Description
Mr. Tarling recalls when Dr. Tilley saves his hand using skin graft from his own body.
Raymond Tarling
Mr. Raymond Tarling was born May 19, 1920 in Vancouver, British Columbia. After his schooling, Mr. Tarling decided to join the Air Force. He trained at the Calgary Wireless School and Lethbridge Gunnery School choosing an occupation of Wireless Air Gunner. After receiving this training, Mr. Tarling attended a year’s service of Instructing in London, Ontario, and was then posted overseas. Once in Nottinghamshire, Scotland, Mr. Tarling was assigned an instructor position and eagerness to participate in active service, he volunteered on the Wellington mission dropping leaflets over Northern France. During this time in Mr. Tarling’s career, he experienced a crash flight and was severely disfurged by the impact. Mr. Tarling was taken to East Grinstead Hospital in Enlgand where many surgeries and repairs to his face, hands and leg were performed. It was because of this tragedy, Mr. Tarling proudly became a member of the Guinea Pig Club. To this day Mr. Tarling takes great pride in his service and experiences at East Grinstead Hospital. After recovery from his injuries, Mr. Tarling returned to Canada married his long time sweetheart, Elsie, and raised a family.
Transcript
Dr. Tilley came around and said, “Ray, I'd like to save that hand of yours.” The other doctors wanted to take it off but he said, "I have an idea.” He says, "We can take skin from other parts of your body." Matter of fact here, I dont know if you wanna see it or not. There's one part where it was... they took all that off and over here, up there and they put one of them on this hand they wanted to take it off, it was a hell of a mess. So they put, he put skin, I guess it’s partly flesh too, on here and some down here. Actually this one went good you can’t even see them! But those will always be white now, they were red for years. Tilley did this, he says, "Ray, we’ve never down anything like this before.” He said, “We have used other people’s skin and that to put on to some people but,” he said, “we find out they don’t take because the skin from your own body comes up or gets better on these sort of things. So he said, "Were gonna put most of it on." My hand was a real mess, ya know, it’s still bad. He left this, he said, "You can chew your ears with it!"