High Wycombe | Life in the English Cotswolds

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…

Buckinghamshire, one of the so-named Shire counties, lies to the north-west of London. A long, narrow county; the southern part is renowned for its beech woodlands. Although greatly diminished in size over the centuries, many of them are still there, remnants of the ancient woodlands that once covered much of Britain, although the industries that they supported are long gone.

In the Chilterns the beechwoods can almost engulf the lanes

Straddling the Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire borders the Chiltern Hills extend diagonally northwards into neighbouring Bedfordshire where they change character from dense woodlands to more open downland. It is within the shadow of the southern woodlands where I was born and where I lived for the greater part of my life before moving to the secret valley in the Cotswolds. Inspired by Enid Blyton’s The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, my childhood was spent crawling around the fields, woods and hedgerows learning as much as I could about the wild birds and animals that lived within them. john david shortland 1965 watermark

Although nowadays the woods appear mostly deserted, they are still made use of. The old tracks and paths that were once used by the men and women that worked and lived there are trodden by walkers, and by the wildlife that remains elusive for only those that move quietly have the pleasure of seeing anything other than a glimpse of a fleeing animal.

This centuries old track leads down into a deep valley

Fallow deer can often be seen at rest in clearings if you walk quietly

The making of chair legs to keep the flourishing furniture industry of High Wycombe, the local market town, was carried out within the woodland by men who would set up shelters there. Known as chair-bodgers, a local dialect word originally confined to this immediate area, they were highly skilled craftsmen who could earn relatively high wages for their work. The Second World War virtually ended the centuries old tradition, the last being Samuel Rockall who died in the early 1960s. I had been unaware of Rockall’s life until I researched for this blog post and it seems as if we may have been related for I have Rockalls in my family tree. In the 1851 census return one of my ancestral cousins is described as a chair turner living in the village where I spent much of my adult life. More research required!

Jonathan Rockall, chair turner and ancestral cousin in the 1851 census return. His wife, Ann, a lace maker,- another local craft

Some of my cousins?! Photo from an old book ‘English Country Life & Work’

It is, perhaps, springtime when the beech woods are most visited for the forest floor is carpeted with bluebells. The intensity of their colour plus the iridescent green of the tree’s unfurling leaves almost hurt the eyes. With early morning sunshine the scent is unique and difficult to describe – gentle is the best I can come up with. As the day progresses the scent is quickly lost. Chilterns Beechwood copyright

During midsummer, the woods become visually silent: the leaves have turned a dark, leathery green and the bluebells gone to lie dormant for the rest of the year. With autumn, the trees become alive once more with colour, this time as their leaves turn into every shade of copper, gold and brown before they drop to the ground for winter. It is then that the smooth bark of the trees come to the fore with a silvery sheen that catches the low light of a winter’s day. Although it may seem as if the woodlands are sleeping, in places the first bluebells are starting to poke their noses through the leaf litter. Spring is on its way. Autumn colour watermark Ibstone 1984 watermark