Austin Bernard Dempsey was born at West Ham on 17 October 1911. He was educated at Stonyhurst, the London Hospital and St Thomas's Hospital and qualified MRCS LRCP in 1935. He was commissioned into the RAMC in October 1935 and appointed to a permanent commission in October 1941. Most of his service before and during the second world war was spent in India, Iraq, and Burma where he commanded 25 Combined General Hospital, 94 Indian General Hospital and 68 Indian General Hospital. On his return to the United Kingdom in March 1946 he was appointed Officer in Charge Surgical Division RH Woolwich. He won the first Montefiore Prize at the Royal Army Medical College in 1947 and obtained the FRCS in 1948. He served in Hamburg, Khartoum, Benghazi and Cyprus and was consulting surgeon to the Middle East Land Forces in 1960, and to the Military Hospital, Accra. He retired on 10 January 1963, with the rank of Brigadier and died on 7 October 1975, aged 63 years.