Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

I entered the University of Melbourne as an undergraduate MBBS student in 1951. University life was phased with National Service training, with an initial 14-week period of full-time army service at the Puckapunyal Reserve, near Seymour, Victoria, followed by weeknight, weekend and annual fortnightly training with the Melbourne University Regiment. This was not an entirely negative event– it brought new experiences, provided an income to support university expenditures, and with myself, after the period of full-time training, a degree of physical fitness not attained before (or since).
I graduated in medicine at the end of 1957, and spent my first year as an intern (then called ‘resident’) with a room and night duties at Prince Henry’s Hospital in Melbourne. I remember the mistakes I made then even now– we ran casualty/ emergency and had very little active supervision. As part of that year I spent a month back at Puckapunyal, back in the same training battalion where I had been a recruit. Life as a captain, even as an honorary captain was very different from that of a recruit. I stayed on with the citizen military forces (CMF), now as a member of the 4th Field Ambulance. I completed army exams to confirm my rank, went on to complete exams for major. The army gave me much more confidence– I found I could demonstrate first aid and give basic lectures. My second year after graduation was at the Repatriation General Hospital, Heidelberg, where we again were actively encouraged to have a military connection.
I trained as an indentured general pathologist and before fully qualifying was invited to take up a consultant position in Gippsland, which I accepted. My period of indenture was for two years; I stayed for twenty. Initially, as I had not finished training it was a requirement that I have my material reviewed, returning to Melbourne on a weekly basis. I continued regular review meetings after full qualification.
I stayed with my mother on these occasions and I remember now in 1968, the phone in her house ringing. It was the DGMS on the line, Maj Gen Colin Gurner, asking me to go to Vietnam later that year and be responsible for the pathology lab at 1 Aust Fd Hospital.
The material coming through that pathology laboratory was some of the most interesting I have seen in my entire career. As well as pathology service for 1 Aust Fd Hospital the lab assisted the local civilian hospital, Bien Hoa, which was largely staffed by Australian civilian volunteers. Looking at faecal samples from these patients I would see more intestinal parasites and ova in an afternoon than I have seen in my entire career in Australia. It was the time of emerging resistance to chloroquine, the front-line antimalarial drug at the time. There were some seriously ill soldiers, with parasite infection rates of 6 and 7%. Blood for transfusion was normally adequate but in emergency supply could run out. We improvised an ad hoc blood bank, taking blood from staff (myself included) and from Australian civilians at Bien Hoa. One seriously wounded soldier, who survived, required 30 units (three times his normal total blood volume).
The laboratory was well staffed by conscripted fully trained laboratory scientists who competently ran all routine testing. I spent time in liaison with the American laboratory in Saigon, who did some of less routine work for us, such as the processing of histological sections.I was also involved with the MEDCAP program, with staff from 1 Aust Fd Hospital running a weekly clinic in the village of Nam Binh. In those days I still had some general medical skills and treating civilian patients was an interesting complement to the pathology laboratory work.