Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1916 — HEAD STOPS SHELL [ARTICLE]

HEAD STOPS SHELL

Private in Yorkshire Regiment Keeps on Smiling. Recovery Amazes Surgeons Who Remove Large Piece of Metal From Forehead and Another From Behind Left Cheek. London.— During the present war medical men have reported many remarkable cases of the recovery of wounded men—cases where a fatal termination seemed inevitable —but it is doubtful if there has been any as astonishing as the case of Private G. a, Dawson of the Tenth Yorkshire regiment, who is now in the King George Military hospital, Stamford street, S. E. Private Dawson has caused so much interest among members of the medical profession that he has been seen by scores of leading surgeons. Enough shell has been removed from Private Dawson’s head to kill many men. As Kipling said of the late Lord Roberts: “If you stood ’im on ’is ’ead You could spill a quart o' lead.” But with it all this “Tommy” is able to sit up in his bed, and he is one of the brightest and cheeriest souls in the ward. Private Dawson, who is the son of a news agent of Bishop Auckland, Durham, went to France with his regiment last year, and after serving five months in the trenches he was wounded oh December 12. He was in a village behind the lines which was being shelled,- and before, he could get to his “dug out” a shell knocked him ouh Unconscious, he was taken to the base hospital, and there, from a great hole in the center of his forehead directly above his nose, there were removed a large piece of shell, a piece of wood and his cap. For 20 days Dawson hovered between life and death. His face became swollen and black and nothing the surgeons could, do seemed to reduce the swelling. On December 31 Dawson was removed to a hospital at Boulogne, and there he was put under the X-rays immediately on his arrival. In the private’s left cheek was found a large piece of shell, which must have entered through the hole in the forehead and passed down the side of the nose. On New Year’s day Private Dawson was operated upon again, and this piece of shell, which weighed two and three-quarters ounces, was removed by the way It had entered, so that there Should not be a scar of any sort on the private's cheek. The piece of shell—about a quarter of an inch thiek, with torn and Jagged edges—is a relic prized greatly by Private Dawson. Another remarkable feature about the case is that by a further operation recently at the King _ . _ ; g m A M m gA eye. was saved. To use his own expression, the piece of shell, when passing into his cheek, “turned the lens of my left eye over. * A celebrated ophthalmic surgeon has righted the lens of the oye, and in a

few days Private Dawson will be able to see again with his left eye.