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MCINDOES ARMY: The Story of the Guinea Pig Club and its Indomitable Members
"More exclusive than Boodle's, Buck's, White's and the Royal Yacht Squadron rolled into one". This was how Sir Archibald McIndoe, the celebrated plastic surgeon, described The Guinea Pig Club, a unique body of greviously burnt, often seriously disfigured and handicapped Allied airmen treated by McIndoe's team at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead.
In the Guinea Pig Club's 60th Anniversary year Edward Bishop revises and expands his perceptive account of its members' courage, heroism and self-generated social and welfare activities around the world since McIndoe's earliest wartime patients founded the Club. He tells how it grew into so much more than a hospital ward Grogging Club in which airmen, who had escaped from blazing, exploding and crippled bombers and fighters, drowned their immediate inhibitions.
Though not himself a Guinea Pig the author commands the same delicate balance between candour and sympathy, horror and humour which has contributed greatly to the success of the Club and its survival into the new Millenium.
Edward Bishop served in the Royal Navy, including the FAA, during WW2, before becoming a staff writer with SEAC. He later joined Kemsley newspapers and has mingled journalism, authorship, radio and tv assignments. He has worked for The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times and the Daily Mail and is a founder director of the de Havilland Museum Trust.
This is a totally re-written version of The Guinea Pig Club, published by Macmillan in 1963.
In the Guinea Pig Club's 60th Anniversary year Edward Bishop revises and expands his perceptive account of its members' courage, heroism and self-generated social and welfare activities around the world since McIndoe's earliest wartime patients founded the Club. He tells how it grew into so much more than a hospital ward Grogging Club in which airmen, who had escaped from blazing, exploding and crippled bombers and fighters, drowned their immediate inhibitions.
Though not himself a Guinea Pig the author commands the same delicate balance between candour and sympathy, horror and humour which has contributed greatly to the success of the Club and its survival into the new Millenium.
Edward Bishop served in the Royal Navy, including the FAA, during WW2, before becoming a staff writer with SEAC. He later joined Kemsley newspapers and has mingled journalism, authorship, radio and tv assignments. He has worked for The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times and the Daily Mail and is a founder director of the de Havilland Museum Trust.
This is a totally re-written version of The Guinea Pig Club, published by Macmillan in 1963.
- GenresHistory
192 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2002
33 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 4, 2008
I loved this book! After watching the Foyle's War series on PBS Mystery I learned about Dr. McIndoe and the men he doctored during WWII. He developed salt water therapy for men burned during plane crashes. The story of his special hospital and special treatment of these badly injured men was inspiring, humorous, heartwarming.
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June 1, 2015Listen to the ABC radio Conversation with Richard Fidler where he interviews the author who remembers the soldier she feinted in front of as a child.
She returned as an adult to track down any survivors of the Guinea Pig Club and interview many of the wonderful nurses who cared for the airmen for many years, and kept their experiences secret from the village and their families...
Heard on 666Canberra on 1st June 2015
She returned as an adult to track down any survivors of the Guinea Pig Club and interview many of the wonderful nurses who cared for the airmen for many years, and kept their experiences secret from the village and their families...
Heard on 666Canberra on 1st June 2015
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews