大象传媒

I have written a book based on my late father's
war diaries. He was an army doctor based in Canterbury during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Then he served overseas in northern Egypt, on an ambulance train in Sudan and, during the last three years of the war, he was in India, working in hospitals in Poona (during Gandhi's hunger strike), Lahore, Box's Bazar (Bangladash) Bangalore and Madras.

The book contains many stories describing the life of an ordinary doctor in war. He wasn't in the front line dealing with casualities - which is what you might expected. A lot of his war was spent dealing with prisoners of war with diseases rather than wounds. He also spent a very wet summer trying to erect a bamboo hospital during the moonsoon in Bangladesh in appalling conditions while the Japanese were dropping bombs and the people were starving. His descriptions of the mood during the anti-British riots in India are evocative. His description of life aboard a troop ship convey the division between officers and men.

I would be happy to send you the book or produce some extracts from it. I know of only one other book based on the diaries of a war doctor. The title 'I will lift up mine eyes' is from the 121st psalm - known as the travellers psalm. My father was a devout Methodist and this psalm and many hymns - sustained him through troubled times.

Please get in touch if you would like to read more. He died in May this year.

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