During World War I, Queen's Hospital near London was used as a special medical facility for soldiers with facial wounds, under the leadership of Dr. Harold Gillies. The hospital is featured in Pat Barker's novel Toby's Room, and after reading that book I searched for more information about Dr. Gillies and his innovative and compassionate mission to restore, as much as possible, the faces of men who had suffered terrible, almost unimaginable facial wounds.

In my search I found About Face: World War I Facial Injury and Reconstruction. This unusual book is essentially a volume of poetry, but it includes as an introduction an interesting and well-researched essay on the title subject, complete with several pages of notes on the text. A important feature of Gillies' work was the careful documentation of each patient's wounds with photographs or detailed drawings of the man's face before, during and after treatment. About Face is the result of Ann Gerike's study of many of these records.

The central focus of the book is the selection of twenty poems by the author. Some of them are based on actual patient files, although Gerike has created fictional life circumstances for each of the patients. The poems are honest and poignant, even haunting. Notes for several of the poems provide backgrounds and details of patient injuries and treatment.

The most striking part of the book, perhaps, are the four pages of photographs from the Gillies Archives at the end of the book. These include before and after photos of three of the patients featured in the poems. The essay, poems and photos together give the reader an objective view of the subject, but also a more personal understanding of the experiences these injured soldiers endured.

More people should read this book, especially anyone interested in "the war to end all wars." I recommend it highly.