Albert Patrick ('Paddy') Dignan was a former director of Army surgery. He was a remarkable character who was born into a modest family in Dublin. His father, Joseph, a tailor, was able to get all five of his sons through medical school. (Whether an ability to stitch can be inherited remains open to

Harold Brown was born at Lostwithiel, Cornwall, on 7 August 1924 and educated at Truro School. He trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying in 1949. After house surgeon appointments, including obstetrics and orthopaedics, he joined the RAMC in March 1952. Initially on National Service, he was

Alan Jardine Watson was born on 2 December 1905. He received his medical education at the Middlesex Hospital and qualified with the conjoint diploma in 1927. He graduated MB BS two years later. He served in the RAMC from 1942 to 1946 in North Africa, Italy and Britain. After the second world war he

Major general Norman Kirby was a military surgeon and director of clinical services, accidents and emergencies, at Guy’s Hospital, London. *On wings of healing* (Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood & Sons) by Howard Cole is the definitive account of the airborne medical services from their beginnin

John Garraway was educated at Eastbourne College and the Middlesex Hospital. On graduating he joined the RAF, in which he served in North Africa and in the RAF hospital in Vereeniging, South Africa, where he married Margaret Lapping in June 1944. After the war he returned to England to serve in vari

John Gibbons was born in Moseley, Warwickshire, on 26 November 1926. His father, Leonard Norman Gibbons, who had been severely gassed in the trenches during the First World War, later became legal adviser to the Birmingham Gas Board. His mother was Gladys Elizabeth née Smith, a secretary. John was e