These Scars Don't Fade

**This game contains themes alluding to Disfiguration, Suicide and PTSD**

In June 1917, Dr Harold Gillies opened the Queen’s Hospital in Sidcup (Southeast London) with 1000 beds for soldiers in need of facial reconstruction due to injuries sustained during World War 1. Dr Gillies and his team . As a result of their work and discoveries, untold numbers of injured, crippled and disfigured persons were able to overcome trauma that had previously been untreatable. 

The patients needing facial reconstruction experienced some of the most incomprehensible trauma as a result of their injuries, left with their reflection no longer being their own. Many lost lovers, friends and family over their new appearances and were subject to the constant gaze of society. At Sidcup it was said that there were no mirrors as these self-appointed “Broken Gargoyles” had such a level of psychological trauma they couldn't risk seeing their own reflection and blue benches were created so they soldiers could sit peacefully without the risk of stares as the blue colour signalled to all passer bys that a “Broken Gargoyle” may be sitting there and they should avert their eyes.  

The surgeries and prosthetics provided at Sidcup changed many people's lives but the trauma they carried haunted them always a reflection away. The famous blue benches at Sidcup sit as a reminder of these men who went from one war to another but this one not as easily won, many of these men took their own lives and many were lost to time but their stories are worth hearing and their pain worth acknowledging.  

“It must be unmitigated hell to feel like a stranger to yourself.” Dr Fred Houdlett Albee