My late father, Kenneth Hulbert, who died just two years ago, was a young doctor during world war 2. Throughout the war he kept detailed diaries and wrote letters home to his family. We still have the letters and diaries - and I have published a version of these in a book 'I will lift up mine eyes'. It starts with the declaration of war in September 1939 when my father was an anaesthetist at the National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. It follows his path through the Battle of Britain when he was at a hospital near Canterbury, then overseas to Egypt and Sudan where he served on an ambulance train. Then to India where he spent the rest of the war. He was in Poona when Gandhi was on hunger strike and on the Burmese border building a bamboo hospital when the Japanese were dropping bombs.
My father was a Methodist and through his diaries he included the names of hymns and passages from the Bible that had given him solace.
I will be posting excerpts from the book on this web site. They show what life was like for an ordinary doctor during the war. At times little happened and the war seemed far away. Sailing down the Nile into the Sudan on a passenger boat he describes the wonder of Egypt while, back home, his family were living through the Blitz. But it describes hardshire and emotional turmoi as well - a broken engagement (not to my mother whom he met later), the very basic living conditions they all endured and having to haul medical supplies across the Brahmatuptra during the moonsoon.
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