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

By Stanley Aylett

From the first week of war to its end, Stanley Aylett offers an extraordinary account of saving life amidst the carnage. His passionate memoir also tells the adventures of a young man, travelling through Europe and North Africa and discovering the world in exceptional times. From a letter home dated 8 June 1942, sent from No. 2 Mobile Surgical Team in Tobruk, Libya, before the Eighth Army's retreat back into Egypt: 'Christ! What a week - once again in all the awfulness of shattered bones, lying on the floor head to head with not an inch between them waiting their turn to come to the surgeon. Limbs bent and unnatural in their brokenness, faces that look like smashed pulp, heads where the brain oozes out, the little room set aside for the dying, the stink, the filth, the flies, the absolute shambles following a night's work of blood and dressings and plaster and cut-off clothes. æThat's briefly what being a surgeon in a forward area is... and now and then one sees the 'hopeless' case recover. It's like a gleam of sunshine in a starry sky... (but) I'm happier than for a long time, feeling I am doing a good job of work. No longer a base-wallah, but a hard-working bloke for a change.' Book jacket.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1784181242
• ISBN13: 9781784181246
• Release Date: June 2015
• Publisher: Metro Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"