Durga Das Guha was a general surgeon who practised across four continents, living his last 49 years in the USA. He was born on 19 March 1918 in Mymensingh, Bengal to Jogesh Chandra, a civil engineer in the Public Service Department of Bengal in undivided India, and Shaibalini. He was the second of their eight children and spent his childhood in Chittagong, where he was influenced by the revolutionary political leaders there fighting for the independence of India. After school each day he would watch the leaders and their followers march in military-like precision and had a front row seat to the Chittagong armoury raid in 1930. From a young age Durga Das always wanted to study medicine after becoming friendly with the family physician. After moving with his family to Calcutta, he finished his pre-medical studies at the Scottish Church College in Calcutta, before completing his medical degree from Calcutta University in 1944, where he was awarded with a scholarship. Immediately after qualifying, Durga Das joined the Indian Army Medical Corps as a medical officer with the rank of lieutenant and was engaged in frontline duties with the Central Mediterranean Forces in Italy and with the Middle East Forces during the Second World War. He was promoted to regimental medical officer of the second battalion in the sixth Gurkha Rifles with the rank of captain. While advancing in Italy for several months with the battalion he recalled spending most of the time in a Sherman tank painted with a red cross at the front. One notable experience he recollected was the day when his regiment was engaged in a fierce battle to cross the Po river in Italy when he had to give first aid to 120 casualties and then evacuate them to the base hospital within ten hours. On his release from the Army in 1948 he worked as a house surgeon at Sambhunath Pandit Hospital in Calcutta for six months before proceeding to England for specialist training in surgery. During his decade-plus stay in England he gathered considerable surgical experience as a house surgeon and a registrar in general, orthopaedic and thoracic surgery at numerous hospitals. Two of his longer appointments included serving as a registrar in general surgery at West Norfolk and King's Lynn General Hospital from 1953 to 1955 and as a registrar in thoracic surgery at Harefield Hospital from 1956 to 1958. During this period, he passed the FRCS examination in 1956. Durga Das returned to India in 1958 when he was appointed as a surgeon at the Railway Hospital, Gauhati, Assam. In March 1961 he took up an appointment as a senior surgical specialist with the Ministry of Health for the Government of Ghana, where he remained until 1971 when he moved with his family to the USA. His initial appointment was as a house physician at the Kentucky Baptist Hospital, Louisville. In 1975 he settled down in Indiana, setting up his private practice serving patients in Parke, Vermillion and Vigo counties for the following 30 years, where he was well-respected in the medical community. Durga Das was an active member of the Indian Association of Terre Haute and an enthusiastic fundraiser for the nonprofit organisation March of Dimes of Terre Haute. At the age of 95, he was awarded the fundraiser of the year award by the March of Dimes of Terre Haute. He was an avid jogger, world traveller, took an active interest in global politics and the stock market, and was known to love and eat bags of chilies in one sitting. Most of all he was a loving husband to his wife of 51 years, Kalpana, and a devoted father to his daughter, Nandita, and his son, Rajiv, all of whom survive him. He died of natural causes on 4 July 2020. He was 102.