors and nurses wanting to look at her facial surgery for none had seen such early reconstruction and to see how it had fared over seventy years. She had been told that she was the first civilian to receive plastic surgery and for the remainder of her long life she was eternally grateful to Odeon Cinemas who had cared for her and paid for her treatment. Most of all, she was grateful to Rainsford Mowlem, without whom she would have had a lifetime of disfigurement; to her he was, indeed a hero.

*Mum on her 90th birthday – and seventy years after the facial reconstruction*

To read the story of Operation Mincemeat and The Man Who Never Was click here

References:
Wikipedia Arthur Rainsford Mowlem

Amin, Kavit Rainsford Mowlem: An unsung father of reconstructive surgery

Bailey, Roderick. Special Operations: a hidden chapter in the histories of facial surgery and human enhancement (CC BY 4.0)

EDIT: Today, 21st June, I was delighted to receive this lovely email in response to this blog post from The London Clinic where my mother received her revolutionary treatment 70 years ago. They are happy for me to share it with you – you may need to click on the image of the email to make the typeface clearer…

Victory and a Brighter Future

Posted on May 10, 2020 by johnshortlandwriter

War, it is often said, is made by old men for younger men to fight and die. Although this is true, as is the realisation that many wars are wars of vanity and/or stupidity, sometimes sadly, they are necessary. As we celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Europe, we need to reflect on the suffering it caused to the peoples of all nations. We also need to reflect that just as the First World War wasn’t ‘the war to end all wars’, neither did peace in Europe bring a future of peace throughout the world. It is with immense gratitude to our parents and grandparents that the end of hostilities in 1945 brought an enduring peace to Europe and the West. However, peace is a fragile object to be nurtured and handled with great care and the recent turn of events with Covid-19, Brexit and the tensions arising from the radical changes in USA diplomacy gives considerable rise to concern. We can only hope that our leaders remember how the rhetoric of the 1930s became the reality of the 1940s.

WW2 memorabilia (2) watermark

Like virtually every other family in the land, mine suffered mixed fortunes. My father, the eldest of three boys survived the conflict as did the middle brother. Sadly, the youngest of the three died, not by enemy gunfire but by his own hand in Austria. By the age of 23 he had already seen more pain and suffering (we can assume) than he could endure and the thought of returning to civilian life proved too much. He is buried in a Commonwealth War Grave beside his fallen comrades in Klagenfurt. For his parents it must have been very hard to receive the news when they had believed all three sons had survived the fighting. My grandmother received a telegram reporting quite simply ‘single bullet wound to head when unsound of mind.’

My father (middle) with his two brothers during WW2

My father’s youngest brother in happier times

My mother’s family suffered an even worse fate. Her parents, my grandparents, were Polish Jews who had come to England around 1912 and, with my grandmother’s sister who also lived here, were spared the fate of the majority of their kin. To learn that all but three of their extended families had been killed in the Holocaust must have been an unbearable burden to be carried for the remainder of their lives. They never showed their suffering – at least, not to us grandchildren – and they never spoke of Poland or their families again.

My Polish grandparents never spoke of the enduring pain they both must have suffered

If it is hard to imagine the anxiety our forebears suffered during the conflict. It is, in some ways, even more difficult to imagine the joy, excitement and sense of relief that they must have felt as the news of impending victory circulated, followed by the reality that victory had finally been achieved. No more black-outs, no more uncertainty and, within a few short years, no more rationing. In our family no-one ever discussed such emotions but the retaining of various memorabilia stands as the record of their feelings. The letter from Field-Marshall Alexander and the Service of Thanksgiving booklet that my father kept and the left-over furniture ration tokens of my mother’s perhaps show how their priorities differed for it was always down to the womenfolk to ensure that there was food on the table and a comfortable home to return to.

The letter foretelling victory from Field-Marshall Alexander, April 1945

Thanksgiving for Victory in Europe order of church service

WW2 memorabilia - Utility furniture tokens watermark

Ration stamps – everything was rationed, even furniture

This week, while acknowledging the pain and hardship of war, there is much to be celebrated on this 75^th anniversary. Not only have we as a family and a nation, survived and thrived there is also much that unites the world. The internet has given the ‘ordinary person’ a much greater and louder international voice, mostly for the better. For me, it means I keep in touch with cousins scattered across the world, descendants of the Polish family that hatred had so very nearly completely wiped out. Through my blog and through Facebook I am in conversation with and have ‘met’ people from all walks of life and cultures – something that would have seemed unlikely if not impossible only thirty or so years ago. So, as we move forward from the celebrations, let us all strive for a world where peace, love, respect, kindness, concern and trust remain dominant. Wherever we are today, tomorrow and in the longer future, may we stay safe, stay well and be thankful for the peace of yesterday.

The start of a new day

Exmoor’s Forgotten Neighbour

Posted on November 20, 2013 by johnshortlandwriter

Sandwiched between barren Exmoor to the west and the rugged Quantocks to their east, the Brendon Hills appear remarkably fertile with their neat, small fields testament to a rich farming tradition. Now incorporated into the Exmoor National Park it seems to be as devoid of human life as it’s more visited partner. It has, however, a surprising past: travel back in time one hundred and fifty years and you would find yourself in a thriving community at the forefront of Industrial Revolution technology.

A corner of the ruined building

For years, I had been intrigued by a ruined building close to one of the few roads that leads onto Exmoor proper. Obviously once substantial, what could this building, miles from anywhere, have been and who lived there? There were no clues as I first approached but the ruins, now stabilised, have had information boards giving its history placed within. It was the site of an extraordinary Victorian venture that extracted iron ore and then transported it to the coast to ship to Wales for the steel industry. Although, there was now just this one ruined building, in its heyday over two hundred miners and their families lived close by in houses built especially for them.

Click on the image to enlarge the poster

The explosion of railway building in the mid 1800’s had created a huge demand for – and, consequently, a shortage of – iron ore. Mining had taken place in the region on a very small, localised scale for many centuries but the small quantities found had never been a commercial prospect. With the rapid rise in price and with advances in extraction the Ebbw Vale Company – Welsh steel works – developed the mines. A major problem was how to transport the ore the eleven miles from the furthest mine to the coast from where it could be shipped across the sea to Wales. The first six miles from the port of Watchet was straightforward enough, the final six miles along the top of the Brendons, although more costly, also did not create a major problem. It was the mile that included the climb of a 1 in 4 hillside that proved to be a challenge and a costly one at that – over ten times the amount required for the same length elsewhere and over £2 million in today’s prices. ‘The Incline’ was completed in 1861 and took just four years to build, rising almost 800 feet in just 0.6 of a mile.

The ruins of the winding house as seen from the top of the incline

Trucks of iron ore were lowered or raised down the incline on twin rails, their steam locomotives held in place by steel cables. The huge drums that were required to do this were housed in the ‘winding house’ with the cables travelling through stone tunnels, now the silent home of bats. The force of gravity brought empty trucks to the top in twelve minutes as the weight of the full ones descended. At the top of the incline the trucks passed over the roof of the winding house. Communications between the men at the top and bottom were by semaphore.

The winding house – the trains passed over its roof

The cable tunnels

The price of iron ore and the methods of extraction continued to change rapidly and the railway never made a profit, with the mines closing just eighteen years later. Remarkably, the railway continued to carry passengers for a further five years seated on wooden planks bolted to the tops of the iron ore trucks. It must have been an extraordinary experience to be hauled up the incline and travelling back down couldn’t have been for the faint-hearted!

The incline today belieing the industry and grit of the men that created it

An even more short-lived attempt to re-open the mine was thwarted by the outbreak of the Great War and in 1916 the sleepers and rails were requisitioned and the drums blown up, demolishing part of the winding house building. A further attempt to rebuild the winding house for agricultural use was abandoned during WWII and it was only with the help of a National Lottery grant that the buildings were recently stabilised and the incline cleared of scrub and restored.