Tin Noses, Tin Roses: Love Stories from World War I by Susan Anthony-Tolbert

Though the story of the “Tin Noses, Tin Roses: Love Stories from World War I” is framed against the awesome facial disfigurements that some soldiers faced from their combat with the enemy, it is not a sad or depressing account. It is a love story, actual several love stories, across the times and events from World War I through World War II. Even war, disfigurements and distance cannot diminish true love. And it is the tale of finding one’s passion in life ---- whatever that passion! It also describes how sometimes when one discipline like medicine can go no farther to repair what has been broken in a human being, another discipline can be used to make life better. In the early days of World War I, artist and sculptor, Francis Derwent Wood, founder of the Tin Noses Shop, said it best: “My work begins where the work of the surgeon is completed. My cases are generally extreme cases that plastic surgery has ----had to abandon …” In order to better understand the story of the Tin Noses, a little background in hospitals during the war is presented. The reader will find information on field hospitals, evacuation hospitals and base hospitals. Base Hospital #18 at Bazoilles-sur-Meuse would have played an important part in the lives of the characters in this book. The main story and its people are completely fictional. They have no counterparts in real life and are completely from the imagination of the author. Any similarities of these characters in “Tin Noses, Tin Roses: Love Stories from World War I” to actual people is accidental and co-incidental. The only non-fictional people in this book are Francis Derwent Wood, Anna Coleman Ladd, and Dr. Harold Gillies. These historical figures, who did so much for the facially disfigured soldiers of World War I, are mentioned to celebrate them throughout the book and to give the story context and historical significance. The book is a salute to the human spirit; to the gift of the tin noses and to the tin roses.