Maisie Dobbs and thoughts on masks

 

Right now, I just finished reading the first Maisie Dobbs book, called, doh,  Maisie Dobbs.  After that she's the main character in the series, but they have other titles.  I didn't post yesterday, for various reasons, one being that I am very concerned about inadvertently glorifying war by my words of appreciation for the people in combat. No criticism of those who posted movingly yesterday, just my take.

But I did read Maisie Dobbs, which is very much involved in the first World War, and the battle of the Somme, in the course of the narrative.  It's accurate, thoughtful, and compassionate reading, though it's really a mystery story, and she's a onetime battlefield nurse, now a private investigator and scholar.

The narrative also centers those men who had terrible facial injuries, to the point where they were shunned by family and friends, and had to endure this ingratitude on top of the war wounds and ptsd, then called shell shock.  But ptsd was little understood outside the medical community.

There were new technological advances in reconstructive surgery, and on masks, made of thin tin, colored to match the wearer's own remaining skin, but a sad attempt at trying to simulate normality.  The men wore linen masks, too, to disguise their facial appearance. 

Maisie's intellectual mentor, Maurice, points out to her that we all wear masks, whether physical or emotional, and this is coming home to this reader, now in the era of mask wearing almost all the time.

One odd advantage to people like me about mask wearing is that,  I can't very well recognize people, and  usually keep a friendly smiling face on all the time out of doors, just in case. But now the mask covers my expression to the point that I'm now finding my face relaxing when I'm out, and it's wonderful. I had no idea how much tension I was lugging around with this defensive smiling mask.  And my normal expression looks very glum now, no matter how cheerful I might feel, gravity does this when you get old, so it's a good idea not to dwell on it! 

My dad served and was terribly wounded, at the Battle of the Somme, mentioned in Maisie Dobbs, and in his later years, not very old, he only lived to his sixties, after all the other sibs had left home and I was alone there with both parents, he talked to me a bit about his experiences.

The horrifying accounts of battlefield medical procedures, scraping of exposed bone with minimal access to morphine, desperate to avoid gangrene and loss of limbs, that you read?  take it from me, they're true. He endured this as just a kid, about 20 at the time. After lying out in no-mans-land for two days till medics could get out and bring him in to the field hospital.  The Salvation Army were the brave medics. And the endless rehab back in England, and the nurses who were amazing and terrifying all at once.  He limped for the rest of his life.  There's more, but that's enough to give you the gist. He, like Billy in the novel, could have lost legs if not for this harrowing early treatment.

As his daughter, I read Sebastian Foulks' Birdsong, a novel based heavily in and around the trenches of the time, partly because if he could live it, the least I could do was read it.  It's a wonderful novel, a love story as well as a stark picture of history.  I really recommend it.  It's important to understand just what it is people endure in combat.

And I always say, the civilian population, little kids in year after year of  rationing and bombardment and darkness and cold with little fuel at home, collecting rosehips and tinfoil for the war effort,  and wondering where all their big brothers have gone, and when this would all end, they're to be remembered, too.

Somber today.  Let's try not to let violent men thrust us into war again.