We Will Remember Them

Whilst watching the Remembrance Day ceremony in London on TV, and seeing the Royal Army Medical Corps in the procession, I was reminded of an autobiographical work that I read earlier this year. The title is “Surgeon at War” and it was written by Stanley Aylett.

It is one of the best books I have read for many years; because of the story it tells but also of the clarity of the writing, which brings to life the incredible job that medics did in the Second World War. This account of the work of a surgeon in war zones is even more poignant in our time with terrible wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan, and elsewhere. Medics are still battling in difficult situations to save the lives of the wounded (often civilians) and to perform major operations with limited resources.

Stanley Aylett was a young surgeon at the beginning of the war. His service began in a relaxed way in Normandy during the “phoney war” but soon things changed dramatically when the Germans made their blitzkrieg invasion of Belgium and France, and the British and allied forces were driven back to Dunkirk. Aylett (and other medics) were there on Dunkirk Beach tending to the wounded and eventually, he managed to escape on a warship. This is the most graphic account of that terrible but miraculous episode in British military history I have come across.

He then went to Egypt by sea via South Africa and worked at a vast tented military camp in the desert and later the General Hospital in Alexandria. He was attached to an Indian clearing station on the North African coast before moving on to Tobruk and receiving casualties from the Battle of El Alamein.

After the victory in that war zone, he returned to the UK but then went over to Normandy again as part of the D-Day invasion. He followed closely the Allied forces to the liberated Paris and through Belgium and Holland to Germany tending to the wounded as the war progressed. He was amongst the first to witness the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp near Sandbostel.

What the book brought home to me was the courage, skill, and dedication of the medics. In difficult circumstances, they witnessed the horrors of war: young men with limbs blown off, or with shrapnel wounds in vital organs, or blinded. They made every effort to save lives and to repair the terrible damage inflicted on human beings by war. War stories are often about the courage of the participants and about victory or defeat. We also see accounts of the number of soldiers killed. Stanley Aylett’s book relates to those who were not killed in battle but who suffered terrible wounds and excruciating pain, and only survived, if they did, through the efforts of those in field hospitals. This is an aspect of war, which is not always well covered perhaps because it is depressing and unpalatable to the reader. Aylett’s vivid and colourful account of his time in the war is, however, uplifting, despite the matters it describes, because the fantastic work performed by the medical teams shows humanity at its best. We also get a picture of life and culture in general in the period of that time in history, an era so different from our own.

(After the war, Stanley Aylett had a distinguished career as a colorectal surgeon.)

So on Remembrance Day let us remember the courage and sacrifice of all who participated in wars, including the medical staff. War is sometimes unavoidable but it is always horrible. Leaders of nations should find ways of living in peace with each other. It may happen one day. In the meantime they should be compelled to read Stanley Aylett’s book, to understand better the horrors of war.

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