World War II
In 1943, Dr. Cannon joined the Medical Corps of the United States Army. He served in the plastic surgery unit at the Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania, as assistant chief and then chief. This unit performed over 15,000 operations without a single fatality.
These moulages show the progress of an infantryman's recovery from a severe soft-tissue and bony injury to the face caused by a shell fragment in Normandy, July 1944.
Known as an Italian rhinoplasty, this procedure was first described by Gaspare Tagliacozzi in De Curtorum Chirurgia per Insitione (1597). The photograph shows the same patient depicted in the moulages.
This letter from Dr. James Barret Brown commends Dr. Cannon's and the hospital staff's work. Dr. Brown was chief of the plastic surgery unit at the Valley Forge General Hospital after he joined Dr. Cannon in the summer of 1943.
Dr. Cannon presented an honorary award to Dr. Brown at the annual meeting of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1967
Awarded to Dr. Cannon by the War Department in 1946. The citation reads, "By his professional skill, sound judgement, and conscientious devotion to duty, he was instrumental in making it possible for young men who might otherwise have been maimed for life to return to useful and normal careers."