Faces of War . . .

If you have not been there already, I cannot recommend highly enough a visit to "Creating Pictures In My Mind", where Laurie Manton is doing simply excellent work digging up history and photos related to cemeteries and past wars. His two recent posts on "The Reality of War" are fascinating reading, with poignant and pertinent photos to support them.
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Outside of France I'm not sure how well known it may be that in the aftermath of World War One, in which France suffered 1.4 million dead and twice that many wounded, of which tens of thousands were considered 100% invalid, with missing limbs, or blind, or horribly disfiguring head wounds; an association was created to provide care and places to stay for soldiers who had suffered face and head wounds, because at the time a facial wound, no matter how terrible, did not merit a government pension. That association, "l' Union des blessées de la face et de la tête" (The Union of People with Face and Head Wounds) was better known as "les Gueules Cassées. . . the Broken Faces. (The word "Gueule" is not the proper term for a human face, it is normally used to refer to an animal's face.)
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That association, les Gueules Cassées, exists still today, they have a web site on which the history page gives you a small idea with a few photographs of what some of the individuals in question had suffered. One of their sites where wounded soldiers could live out their lives in seclusion if they so desired, is just north of Paris in the small village of Moussy. It is not open to the public. The last veterans from World War One have passed away, but more recent wars have continued to supply patients needing care in such facilities. . .
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