Lindsay Sangster Rogers was a professor of clinical surgery at the Royal School of Medicine, Baghdad, Iraq. He was born in 1902 in Dunedin, Otago, the son of David Rogers, who had emigrated to New Zealand from the Hebrides in Scotland, and Eliza Jane Rogers née Nimmo. He was educated at Otago Boys’ High School and then attended Otago University, initially studying mining but eventually switching to medicine. He qualified MB ChB in 1927 with a medical travelling scholarship, the Batchelor Memorial medal for gynaecology and obstetrics, the Marjorie McCallum medal for clinical medicine and the Medical Graduates’ Association medal for clinical medicine and clinical surgery. He was a house surgeon at Dunedin Hospital for a year and then, in early 1928, went to England for further training, studying at Middlesex Hospital in London. He was a resident surgical officer at the Cancer and Royal Northern hospitals, and spent a year as a surgeon in Omdurman, Sudan, where he trekked in the desert and learnt Arabic. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1929 and of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1931. He returned to New Zealand in 1932 to see his dying father. In July 1935 he joined the New Zealand Medical Corps as a lieutenant, posted to No 1 Field Ambulance. He became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1936. At the beginning of the Second World War, he left New Zealand to enlist in the British Army, joining the Royal Army Medical Corps as a lieutenant in May 1940, where he was attached to a field ambulance. He was initially based in Norwich, Northern Ireland, Manchester and York, before being sent to North Africa in August 1941. He served at No 27 General Hospital in Geneifa, Egypt, at casualty clearing stations in the Western Desert, at No 9 General Hospital, Cairo and then back at a casualty clearing station. In 1942 he was awarded an MBE. After the end of the campaign in North Africa, he remained with the Eighth Army for the invasion of Sicily and Italy. In November 1943 he parachuted into the Balkans from Italy as a surgeon to Marshal Tito’s guerilla forces. He later wrote a book about his experiences (*Guerilla surgeon* London, Collins, 1957), recounting the harsh conditions, including civilian atrocities, patients attacked by wolves while hiding in forests and having to use four-inch nails to secure bones when surgical supplies ran out. For his service in Yugoslavia, he was honoured with two bravery awards. In May 1944 he reappeared in Cairo and at the end of the war returned to New Zealand. In 1945 he was appointed as superintendent of surgery at Baghdad Hospital and Medical School, Iraq and professor of clinical surgery at the Royal Medical College, Baghdad. He returned to New Zealand in late 1950, where he practised medicine in Te Awamutu. In November of that year, he was elected as a councillor for the borough of Te Awamutu. In around 1956 he married, and he and his wife then adopted two boys. In June 1962 Rogers was drowned in New Caledonia while on holiday with his wife.