Surgeon at War: The Second World War Seen From Operating Tables Behind the Front Line

by Stanley Aylett

Stanley Aylett's remarkable account of six years' service as a front-line surgeon with the British Army is that rare thing: a complete narrative from the first week of World War II until months after the final capitulation of Nazi Germany. That war was the last Western conflict in which military surgeons performed operations immediately behind the front line, often in makeshift theaters set up in tents or abandoned, battle-scarred buildings. This memoir records the resilience and resourcefulness of the medical teams, fighting to save each wounded soldier's life, and the advances in medicine such as penicillin and plastic surgery that transformed their experience. The author draws on his extensive diaries to describe the first advance into France at the start of the "Phoney War" in 1939; the chaos of the retreat to Dunkirk and subsequent evacuation of British and French forces; the sea voyage round the Cape to join the Eighth 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 into Germany; and VE Day, which Lieutenant-Colonel Aylett spent amid the horror of the Sandbostel concentration camp in northern Germany. Alongside the challenge of serving the wounded and dying, Surgeon at War also reveals the passions of a young man—in search of lasting love, exasperated by the incompetence of his superiors, encountering different peoples and cultures, anxious that the narrow focus of battle surgery will not jeopardize his medical career when peace returns. Few war testimonies have the scope of this account. Stanley Aylett signed up in the week war was declared, and survived to tell his story, edited here by his daughter with extensive use of his own photographs and letters 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 revealed mankind at both its best, and its worst.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published June 5, 2015

Reviews

[Soozee · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely man. If only all doctors were so committed to giving their patients the best care they could. And this man was working under such difficult conditions in Egypt, France, Germany, Denmark and finally working with those 'liberated' from a concentration camp.

Throughout the book his humanity and care shine through. His story tells of a young surgeon who works, frequently under fire, in the forward hospitals and clearing stations in the Second World War. He doesn't gloss or glamorize, but tells it how it was - dust, dirt, blood and all. Several times he brings the senior officers to task when he felt conditions were not at their best and people were being treated unfairly. He speaks of being so tired he could hardly stand, operating on one terribly injured soldier after another. It would have been easy to become hard and bitter, but he never does.

It made me smile, it made my eyes fill with tears. We owe him and his colleagues a debt, and it was a privilege to read his story. Many families must thank them for the safe return of their injured loved ones.

[David Vernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book which shows a different view of the Second World War. Aylett shows compassion and intelligence in his dealing with people, hierarchy and the situation in which he finds himself. Clearly his letters were an important part of putting together this auto(biography) by his daughter but the included letters often simply repeated what was in the text. This was a very strange overlap - one or the other would do - not both. For a perspective from a non-combatant, this is a great read.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, starts off slow and a little technical for my liking but as the war progresses it gets a lot better. The letters printed that he sent home are a little tedious and I found myself skipping them to carry on reading the memoirs. He was a clever man who had a difficult task to complete and often had run ins with senior officers to get things done. The afterword is worth a read to see the pioneering surgery invented by him still used today.

[Sara Hindle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating inside into the medical system around the world during World War 2