I was involved in setting up Camp Bastion, but I never served there, I visited it as part of the checks and balances thing. RAMC field hospital for protection against chemical and biological weapons in the Gulf War, 1991, © IWM (HU 102371) Camp Bastion The snag is with where Šipovo was, what should have been the local hospital was on the other side of what, in NATO speak, the inter-ethnic boundary line, which meant that in practical terms, the locals around Šipovo did not wish to go to the hospital that they should have done, so we did whatever was needed, which stopped us getting bored, provided a service that they wouldn’t otherwise have had.Īfter that, again, in all cases it was back to Haslar, I was on an aircraft carrier, Kosovo, Afghanistan a couple of times, Iraq for the next Gulf War… We should not have provided care for the local population was the theory, because you don’t want to set up a medical system that isn’t part of the local infrastructure. Bosnia, which wasn’t great, but the major cause of deaths was road traffic accidents. ![]() I went to assorted war zones- not as peaceful as the first one. We expected quite a lot of casualties, the casualty estimates weren’t good, the casualties that happened were non-existent. I was in the Gulf for six months, Gulf War I was total idleness, I did absolutely nothing or as near nothing as made no difference at all. ![]() HMS Tireless in Gibraltar, 1990, © IWM (CT 2409)Īfter that, I went to my ASCAB, Armed Service Consultant Advisory Appointments Board, I was asked, ‘Where do you think you will go?’ This was Gulf War I was just starting and I said, ‘I will be joining Argus on her way out to the Gulf next week.’ And that was true! It meant you were on call the whole time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was military personnel rather than Naval, included MOD, civilians as well, hence it was 300 deliveries a year. We provided the anaesthetic service for the obstetrics and it really was being able to provide the anaesthetic service that I’m sure that obstetric anaesthetist would love to be able to provide, where you saw every mum at the antenatal classes, so you could talk to them, you weren’t dependent on midwives’ prejudices and things like that. Not helped by the fact that my son was at her birthday party five or six days before. Having a wee girl come in with fulminant meningitis, such that she had a respiratory arrest coming into hospital and incubating her and keeping her alive until she was flown back. I was in Haslar until ’82, whenever, I then got something that would be totally unacceptable now, where I was sent out as the only anaesthetist in Gibraltar, as still SHO/Registrar. The next step after the submarines was heading down to Haslar and starting anaesthetics there. A submarine is the biggest closed circuit breathing apparatus in the world, so there’s parts of this that were purely coincidentally very useful and the diving world. The Navy also trained me as a diver and I got involved in some of the diving research things and submarines where the doctor is responsible for atmosphere monitoring. Then I disappeared off into the submarine world for a couple of years. To my enormous surprise, enjoyed it hugely. After that I had to go to Dartmouth for what we call the short knife and fork course: how to behave as an officer and a gentleman, and there was a couple of months gap between end of house jobs and Dartmouth, and I did three months anaesthetics just as a gap filler. I did both medicine and surgery and orthopaedics house jobs. How real it was, I’m not certain, but that made my mind up that I would go and do my house jobs with the Navy. I had debated on doing them in the Ulster Hospital, but I got some threats from the IRA, because of the naval connection. ![]() I did my house jobs with the Navy in Plymouth. ![]() I joined the Navy Reserves at 16 as what the Navy calls a stoker and what the rest of the world would call a diesel mechanic, with a view to spend as much time with the Navy as I could to find out what the Navy was like before I sold myself for thirty pieces of silver.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |