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Harold Gillies, a native of New Zealand, was a young ENT (ear, nose, and throat) surgeon at the time. Sent to the battlefields himself, and on seeing the attempts made to address severe facial injuries on the Western Front he realized that there was a need for more specialised care.
The authorities agreed with him and he was given the go-ahead in 1916 to set up Great Britain's first dedicated plastic surgery unit in Aldershot at the Cambridge Military Hospital.
Front line hospitals were checked for suitable patients to be helped at the unit and the pioneering work or 'strange new art' as Gillies referred to it began.