The Dark Way Home

It would be hard for them to imagine me doing the job that I do today...

'As a journalist and blind person,

'I've experienced massive changes in technology

'in the past two decades...'

SPEECH SYNTHESISER ON COMPUTER

..but the biggest shift in attitudes happened 100 years ago.

Out of the horror and carnage of the First World War came advances

that revolutionised the way in which blind people live and work.

From Guide Dogs

to talking books...

..and new skills for independence.

These pioneers left a legacy that is still with us today.

The fields of Belgium and France...

..where millions of soldiers fought for four long years

in the stalemate of trench warfare.

Many would never return.

It was the biggest conflict the world has ever seen...

..with new and devastating weapons.

Hundreds of thousands of men survived to return home,

but sustained terrible injuries.

I want to find out why so many in this particular conflict

lost their sight.

Because it was a highly mechanised new type of industrial warfare,

a lot of men had impaled injuries to their face.

They had a lot of facial trauma which involved the eye, as well.

There were...everything from wooden splinters to shells,

to, quite frankly, human bone

that actually penetrated men's face, head and body.

It's very, very basic medical intervention.

If you were bleeding, you had your bleeding arrested.

If you were in shock and cold, you would be warmed up.

If you were burnt, they would try to irrigate your eyes,

irrigate the tissue,

compression bandages applied, splints applied, morphine given.

It was all very, very basic emergency care

and then you were moved up the line to a base hospital

until they decided either you could be returned to duty,

or you would be sent back to Britain

for longer-term treatment and therapy.

But there was something worse than the guns -

a silent killer.

Gas.

By 1915, the two sides were trapped in the insanity of trench warfare.

Thousands losing their lives each day

in return for a few feet of ground.

The use of chemical weapons had been banned

at the Hague Convention of 1899 -

but the opposing armies needed a more effective weapon

than artillery -

one which delivered quickly and to devastating effect.

During the First World War, we would actually have

predominantly mustard and phosgene.

Both of those chemical weapons could get into the membranes of your nose,

and your eyes and your mouth - and in particularly into the lungs.

If it gets deep into the lungs,

it's going to then burn out the membranes of the lungs,

which will then naturally be replaced by fluid.

That fluid then starts to corrupt and to froth,

and then you start to drown in your own bodily fluids

from the lungs within.

Of course the membranes of the eyes

would then be burned with the phosgene,

and that would cause the temporary

and sometimes the permanent blindness, of course.

Those returning home may have escaped the trenches...

but faced new challenges ahead.

It must have been very difficult to go home,

because you don't know what you're going home to.

You might be going home to a job

that you might not be able to do any more

and it's not just a physical trauma that people will be going through.

It would be the psychological trauma -

and would your friends and family accept you the way you were before?

MUSIC: We All Went Marching Home Again by The Black Diamonds Band

Coming back from France 100 years ago

must have been really horrific for people.

Really busy - not quite as busy as the traffic is today

but nevertheless, the pavements will still be busy.

The idea of having no guide dog or no white stick

to find your way around would have been really difficult.

I can't really imagine what it would have been like for these soldiers.

The attitude to working with a disability

would have been very different then compared with today.

Before the First World War, 80% of blind people

were not considered part of mainstream society.

They were known as the outdoor blind.

The indoor blind could live and work in institutions

where they would handcraft practical items for sale.

The blind asylum near Glasgow Cathedral was founded in 1804.

On a pedestal there's a statue of Christ seated

and he's placing his left hand over the eyes of a small boy,

um...and the title of the statue

was to the effect, Christ Restoring The Sight Of A Boy.

Historian Iain Hutchison

is an expert in the lives of disabled people in the past.

What was it like, Iain, for visually impaired people,

latter part of the 19th century leading up to the First World War?

I would say it depends at what stage in their lives they were at,

whether they were young people, older people, whatever.

If people were in the prime of life,

they were looking to be active.

They were looking to be self-supporting

and this is where the likes of the blind institutions came in

as providers of work.

And what kind of work did they do?

It was very kind of stereotype work.

It was handcraft work - so they were making things like ropes, canework,

mattresses, this type of thing.

The choice available to them was fairly limited.

In terms of aspirations for blind people outside that,

what were they like in terms of their life -

married life, family life?

Many blind people had to actually fight to live normal lives

in terms of romance, marriage,

bringing up families and so forth.

That was probably more challenging -

not just in terms of meeting people,

but in terms of barriers that were sometimes put in their way

because of outside perceptions.

Should blind people marry and have children?

There were people who thought not.

These attitudes would change dramatically

with thousands of blind soldiers returning from the front.

St Dunstan's charity was founded in 1915 in London

specifically to help them adjust to the new circumstances.

These would be, on the whole, young men, often in their 20s,

some even younger than that,

who had been blinded in often very shocking circumstances.

They would have had to adjust to that,

and an absolute change in where they thought their life was going.

They would not have seen themselves as career soldiers.

They would have joined up to fight a war

for what they would've thought was a very limited period of time

and expecting, then, to go back into society.

St Dunstan's was the brainchild of Sir Arthur Pearson,

a successful businessman who had founded the Daily Express newspaper.

He had poor vision from birth,

and finally lost his sight through glaucoma.

As president of the National Institute for the Blind,

he wanted to help these newly blinded young men.

When he went blind himself,

he's reportedly said to have told his wife

that "I'm not going to be A blind man, I will be THE blind man."

He was absolutely determined that losing his sight

would not impair his ability to carry on living

an entirely full life -

and part of the thinking with the charity

was that he wanted to imbue those values

in the men that he was helping,

but also he wanted to demonstrate to wider society

that being blind didn't mean that you couldn't have a family,

that you couldn't have a career,

that you couldn't do a lot of things.

His idea was to create a place where men could go to learn to be blind.

A place to recuperate and start enjoying life again.

Although things would never be the same

after the trauma of losing your sight,

the men could still experience

some of the same pleasures and pastimes as everyone else.

They also could prepare for the future.

Part of what we did was actually train the men in new skills,

a variety of skills, some of which had been traditional occupations

for the blind, some of which much less so,

such as poultry farming and massage, what we'd now call physiotherapy.

So, there were a wide range, really, of occupations

that the men were going into and they would have been, in that sense,

visible to the wider sighted community,

they would have seen... They would have worked with these people,

in out-facing jobs. They would have seen them,

some of them went on to be things like shopkeepers.

So, they would have seen them around,

and the thinking, really,

was that that actually would help to change attitudes.

Unlike the past, when options for blind people were limited

to rope-making and mattress-stuffing,

these veterans went into the full range of professions.

There's a whole variety of people that went into...

careers that people went into.

We had blind veterans who became lawyers, who became academics,

a whole range of occupations.

And, for them, I think, a lot of it would have been

the basic core training that we offered in the first instance.

So, we taught Braille reading and writing, we taught typewriting.

Those were seen, really, as core skills -

but they were the stepping stones, in a lot of cases.

St Dunstan's didn't just teach the skills needed

for blind people to go into a wide range of jobs -

they changed attitudes, and made it normal.

'At the same time, the large numbers of blinded soldiers

'returning to Germany led to the opening

'of the first school for guide dogs.'

All right, on you go. Good boy!

-On you go. Is that us here?

-That's us here.

'I would certainly find it difficult to get around

'without my guide dog, Renton.'

Forward, Renton. On you go.

'I might still have a more unusual job for a blind person,

'but developments like guide dogs, as well as changes in attitudes,

'have made it possible for blind and visually impaired people

'to go into a huge variety of careers.

'Mark Pemberton and I went to college together.

'It's a few years ago now, but we've always kept in touch.

'Mark has made a successful career as a piano tuner in London

'and he's going to show me what's involved.'

To finish off just taking it apart, you've got the fall -

-F-A-L-L - which goes over the keys, and that..

-Oh, right.

..comes outwards...

-Not much of the piano left by the time you're finished!

-Uh-huh!

Now I can start. Now, you can see all the strings in there,

-if you can see.

-Well, I can feel them.

-Yup.

-Right, you're going to show me how to do this?

-Cos you know how musical I am.

-Yes.

-Not at all.

-Yeah! Well, anyway...

OK, hold the tuning lever fairly near the top.

Now, where's the key? What key am I?

You want the D, that one.

You say that as if I know what a D is.

That's it, now move the tuning lever to the right.

Play it.

NOTE PLAYS

-OK...

-It's not moving.

-It is.

-Now back down again to the left.

-NOTE MODULATES

-Well, you're getting there.

Keep going.

Now to the right.

-Can you hear that getting better?

-Yeah, I can.

This is the art of piano tuning.

-That's it there.

-Yes. There's no such thing as perfection.

Have I got a new career? Would you say that was in tune?

Yeah, you were a bit lucky that it went into tune this quickly.

I... That was skill!

But you get the drift.

I suppose piano tuning is a bit of an obvious one.

Did it worry you that it's a bit of a stereotypical job?

I think, yes.

I think it was a bit, "Oh, well, piano tuning, that's so-so,"

Sort of like, "That's so traditional,"

and I might have been a bit sort of high-browed about that,

but once I started, I realised that it was quite a demanding job,

and there was quite a failure rate from the course, it wasn't easy.

So, it was challenging, and I liked that

because, as you know, I'm a bit of a perfectionist,

so I think that side of the job suits me well.

But the challenges faced by the soldiers returning 100 years ago

would have been huge.

At the age of 26,

Private Robert Steele from Cumnock in Ayrshire

left the pits to join the Ayrshire Yeomanry in 1914.

They had the horses.

They worked with horses on the farms,

and The War Office wanted as many horses as they could get,

so it was the yeomanry he went into, and his horse went with him.

Horses were important for transporting weapons and goods.

After fighting at Gallipoli, in Egypt and in Palestine,

in 1918 Robert Steele found himself at Ypres on the Western Front.

Can you tell me, Mona, how did he lose his sight?

Well, it was the mustard gas.

He was only... There were two out of the whole company lived -

the rest of them all died with the attack with the mustard gas.

And as a result, his lungs were pitted with the gas.

But it didn't just affect his lungs, did it?

Oh, his eyes. He lost his sight.

I can't imagine how horrific it must have been in these trenches, Mona.

Did he speak about it much when he came back?

He didn't, he very seldom spoke about the trenches,

he said it was horrific, there was rats eating the bodies.

He talked about his uniform,

they had to use matches to go along the seams of the uniform

to kill the lice.

How bitter was he about losing his vision?

He wasn't - he was an amazing man,

because he had so... an unfortunate life.

He lost a daughter when she was five and a half,

my brother was lost at sea when he was 19,

and he never, ever said, "Why me?"

And your mum died.

My mum died in 1937, before I was five,

and he never, ever felt sorry...

He always said, there's somebody worse off than me.

He just seemed that determined to do things as positively as he could.

He must have had some huge internal reserves

that allowed him to carry on in spite of that,

and find ways to manage his life without being bitter,

because he wasn't bitter.

Per head of population,

Scotland sent more men to the Front than any other part of the UK...

..and, as a result,

suffered disproportionately high numbers of casualties.

I think there's something partly within the, kind of,

the Scottish mind-set,

that does not approve or allow for people to be abandoned,

particularly when they have given service to their country.

There was St Dunstan's down in England,

but I think there was a general consensus

that our war blind needed to be returned to Scotland.

It was their home, that's where they needed to be,

and that we were wanting to look after our own men and women.

Scottish War Blinded in Edinburgh

was set up in the same year as St Dunstan's in London,

and provided support near to home for those north of the border.

It was all about...

find a way that the service people with injuries can earn a living

and have pride in being a self-standing member

of the community.

To get them back on the rails again,

having come back extremely discouraged

and believing there was no future for them.

-I'll introduce you.

-OK, OK.

Just on your left here, can I introduce you to Phil?

Phil, this is Ian.

'The profile of those helped by the charity has changed.'

This is Harry. Harry Hogg.

'They're now mainly older veterans,

'many who have not necessarily lost their sight in active service,

'but later in life.

'The emphasis is on camaraderie, recreation and experiences.'

Mostly, I do a lot of painting here, artwork -

but we also go paragliding,

we go powerboat racing and white-water rafting.

How important is it, do you think, for you guys who are ex-forces

to get that kind of buzz doing these kinds of things?

-Do you think it's important?

-Well, it has changed my life.

Many of the veterans enjoy painting,

something that might seem a surprising activity

for those who have lost their sight.

Why painting? Why do you like it?

I was diagnosed with PTSD,

-and I find it's more of a therapy, and I love doing it.

-Right.

Quite relaxing, eh?

I could never paint until I went to Blind Veterans

for a week's course,

and he says, "There's a picture, there's a canvas, get on with it."

I finished it, and he says,

"Well, which college did you go and learn it at?"

I never painted before in my life!

How much sight have you got?

-Sight as such?

-Uh-huh.

Well, I'm standing right in front of you

and I can't see your face at all.

I don't even know what my grandkids look like.

If I look at my fingers, it's a just a blur.

So, once I've got my magnifier in front of me,

then I've got a space in one eye I look through and it's only tiny.

I call it painting through a keyhole.

When I used to do it, I used to describe it

as a bit like painting a jigsaw puzzle one piece at a time.

-Is that what it's like?

-Yeah, that's it -

-and I do a lot of feeling work.

-Uh-huh.

Cos when I start saying, "I'm going to paint this,"

I throw the colours in, and I started using my fingers.

And then you can blend it in.

When you're using your fingers, there's a lot of motion involved.

-Mm-hm.

-And even a lot of the bigger pieces I've done,

like I did one of a young child,

and when I was blending in the shades and that, I started crying.

-Oh, right!

-It was quite scary, you know,

it was just so therapeutic, you know?

Young soldiers do still lose their sight.

In 2006, Simon Brown was a corporal

in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers,

on tour in Iraq.

I was tasked to go and recover a vehicle.

When we got there we were under heavy fire.

I got the vehicle out with the six people on board,

and effectively completed the mission.

But on the extraction I was shot by a sniper.

So the bullet came in my...

left cheek between the corner of my nose, corner of my eye,

outside corner of my eye,

came out my right cheek between the bottom of my nose,

and the bottom of my ear.

It was when I woke up three weeks later in Selly Oak

and they explained to me what had actually happened,

that the true meaning of the injuries sort of dawned on me.

And...that initial...

..thought that you were going to be blind, I cannot...

Cos my sight - I didn't have much sight, Simon,

but what little sight I had faded over a period of time.

It's like somebody just throwing a big switch for you, isn't it?

Quite traumatic.

It is, but I'm sure it's the same thing - when someone says,

"You've lost your sight", you don't hear that,

you hear, "Your life's over."

Simon has a small amount of vision remaining in his right eye,

which allows him to use some forms of technology.

When I started looking into things and realising what was out there,

it really changed my opinion of where it was,

and what opportunities might be available to me.

I never thought I'd be back in work,

but I was able to start looking at the next stage of my life.

Learning how to use a computer,

learning about mobility skills with the white cane,

understanding what technologies were, and what was useful to me.

When you came back, you were fortunate, in a sense,

that we've got far more technology now.

Being blind today is not the same as being blind 100 years ago, is it?

I don't think being blind today is the same as it was 25 years ago,

to be honest!

I feel very fortunate that there is not only the technology,

the opportunities, the support from government

with the disability acts and things like that,

but also the awareness of society of it.

SPEECH SYNTHESISER ON PHONE

Technology has certainly changed my life.

I would find it very difficult to survive these days

without my smartphone.

There are quite a few apps that I like particularly.

-'Light Detector.'

-Light Detector lets me know

when a light's left on in the house, or anywhere, for that matter.

-'Money Reader.'

-Money Reader lets me identify currency via the camera.

-'Recogniser.'

-Recogniser, that's a tag where I can photograph something

and it'll tell me exactly what it is.

-'Colour It.'

-That'll let me know what colour I'm wearing.

And these are the kind of apps that I just adore.

But the one thing I really like...

'Periscope, ScotRail, TweetList, Voice Dream...'

..is my talking book one,

which means I can listen to a talking book just about anywhere -

and that's one of the things that came out of the First World War

that made a huge difference to people who were blind.

-MAN IN BOOTH:

-He reached over for the Gieves & Hawkes suit and shirt

that was hanging in the suit carrier,

which, in turn, was hanging on the towel rail radiator.

Servicemen blinded in the First World War

were just excluded from the experience of reading.

The man who changed all that was the inventor of talking books,

Ian Fraser.

He lost his sight in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme

when he was hit by a sniper.

That single gunshot robbed him of one his greatest passions -

reading.

He tried to learn Braille at St Dunstan's,

but found it frustratingly slow.

Ian Fraser was incredibly passionate

about responding to some of those problems

and had the dream to provide talking books.

-ARCHIVE:

-In Regent's Park stands a small building

dedicated to the service of those

for whom the beauty of flowers and trees

can only be an idea or a memory.

Inside this building, a recording engineer transfers onto wax

beauty of another kind,

for blind folk to share with their more fortunate fellows.

This waxen disc will become almost like a pair of eyes

to thousands who live in darkness.

Well, this is one of the very early talking book machines,

and it was a record, as you can see,

and it must have been incredible to use one of these things -

but for a lot of soldiers this must have been fantastic,

to sit down and be able to listen to a book,

maybe for the first time in years.

Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac.

Recorded for the Talking Book Library

for the sole use of the blind,

read by Joseph Macleod.

"Madame Vauquer, nee de Conflans, is an elderly person..."

For me personally, doing the job I do,

and spending a lot of time in hotels, talking books are fantastic.

It means that you can get the same cultural references

as everybody else, and not to feel missed out and that,

I think is really important.

And so, the blind are able to see with a mind's eye.

'Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac...'

It's a relatively small number of years ago, we thought CDs

were the absolute state-of-the-art,

whereas now that's evolved into delivery mechanisms

like USB memory sticks and digital downloads,

on to the whole plethora of mainstream devices -

be that PC, be that tablet, be that smartphone.

So, I think there have been changes and innovations

in just about every aspect of the service.

And I think, even today, servicemen blinded in modern day conflicts

benefit from the consequences and the products

of some of that initial innovation.

Today, talking books are more popular than ever,

and their use has spread far beyond the visually impaired community.

I'm currently in one of the studios at BBC in Glasgow.

Now, they've made two studios accessible here,

and this is the larger one.

They've got a few bits of Braille over here behind me,

on the switches, which lets me know what the most important switches are

that I need to know. They've created what they call snapshots,

which means I hit a couple of buttons

and it comes up with my settings that's most accessible for me -

and, plus, we have a computerised voice which comes into my headphones

which indicates, when I'm editing or when I'm recording,

what's happening on the computer screen.

SPEECH SYNTHESISER

'..OK button. Title is Highlander.'

It's a long way from learning to type at St Dunstan's...

AUDIO PLAYS AT HIGH SPEED

..but those first steps paved the way for how I do my job today.

'Ian Hamilton for Reporting Scotland on Rum.'

When you think back to the First World War, and the guys coming back,

they could never possibly imagine this.

We must remember, then they came back from the First World War,

there wasn't even any radio.

I mean, there were typewriters, but very difficult to use -

but for them to come and see...

I must seem like an alien in so many ways,

with so much technology.

They would see me as some sort of creature from a faraway planet.