LEARNING TO LIVE WITHOUT LIMBS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 268, 11 August 1944, Page 24

LEARNING

TO LIVE WITHOUT LIMBS

AN is adaptable. Alter his environment, change his way of living, place him under the most difficult circumstances, and he still contrives to battle along. Given certain basic encouragements which create the urge to succeed, perhaps no one displays such adaptability as the person who has lost the use of a limb. The stories of these people performing feats usually requiring the full use of every limb are legion. There was the man. discovered hunting in the rough country of the Southern Alps, manipulating his gun while he swung himself up impossible ridges with his one leg and two stout crutches. There was the one-armed newspaper delivery man who steered his car with the stump of his lost arm and folded papers and tossed them into the front gardens with his good arm. There was the reporter who lost his right arm and became the fastest reporter round the city, using his left. There was the one-legged boy who was always included in his club cricket team because of his good batting. Someone else ran for him. And of course there are all the one-legged men who dig the garden, play ping-pong, go hiking, drive cars, ride horses and do all the hundred and one things which many of us, with our two legs, sometimes hesitate to do. And there are all the one-armed men who scorn assistance in dressing, shaving, rolling their cigarettes, filling their pipes, tying their ties, and eating. Something of the spirit of these men was expressed the other day by a recently returned soldier who has lost an arm. It was dinnertime, and the fare was roast beef, hardbaked vegetables, etc., which he was consuming with the utmost ease, "Don’t look so surprised," he said, "I haven’t met the meat yet that I can’t cut with my fork. The only faux pas I’ve committed was when a pickled onion evaded my fork and shot across the table on to the lap of my hostess, but apart from that, everything’s going fine." These men have been able to adjust themselves, but there are thousands of disabled men who can’t unless they are given sympathetic understanding and careful encouragement. The greatest proportion of men who become disabled can’t return to their old employment and if they are not given some kind of satisfying work to restore their independence and occupy their minds, recovery is a slow process. This task of adapting disabled people for normal life again is very complex and delicate, but the Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment League is tackling it bravely. Many of our readers will never have heard of the league. Our own knowledge before we visited their fine new building was scanty, so the manager started from the beginning and explained. A Little History "The league was formed in 1930 by the R.S.A. It was formed to give occupation and new hope to all the disabled men of World War I., who had by this time drifted hopelessly into unemployment. At the beginning of this war, it altered its rules to enable it to deal with men from the second world war. ‘The Rehabilitation Board appointed

the league as its agent for dealing with men who were disabled and who, because of this, could not go back to their previous occupations. We have several departments — cabinet making, basket-making, jewellery-manufacturing, leather work, boot-repairing, and now we are opening up a watch-repairing department, and are negotiating for opening a department for printers. In all these cases, men who can’t go back to their previous occupation are given a period of training. They are, of course, personally studied to ensure the right man for the right work. Then we try to place them with private employers. Those men who will be unable to retain positidns with private enterprise will be retained by the league, which is in business for no other reason than to assist them. Some men after training start business. on their own account. In those cases the league assists in every way possible, "Our headquarters are in Wellington, and we have branches at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Invercargill, each with a retail shop and a training factory. We still deal, of course, with men from the first world war. Only recently we admitted a returned man from that war, who, because of his disabilities, had had no work since 1929. You can imagine the bad mental effect this enforced idleness has on a man already suffering from disablement. That is one of our endeavours -to restore their mental happiness. You see, the longer a man is away from work the worse he gets. But when he is working, particularly when he is working with his hands, the pride of craftsmanship can dispel all this neurosis. And he no longer feels a burden on the. State, because he is independent. But come and see the men themselvés." Men At Work The building that houses this branch of the league is Jarge and rambling, three stories of it. In the office was a young man with one arm. In the corridors men were limping. In the rooms, disabled men were. everywhere. They didn’t say much, but they were all interested and busy. Such a variety of work was going on from one room to the next that the effect was like a kaleidoscopic glimpse of a complete city at work, The first room was dim and greenthe basket-makers’ room. The products of their craft were stacked up every- where. Round the walls were baskets of every description and trays of every shape. Wartime shortages have brought New Zealand materials into play here. They weave with supplejack and willow. The room across the corridor was not a room to enter alone at night. In various stages on the tables were realistic arms and legs-the prosthetics department. The work is still very much in its infancy in New Zealand. The fitting and prescribing are highly technical work, and a specialist is coming to help from Rockhampton, England... Each limb has to be specially prescribed and fitted for the indivilual, because, of course. what will fit one, won’t fit . But even though the work is*in its ancy here, the men in this room seemed very busy. They were assembling plaster

casts and making the metal casings, out of a light non-corroding metal, Some of them were wearing limbs of their own manufacture. At the end of the passage the scene changed. This was the cabinet-making department, which provides a threeyear course. At the end of that time the men in this room will be qualified craftsmen. "They do their work well and correctly," said the manager, "though, of course, they are not quick." Finished articles, this time bedroom suites, were lined along one wall, the veneer shining, the drawers fitting perfectly. Silver, Shells And Leather Upstairs we visited the jewellery room, where the men were working with painstaking care, fashioning their pieces with tiny instruments. They work mostly with silver and paua shell, the silver from the Waihi mines, the paua shells from Stewart Island. Dainty bracelets, glistening pendants, brooches, spoons, lay in tempting groups along the benches. We saw granulated silver ready for smelting and paua shells waite ing to be ground. Pauas don’t need to be taken alive, by the way, but they do need to be thick. The grinding i done under water. "The polishing, added the: manager, "is sheer hard work." These men were learning a craft that could be carried on in their own homeg since they, like the others, were learning to adapt themselves to new conditions, The next room smelt of leather, Here the men were making adorning an astonishingly wide range of articles. They were working out their own designs for poker-work, for purse shapes, and for tobaeco pouches. They were binding up slippers and stitching down school bags. Great piles of hides in the cupboards were witnesses to the amount of work they hoped to achieve. The smell of leather still lingered in the boot-repairing room opposite, where two dozen potential bootmakers cobbled together. "Those are our watch-repairing and printing rooms to be,’ explained the manager as he limped down the passage past two large, empty rooms, "And here’s our cafeteria. To-day’s menufish pie, cottage pie, ordinary pies, or sandwiches." Food And Pleasant Reflections It was a happy room with plenty of little tables and comfortable chairs, shining floors and bright curtains. Behind the counter voluntary women helpers from the Red Cross were putting the last touches to the fish pie, cottage pie, ordinary pies, and sandwiches. Here the men have a hot lunch every day, and morning and afternoon tea. Here they can sit back and enjoy fellowship with one another and watch their bowling-green under construction below them. Here they can complete the cure that this new life of craftsmanship has made possible for them. Back in the city we passed the Returned Soldiers’ Shop, stocked full of well-made and beautiful articles made by disabled servicemen ‘working contentedly in their own homes, ex-pupils of the Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment League, It was a reassuring sight.