Death of a hero

December 16, 2010 1:11 PM

If you've ever watched the movie "The Battle of Britain", you surely must remember Squadron Leader Evans, a man with a horribly burned face. That role was played by William Foxley, his only appearance in film, and that was really what he looked like. In 1944,. Bill Foxley was navigator in a Wellington bomber which crashed shortly after takeoff. He got out of the wreck safely, but he heard a crewmate screaming inside and went back in and dragged the poor fellow out. In doing so he was horrifically burned, destroying his face and badly ruining both his hands. He lost one eye and the cornea of the other was badly scarred, leaving him nearly blind. As a member of the "Guinea Pig Club" he underwent almost 30 surgeries over three years to fix his hands and rebuild something like a face, which is what you saw in the movie. Bill Foxley got on with his life, and this week he died at age 87.
posted by Chocolate Pickle (21 comments total)

.
posted by pompomtom at 1:29 PM on December 16, 2010

The USS Clueless blog spoke about Foxley in an entry about heroes and heroism a few years back.

.
posted by zarq at 1:39 PM on December 16, 2010

.
posted by Jon_Evil at 1:41 PM on December 16, 2010

Thanks for this. The Battle of Britain was the first "grown-up" movie I saw in the theater, and I do remember Foxley. A few years later I read Tale of a Guinea Pig. At the time I was really interested in the fighting part of WWII airplane books and this one was mostly about the surgical techniques and his recovery. But I remember not being able to put it down, I was like 12 years old.

I hadn't thought about this guy for years and this post just opened up a door in my head I forgot was there.

And:

.
posted by marxchivist at 1:43 PM on December 16, 2010

The obituary called him "a remarkable and courageous man." I can't add anything to that.
posted by Gelatin at 1:46 PM on December 16, 2010 [1 favorite]

The Guinea Pig Anthem
(Sung to the tune Aurelia by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, 1864)

We are McIndoe’s army,
We are his Guinea Pigs.
With dermatomes and pedicles,
Glass eyes, false teeth and wigs.
And when we get our discharge
We’ll shout with all our might:
“Per ardua ad astra”
We’d rather drink than fight

John Hunter runs the gas works,
Ross Tilley wields the knife.
And if they are not careful
They’ll have your flaming life.
So, Guinea Pigs, stand steady
For all your surgeon’s calls:
And if their hands aren’t steady
They’ll whip off both your ears

We’ve had some mad Australians,
Some French, some Czechs, some Poles.
We’ve even had some Yankees,
God bless their precious souls.
While as for the Canadians -
Ah! That’s a different thing.
They couldn’t stand our accent
And built a separate Wing
posted by unliteral at 1:52 PM on December 16, 2010 [6 favorites]

.
posted by HandfulOfDust at 2:15 PM on December 16, 2010

.
posted by rmd1023 at 2:18 PM on December 16, 2010

Fair winds, sir.
posted by pjern at 2:18 PM on December 16, 2010

.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:33 PM on December 16, 2010

.
posted by Rumple at 2:34 PM on December 16, 2010

Thanks for posting this. As long as we're celebrating recently-deceased soldiers of the Commonwealth, let's have a hip-hip-hurrah for David Eastwood and Havildar Lachhiman Gurung:

One grenade fell on the lip of Gurung’s trench. He quickly grabbed it and hurled it back at the enemy. Almost immediately another grenade came over. This one fell directly inside the trench. Again Gurung snatched it up and threw it back.

A third grenade landed just in front of the trench. Gurung attempted to throw it back, but it exploded in his hand, blowing off his fingers, shattering his right arm and severely wounding him in the face, body and right leg. His two comrades were also badly wounded and lay helpless in the bottom of the trench.

The enemy, screaming and yelling, now formed up shoulder to shoulder and attempted to rush the position by sheer weight of numbers. Gurung, regardless of his wounds, loaded and fired his rifle with his left hand and kept up a steady rate of fire.

The attacks came in wave after wave, but the Japanese were beaten back with heavy losses. For four hours Gurung remained alone at his post, calmly waiting for each new onslaught, firing into his attackers at point blank range, determined not to yield an inch of ground. His comrades could hear him shouting: “Come and fight a Gurkha!”

.
.
.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:51 PM on December 16, 2010 [6 favorites]

Unilateral, your page contains a link to this, which has (VERY DISTURBING!!) before-during-after pictures of some of the members of the Guinea Pig Club, including Bill Foxley.

As strange as those men looked after McIndoe was done with them, it was a vast improvement over how they looked before he began.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:27 PM on December 16, 2010

Unilateral,[sic] your page contains a link to this
Yes, I know, it's a very good online exhibition. And I agree with 'very disturbing', the pedicles are particularly hard to look at. I can't imagine what it must have been like having you arm joined to your face.
posted by unliteral at 3:41 PM on December 16, 2010

The fact I can't even bring myself to click through to unilateral's link reinforces how much respect I have for the bravery of the likes of the Guinea Pig Club, both during and after the war.
posted by Hartster at 3:58 PM on December 16, 2010 [1 favorite]

Sorry about the name. That should have been "unliteral", not "unilateral".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:14 PM on December 16, 2010

Umm, ditto.
posted by Hartster at 4:39 PM on December 16, 2010

The Battle of Britain is classic war-technology-art, if you are into that sort of thing.
posted by ovvl at 5:30 PM on December 16, 2010

.
posted by DreamerFi at 2:02 AM on December 17, 2010

Looking at Chocolate Pickle's link I'm amazed. I remember hearing stories of people who get too fat and end up sitting in the same spot for years and hearing how their skin begins to cover the objects that they're sitting on and wondering why don't we use that for plastic surgery. I didn't realize that such a procedure was already used and it uses an extension of skin from a different part of the body. It's amazing.
posted by I-baLL at 10:23 AM on December 17, 2010

.
posted by dealing away at 9:59 PM on December 19, 2010