Peter Roberts was professor of military surgery for the Army Medical Services. He was born in Manchester on 20 December 1940 at the height of the Manchester Blitz to George and Edith Roberts. Edith died when Peter was nine months old, and he was brought up by his aunt and uncle, Annie and Bob Roberts. He attended Manchester Central Grammar School, where he was head boy. Peter attended the London Hospital Medical College between 1960 and 1965. He did his surgical training around London, including posts as a resident surgical officer at St Mark's Hospital and as a senior registrar at Whipps Cross Hospital. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as a surgeon in 1969 and secured the FRCS in 1971. Peter left the Army for the NHS as a consultant surgeon at Whipps Cross Hospital for a further decade, before returning to full-time service with the RAMC. He progressed to the posts of professor of military surgery, consultant adviser in surgery to the directors general of the Army Medical Services, and adviser on war trauma research to the surgeons general and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. Peter Roberts was never far from the action when surgical teams were deployed overseas in support of service personnel on operations. He served with distinction as a surgeon and later as command surgeon in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. During his time as professor of military surgery, he introduced Quikclot, a haemostatic agent, to help reduce deaths from major haemorrhage, and directed the UK military's fledgling research into haemostatic agents. He was editor of the *The British Military Surgery Pocket Book* (British Army Publication, 2004). He was a founder member of the conflict and catastrophe forum of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, where he taught and examined for the Society's diploma in the medical care of catastrophes. He was a founding convenor of the Royal College of Surgeons' definitive surgical trauma skills course in the late 1990's, teaching his last course in November 2016. He also taught on the military operational surgical training course for surgical teams, and the surgical trauma in the austere environment course at the Royal College of Surgeons. He was an honorary lecturer in surgery at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Washington, USA. He was a McCombe lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, a Mitchiner medallist at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a Mitchiner lecturer in the Defence Medical Services. In 2000, Peter was awarded the Michael E DeBakey International Military Surgeons' award for outstanding service to international military surgery. His operational work led to the award of MBE (military division) in 1983 and the CBE (military division) in 2003. He was a founder member of the charity Trauma Care. He served on the council of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland as the military representative and was president of the Military Surgical Society. The bald facts of Peter Roberts' career do not do justice to the extent of his avuncular influence and leadership of the specialist cohort of UK general surgeons in regular and reserve military service of his era. These surgeons and their anaesthetic and nursing colleagues collectively made a profound contribution to the modernisation of military surgical trauma care and to the evolution of the modern NHS trauma service from lessons learned through operations in the Gulf, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Peter was often to be unexpectedly found in officers' messes and in less comfortable surroundings around the globe, dispensing wisdom, operational experience and anecdotes to his junior colleagues, and memorably with a cigarette to hand. This was to prove the instrument of his final undoing: he died on 11 March 2017 of metastatic lung cancer. He was 76. Peter's funeral and celebration of his life was held at the Royal Garrison Church of All Saints, Aldershot, with his extended family and many friends and former colleagues from his five decades of military medical service in respectful attendance.