Surgeon at War: A Frontline Surgeon's Compelling Account of the Second World War

(Paperback)

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Stanley Aylett's remarkable account of six years' service as a front-line surgeon withthe British Army is that rare thing: a complete narrative from the first week of theSecond World War until months after the final capitulation of Nazi Germany. Thatwar was the last Western conflict in which military surgeons performed operationsimmediately behind the front line, often in makeshift theatres set up in tents orabandoned, battle-scarred buildings.

Surgeon at War records the resilience and resourcefulness of the medical teams,drawing on the author's extensive diaries to describe the first advance into Franceat the start the war 1939; the chaos of the retreat to Dunkirk and subsequentevacuation of British and French forces; the sea voyage round the Cape to join theEighth Army in Egypt; leading a Field Service Medical Unit in the Western Desert;the Allied invasion of France following the D-Day landings; crossing the Rhine intoGermany; and VE Day, which Lieutenant-Colonel Aylett spent amid the horror of theSandbostel concentration camp in northern Germany.

Stanley Aylett signed up in the week war was declared, and survived to tell hisstory, edited here by his daughter with extensive use of his own photographs andletters home. It is a narrative of courage, duty and endurance amid the fog of war,but above all a tribute to the skill and humanity of those whose daily lives revealedmankind at both its best, and its worst.

Author Bio

Stanley Osborn Aylett, MBE, FRCS (1911 2003), won an open scholarship to King'sCollege Hospital, graduating with first-class honors in Physiology in 1932 and inMedicine in 1935. After six years serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps he wenton to become a distinguished consultant surgeon, known for the fastest fingers inthe trade, and specializing in the inflammatory bowel disease colitis, for which hepioneered a revolutionary treatment. He was Hunterian Professor at the RoyalCollege of Surgeons and a member of the Academie de Chirurgie Francaise, amongother distinctions. He published widely in his field and for his services in opening upSandbostel concentration camp he received the French Croix d Honneur. After thewar he regularly returned to France, for whose people he felt a great affinity.