Keith Buchanan Bridge was a consultant surgeon in Wellington, New Zealand. He was born on 4 July 1903 at Gisborne, on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, the second son of a farmer, Charles Harry Bridge, and his wife Christina née Macdonald. He was a boarder at Waitaki Boys' High School from 1916 to 1920, before moving further south, to what was then the only medical school in the country, Otago in Dunedin. During his time as a medical student he was a member of Knox College. He graduated MB ChB in 1925. From 1926 to 1928 he was a house surgeon at Wellington Hospital; then, as was the essential pattern for young men planning to specialise, he made the sea voyage to the UK. His first post was at the West London Hospital in 1930, where he worked for Tyrrell Gray. In 1931 he gained his FRCS and then became a resident surgical officer at Ancoats Hospital in Manchester, where his mentor was Peter McEvedy. In 1934 he worked at St Mark's Hospital, where W B Gabriel secured his commitment to colo-rectal surgery, and in 1935 he was at St Peter's. On his return to New Zealand, he resumed his association with Wellington Hospital. He became visiting assistant surgeon to the Children's Hospital in 1937, holding this position until he enlisted in 1940. The outbreak of the Second World War brought profound changes to the New Zealand medical scene. The country contributed a division, and this went overseas in three echelons, two to Egypt, the other to help the defence of Britain against the threat of invasion in mid-1940. By early 1941 the division was assembled in the Middle East in time to take part in the campaign in Greece. Meanwhile, by the end of 1940, it had been accepted that New Zealand needed a hospital ship of its own, and an elderly Union Company liner, the *Maunganui*, was taken over for conversion. The casualties from the Greek campaign emphasised the need, and the task of conversion was hurried along so that *Maunganui* was handed over on 21 April 1941. With her went Keith Bridge, to begin a year of service afloat before he joined the division itself. In North Africa he was attached to a mobile surgical unit in the pursuit after Alamein, bringing a surgical team well forward in accordance with the doctrine that evolved out of the lessons learnt during the previous war; and when 2 NZ Division formed to attack Mareth, Bridge's surgical team out of 1 General Hospital served to augment 4 Field Ambulance. Then, in the Italian campaign, now commanding the surgical division of 1 General Hospital, he was involved in the establishment of the hospital at Senegallia on the Adriatic coast, where on 3 September 1944 one of their first patients was General Bernard Freyberg, who had suffered a wound in an aircraft accident. Bridge finished the war as a lieutenant colonel, commanding 6 General Hospital at the end of 1945, and his services were recognised with the award of an OBE. In 1946 he rejoined the visiting surgical staff of Wellington Hospital, at first in a 'relief' position; but by 1951 he was a senior surgeon and head of one of four general surgical firms. He was recognised as a surgeon's surgeon, and to him would be referred colleagues, relatives, problem cases and potential disasters. He possessed the valuable surgical triad: diagnostic skill, good surgical judgment and meticulous surgical technique. Being a modest, even a shy man, he carried responsibility well, and, even though his role involved him in long procedures, he was well esteemed by his anaesthetic colleagues. Just before he sailed in *Maunganui* in April 1941 Keith Bridge had acquired the fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, which had been founded in 1927, blending elements from two existing colleges: the English Royal College, established more than a century earlier, and the American College, then 14 years young. He devoted himself to the new institution, serving on the Court of Examiners and as secretary, as an elected member and ultimately as chairman (from 1959 to 1961) of its New Zealand committee. In 1947 he married Kathleen Cook; they had a daughter and one son. On his CV he recorded no outside interests, and indeed work and his family were his life. But two of his abiding interests deserve mention: he was an avid follower of rugby football, his season ticket shrewdly placed at the centre of the main stand, and his normal reticence was easily overcome by a comment on last weekend's game. Then there was his devotion to fly-fishing at Taupo, where he and his colleague Ted Gibbs would often fish together. He did find room for involvement in the governance of the insurance co-operative known as the Medical Assurance Society, of which he had lately become chairman of directors when, in 1972, a group of members who had become justifiably dissatisfied with the administration of the society staged a revolt and succeeded in installing a new board. When Keith Bridge came up for re-election the following year, he withdrew from his involvement with the society; he had been deeply wounded by events, but had preserved his dignity throughout. He had retired from his appointment as senior visiting surgeon in 1966, having by then contributed 40 years to the institution (apart from his overseas training and war service), but at a time when there was much discussion of the problem that hospitals tended to allot their most junior staff to the 'front door', and the discipline of emergency medicine was yet to emerge, there was a frisson of excitement when Keith Bridge reappeared as senior casualty and admitting officer in 1967. His level of expertise in the handling of emergency cases presenting at Wellington Hospital became legendary. In 1973 'K B' retired again, but almost immediately he was back, this time in charge of the blood transfusion service - on a part-time basis, for a couple of years only, but long enough to make it a model of quiet efficiency. He then withdrew gently from his involvement in the Wellington medical scene. He lived for another two decades, and died - again, gently - on 23 October 1997, aged 94. His colleague Ted Watson remembers him as 'all in all a man much admired by those who had the privilege to work with him'.