Bertram Owen-Smith

Jul 29 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

THEIR faces were destroyed because hate had filled the hearts of some men, but those faces were remade by the love of other men, who knew that human life was precious.

And when that happened, the wartime airmen formed themselves into the Guinea Pig Club, which remembered they had been the first to benefit from methods of treatment developed by Archbald McIndoe, the plastic surgeon.

So they were able to face the world again, not quite as they had been, but still recognisable to those who had known them before.

In recognition of that, Bertram Owen-Smith dedicated much of his later life to treating people disfigured by war wounds.

Owen-Smith was piloting a Whitley V, carrying fuel and incendiary bombs, when an engine failed and it crashed in a field near Darlington, bursting into flames.

The co-pilot and navigator were also badly burned.

For two years, Owen-Smith was in the care of McIndoe and his team at the hospital at East Grinstead, Sussex.

In addition to his supreme skill in reconstructing the faces of his patients, McIndoe was determined that his men should return to society with their spirits and morale restored as well.

Owen-Smith was one of four children born to a customs and excise officer in Liverpool. The family moved to Swansea, where he attended the local grammar school.

In common with so many young people, his world was transformed, unimaginably, by the war.

A bright youngster, who had been more dedicated to sport than studies, he started work with an insurance firm. But with bombs falling on the docks, he volunteered for ambulance service, as a prelude to joining the RAF at 18.

He was commissioned in Canada, returning to England, where he was serving with No 78 Squadron in 1941, shortly before the crash.

After leaving the RAF, Owen-Smith pledged himself to medicine, studying at King’s College, London, before working in cancer treatment at various hospitals, during which he became interested in the way plastic surgery could be used to alleviate surgical scars.

This led him back for more training at McIndoe’s hospital.

He moved to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1957, opening a practice in Salisbury (Harare). In the subsequent bush war, he treated patients with terrible burn wounds.

Owen-Smith married twice and had four children.

Bertram Owen-Smith, surgeon, born April 12, 1922; died June 6, 2008.