Jenny Nicholls reviews Frontline Surgeon: New Zealand medical pioneer Douglas Jolly by Mark Derby for Waiheke Weekender:
‘A brilliant war surgeon, this New Zealander’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War and World War II led to changes in triage, wound treatment and trauma surgery used in emergency rooms throughout the world to this day. Douglas Jolly is one of the greatest war surgeons of the twentieth century, and he wrote the guide to field surgery in 1940– and yet you have probably never heard of him, even though he was born in Cromwell and educated at Otago Medical School. He doesn’t even have (as I write this) a Wikipedia page.
Mark Derby, a New Zealand writer and historian, wants to rescue Jolly from this undeserved obscurity – and his meticulous book shines a bright new light on the work of a deeply caring man whose career stalled after World War II, despite the lasting influence of his ideas.
Why? It might have been his politics. “He was always a ‘non-aligned leftie,” says Derby, “and that may have counted against him in the conservative UK of the 1950s.”
Jolly also suffered from bi-polar disorder, and untreated trauma from long years on the frontline. Despite this inner pain, he was, by all accounts, adored by the people he worked with.
“The more I learned of Jolly, the more I liked him,” writes Derby, describing a man of wit, empathy and bone deep integrity. “He insisted on operating first on his most critically injured patients, even when they were troops from the opposing side.”
There is another forgotten genius who makes an appearance in Derby’s history: the Spanish Civil War photographer Gerda Taro, the first female photojournalist killed on the frontline. (She spent her last hours in Jolly’s field hospital near Madrid.) Taro was the partner of a photographer whose name went on to vastly eclipse hers – Robert Capa, a name almost synonymous with war photography. This turns out to have been the couple’s alias, and much of what was once thought to be Robert Capa’s early work was actually shot by Taro. This was news to me.
Jolly learned field surgery at the dawn of ‘total war’ – an era when aerial bombing began to kill and wound vast numbers of civilians along with soldiers. Derby provides fascinating detail about the working life of this gifted and empathetic human being, a loveable japester who once cheered up his terrified colleagues by dancing in the operating theatre.
Although the prose tends to precision rather than warmth or excitement, this long overdue portrait will fascinate anyone interested in emergency medical care, the Spanish Civil War or WWII military history.’
