PublishedJohn Blake, February 2023 |
ISBN9781789466669 |
FormatSoftcover, 336 pages |
Dimensions19.8cm × 12.9cm × 2cm |
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.
