Jack Toper, a Jewish Second World War veteran who was a member of the Guinea Pig Club, an RAF society for those who suffered disfiguring injuries in combat, has died at 97.
He was a wireless operator in a Wellington bomber in August 1943 when, on its way back from a mission, it was hit by German anti-aircraft fire, managing to limp back across the North Sea on a single engine before crash-landing in Essex.
Mr Toper, then a 22-year old flight sergeant, was helping a fellow crew member out of the aircraft when oxygen tanks blew up. He suffered third degree burns to his hands and face.
In an interview with the Observer in 2004, Mr Toper said: “I badly burnt my fingers, I lost my nose, my upper eyelids, the top of my right ear, my upper lip, my chin and my right cheek. Otherwise I was normal.”
He was taken to the Queen Victoria hospital in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where he underwent more than 30 operations, under the care of Sir Archibald McIndoe, a pioneering plastic surgeon.
The Guinea Pig club was so called because its members understood that they were effectively being used as “guinea pigs” in experimental plastic surgery techniques.
Sir Archibald would use skin from Jack Toper’s stomach to make him a new nose. But in order to keep the skin alive during a series of operations, it had to remain connected from his stomach to his nose for a period of a few months, in what looked like an elephant’s trunk, a treatment which would become known as a pedicle graft.
He spent three years at the hospital.
In a 2004 Times interview, Mr Toper described how most members of the Guinea Pigs went on to have successful relationships and careers. He himself went on to become a store manager for Marks & Spencer, married a “beautiful young woman”, Sybil, and had two children.
Along with other members of the club, which comprised 650 members at its height, Mr Toper would go on to provide help and support to other members of the armed forces who suffered from disfiguring injuries in subsequent conflicts.
He became chairman of the club, as well as editor of its magazine, The Guinea Pig, in the 1980s, and received an MBE in 2004 for services to people with severe burns. He was also a senior member of Ajex - the Association of Jewish ex-Servicemen and Women.
Mr Toper was buried at Waltham Abbey Jewish cemetery on Tuesday. He is survived by his children, Helen and Stephen and children-in-law Norman and Susan, and his grandchildren, Michael and Natalie and great granddaughter, Katherine.
In the eulogy for her father, Helen Toper described him as "brave, courageous, modest, warm and compassionate.
"My father possessed great moral character, integrity and honesty, as well as a wry sense of humour, adventure and fun," she said.
"He was a truly wonderful and special person in every sense of the word, and we are grateful to have had the honour of knowing, loving and cherishing this amazing human being."
Mr Toper's grandaughter Natalie said that his passing had "left a chasm", and that his family had "all loved him very much and grew up with stories from his RAF days", describing the "very close bond" he had enjoyed, in particular, with his great grandaughter.
In 2016, marking the 75th anniversary of the club, Mr Toper described how “the Guinea Pigs have been there to mentor new generations of burns victims, including Service personnel injured in the Falklands, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
“We know all about burns. We can tell them that their life is not over. It is beginning a new phase, but it is up to them what they want to do with it."
