Letters from the front line: medics celebrate launch of book about "Doctors at War"

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Student doctors perform readings of first and second World War correspondance at book launch<em> - News</em>

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Faculty of Medicine

By Laura Gallagher
2 October 2007

A medical student performing a reading of the lettersHow it felt to be a practising medic on the front line is the subject of a new book which was launched last week as part of the celebrations of ten years of the Faculty of Medicine and Imperial's Centenary.

"Doctors at War" is a collection of letters written to the St Mary's Gazette, primarily by St Mary's medics, during various conflicts including the two World Wars. The letters were discovered in the Medical School archives by a retired Imperial College professor, Alasdair Fraser, who compiled the book together with Emeritus Professor Oscar Craig. The letters provide very personal accounts of working in wartime conditions between 1897 and 1945.

On the evening of Wednesday 26 September, an invited audience including St Mary's alumni and past staff of the Medical School was treated to a special dinner with readings of the letters by current Imperial medical students. Medical School alumnus and record-breaking runner Sir Roger Bannister, retired Dean of the Medical School Professor Peter Richards, and Averil Mansfield, the UK's first female Professor of Surgery, were among the many guests.

Included in the letters was a moving account of the brave work of one St Mary's medic on the front line, written to his brother after his death. In the letter, dated December 12 1914, the anonymous author writes of John Forbes O'Connell: "I am only too pleased to tell you anything I can about your brother, as he was quite one of ours, and in all your life you can never have a prouder boast than that you were his brother.

The authors compiled the letters"As I expect you know, we went out on 13th August, and our first show was at Fanieve, near Mons, where he once came to notice. He established his dressing station in a little cottage quite in the open, about 200 yards behind my firing line...He personally went into the trench and helped to carry out the wounded, though the Germans had the range to a T, and were raining shells on it. Then they turned on to his cottage, and knocked it to bits, and again he carried everyone out, not losing a single man...

"The day I was 'downed' one of my subalterns was knocked out within 300 yards in a 'sort of trench'...As I was being tied up I mentioned him to your brother, and he at once insisted on going to see if he could do anything for him, although it was within very close range of a well constructed German trench, and while doing this he was killed by a rifle bullet through the heart."

Miss Janet Holland , Operational Projects Manager in the Faculty of Medicine, who attended the event, said: "It was an excellent evening and a great opportunity for people from the St Mary's Campus to get together. The dramatic readings of the letters were very moving and the book is fascinating.

"Both my grandfathers fought in the first World War and my father was in World War Two, so the letters give you a feeling for what it must have been like for them. You realise how privileged you are not to have lived through any of those wars," she added.

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