Robert Debenham, or 'Deb' as he was universally known, was born in Presteigne, Radnorshire, on 3 January 1902, the son of Horace Alan Debenham, a general practitioner, and his wife Maud Constance, who was the daughter of a GP. After preliminary schooling at Brockhurst he was educated at Malvern Coll

There was always something of a military bearing about Alan Stammers. Handsome, upright, level-headed, he had an able and generous mind and was always to be counted on to do the right thing by his patients, his medical students, young aspiring surgeons and his colleagues. It was characteristic that