Major General John ‘Jack’ Taylor Coull was a director of Army surgery. He was born in Aberdeen on 4 March 1934, the only son of fish merchant John Sandeman Coull and Ethel Marjory Coull née Taylor and attended Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen. After considering becoming an engineer, he decided on a medical career and studied medicine at Aberdeen University, the first in his family to go to university. While a medical student he was employed in a Kodak photographic factory during the vacations, eventually becoming an assistant manager. In 1958 he married Mildred Macfarlane: they had met through attending Holburn West Church in Aberdeen, where Mildred was in the choir and they both volunteered in the Sunday school. After qualifying in 1958, he had expected to carry out his National Service, which had been deferred while he was at university, but was told he was not required. He held house appointments in Aberdeen in surgery, medicine and in the accident and emergency department and had just started a senior house officer post in orthopaedics, when he was told that the Army was short of medical staff and, even though the National Service call-up had officially ended, a number of doctors were to be conscripted. Jack Coull joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in April 1960 as a sublieutenant, two weeks before the birth of his first son. After basic training, he was posted to Colchester as a general surgical trainee with the rank of lieutenant. He was later accepted for a regular commission. In 1963 he was posted to the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, Millbank, London and then seconded to the Eastern General Hospital in Edinburgh as a senior registrar to James Ross and Thomas McNair. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1965 and in the same year was posted back to London, to the Royal Herbert Hospital in Woolwich. In 1967 he was seconded to the Birmingham Accident Hospital, where he worked for Peter London. He was then posted to Singapore for three years as a surgical specialist. From 1970 to 1971 he was a lecturer in the department of orthopaedics at the University of Edinburgh and a resident surgical officer to J I P James at the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital. For six years from 1971 he was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the British Army of the Rhine, with a six-month period in 1974 spent at Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast during the height of the Troubles. From 1978 to 1986 he was posted to the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital in Woolwich as an adviser in orthopaedic surgery to the director general of Army medical services. In 1986 he returned to West Germany, to the headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine, as deputy commander of medical surgery and a senior surgeon. His main task involved the rewriting of the British Army’s medical strategic operational plan. In 1987 he was appointed as an honorary surgeon to the Queen. In 1988 he was posted to the Ministry of Defence as director of Army surgery with the rank of major general. He was directly involved in the preparations for the Gulf War, including the establishment of hospitals in Saudi Arabia and the deployment of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship *Argus* and field ambulances and preparing equipment for these units including nuclear, biological and chemical protection. In 1990 he inspected all deployed units in the Gulf reporting directly to the British commander Lieutenant General Sir Peter de la Billière, liaised with the American forces and was appointed tri-service surgical adviser to the Surgeon General of the United States for the duration of the Gulf War. Having previously been awarded the Mitchiner medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1980, he became a fellow in 1990 (ad eundem). He retired from the Army in 1992 and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath. From 1992 to 1997 he was director of the Army medico-legal department at the Ministry of Defence, and from 2000 he was in private practice as a medico-legal expert with consulting rooms in Harley Street. He and Mildred finally retired ‘home’ to the village of Ballater in Aberdeenshire in 2006. He was chairman of Ballater Royal Deeside, a local charity, and chairman of Ballater Probus, and loved being part of their church community. In 2022 both Jack and his wife became ill with cancer. He nursed Mildred until her death on 4 June 2023; Jack passing just a few months later, on 27 September in Aboyne Hospital. He was 89. They were survived by their three sons, Stephen, Gordon and Andrew, 10 grandchildren and one great grandchild. He is remembered as being a humble and selfless man, devoted to his family and his country. His professional success and impact is perhaps best summed up by John Blair in his book *In arduis fidelis: centenary history of the Royal Army Medical Corps* (Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1998): ‘He (Jack) ranks as the greatest full career Army surgeon and Director of Army surgery of the second half of the twentieth century…as a visionary, he was able to re-think and revise treatment plans that enabled lifesaving surgery and outcomes for patients.’ Jack and Mildred were buried together at Tullich cemetery in Ballater, Aberdeenshire.