Guinea Pig Club saved flyer’s life
AS ONE of Sir Archibald McIndoe’s last surviving patients, RAF serviceman Jack Perry always credited the pioneering surgeon with giving him a new lease of life. On August 31, 1944, flight engineer Perry was on board a Halifax bomber when it blew up 300ft over RAF Topcliffe in North Yorkshire.
The ground crew hadn’t properly sealed a nut on a fuel outlet pump and the explosion left the tail gunner dead and several other aircrew – including 19-year-old Perry – terribly injured.
Suffering 80 per cent burns to his hands, face and ears he was admitted to hospital and two weeks later was transferred to Rauceby Hospital near Sleaford, a satellite burns unit overseen by McIndoe’s team at East Grinstead.
“My hands were completely burnt, I had 31 operations and skin grafts. My ears were burnt too.
“McIndoe was a wonderful man and a brilliant surgeon. He was very protective over us,” he said.
Three years earlier, the Guinea Pig Club had been formed by the badly burnt men whose lives had been saved by McIndoe’s pioneering reconstructive surgery.
In total Sir Archibald “fixed up” 649 Second World War Allied airmen who dubbed themselves “guinea pigs” because the surgical techniques used on them by McIndoe were hugely innovative. But it wasn’t just a case of rebuilding faces and limbs. McIndoe gave the men scarred by war a new sense of purpose in life, a new reason to live.
He encouraged them to socialise with the community by going to local pubs and to seek work locally.
“I owe him 100 per cent,” Perry said in 2014. “He was just an absolutely wonderful man. He put you at your ease immediately. He said: ‘You’re going to be okay. We’re going to fix you up.’”
Edward John Perry, always known as Jack, was the second of four children born to William, a volunteer fireman and his wife Eva.
He was raised in Dartmouth but after the death of his youngest brother Clive from meningitis aged 18 months, the family moved across the River Dart to Kingswear.
Perry left school at 14 to start a two-year engineering scholarship and then joined the Air Training Corps and Home Guard, spending time patrolling the Paignton to Kingswear railway line. At 18 he joined the RAF and after training as a flight engineer was seconded to fly with a Canadian crew as part of 6 Bomber Group. He was barely a year in the job when the crash happened.
After the war Perry, who received the MBE earlier this year, enjoyed a successful career as a draughtsman at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.
At the same time he became a devoted member of the Guinea Pig Club, becoming social secretary in 1967, a post he held for over 40 years.
In that time he worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the club and its members, as well as generating greater public awareness and understanding of the unique history of the guinea pigs. He offered encouragement and help to those who suffered burns during conflicts and whenever someone he knew was involved in a bad accident he would cut a piece of his club tie and post it to them as a show of support.
“The Guinea Pig Club means everything to me,” he said. “I’m proud to be associated with a fine body of men and wonderful surgeons and nurses. I would do everything again. I’m proud to be a guinea pig and I try to help anybody I can.”
He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Mary, whom he met while recovering at a convalescent home near Southampton, and his three children.