Surgeon and General

SURGEON AND GENERAL: A LIFE OF MAJOR-GENERAL RUPERT DOWNES 1885-1945

Ian Howie-Willis

Australian Military History Publications, 2008.  400pp.

Rupert Downes and George Patton had a number of things in common.  Both were born in 1885 and both died accidentally in 1945.  Both became general officers.  Both enjoyed success and endured setbacks in their military careers.  They also, however, had important differences.

Patton’s setbacks were largely self-inflicted, while Downes’ were inflicted upon him.  Patton revelled in warfare, while Downes, although he apparently wanted to be a soldier from a young age, found that his ultimate military career as both surgeon and general was devoted to serving the casualties of war rather than winning its victories on the battlefield.  While the flamboyant Patton is still remembered, the quiet achiever Downes is largely forgotten, even in his own land.

Dr Howie-Willis covers Downes’ family background well, drawing particular attention to the heavy loss of his siblings in childhood (ten of his parents’ fifteen children died before the age of twelve months).  Even by the standards of the period, this was a heavy loss.  Downes’ father, a British artillery officer, held senior positions in the South Australian and Victorian colonial forces, and those of the Commonwealth.  Indeed, the family nearly moved to New Zealand, to give a full ANZAC connection!

After a privileged upbringing in Melbourne, and early military experience as one of the trumpeters who sounded the fanfare at the inauguration of the Commonwealth Parliament, Downes graduated in medicine from Melbourne University.  As well as practising medicine, he enlisted in the Army Medical Corps, Downes also lectured and demonstrated at Melbourne University, and undertook post-graduate studies there.

Soon after war was declared in 1914, Downes enlisted in the AIF, and raised the 2nd (later 3rd) Light Horse Field Ambulance, which he took to Egypt and then to Gallipoli.  However, his career soon developed, when he was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of initially the Anzac (sic) Division at Gallipoli, probably the New Zealand and Australian Division, and later of the Anzac Mounted Division.

As ADMS of the Anzac Mounted Division, and later as Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps, Downes contributed significantly to the medical support of operations in Sinai and Palestine.  He even clashed with T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) after the fall of Damascus – but he was not the only Australian officer who was not completely be-dazzled by Lawrence.  When he contributed to the medical history of the First AIF, Downes had (and took) the opportunity to correct some distortions in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Downes’ contribution to operations in the Jordan Valley was highly significant, particularly his robust anti-malaria measures, which kept infection levels low.  He also made some attempts at air dropping medical stores.  As in New Guinea in 1942, packing materials loosely in bags proved ineffective for fragile items, but Downes should be recognised for his efforts as an early experimenter with a new technique.

After the end of the First World War Downes spent time in Britain, studying under paediatric doctors there.  This might have influenced him in his future career choice, and he later pioneered new paediatric surgical techniques in Australia, and worked to modify less useful ones.  However, Downes might have lost some of his enthusiasm for surgery after the death of his only son (from meningitis) in 1933.  If so, the proposal in 1934 that he become a full-time soldier, as the Army’s Director General of Medical Services (DGMS), may well have seemed more attractive.

One of Downes’ early tasks as DGMS was to persuade young surgeons to enlist.  One of those who heeded his call was ‘Weary’ Dunlop, who had been a medical critic of Downes, believing that he carried out operations that had little chance of success.  After the Second World War, Dunlop again criticised Downes, this time for his work as the DGMS, and later as Inspector General of Medical Services.  Among Downes’ initiatives as DGMS was the establishment of a system to ensure that the demands of a future war would not denude the community of its medical personnel.  He also initiated the construction of the military base hospitals that later provided the foundation for the post-war repatriation hospital system.

Downes was criticised over deficiencies in medical supplies by medical personnel serving with the Second AIF in the Middle East.  It is interesting, therefore to read that Samuel Burston, who later became the Director of Medical Services (DMS) of that force, and ultimately became DGMS, had earlier claimed that the there had ‘probably never been a force sent overseas … better equipped on the medical side’.  Perhaps personal ambitions led later to a revision of that assessment?

Dr Howie-Willis tries, though perhaps not entirely successfully, to disentangle the circumstances of Downes’ removal from the position of DGMS.  This occurred after a botched attempt to make him DMS of the AIF in the Middle East, a position to which Blamey appointed Burston, who had been operating effectively there.  The Adjutant-General, Major-General Victor Stantke, seems to have played a key part in this process.

Stantke is a character whose wartime performance would be worthy of deeper study.  As well as the Downes matter, Stantke presided over a number of questionable personnel decisions.  The despatch of untrained reinforcements to Singapore in early 1942, and the breakdown from about 1943 of the ‘regional’ system of reinforcing units, also occurred under his direction.  It seems possible that Downes might have placed Stantke alongside those British regular officers whom he described during the earlier war as having a ‘narrow dogmatic view’.

Dr Howie-Willis shows that Downes’ military career after his time as Inspector General of Medical Services ended in what was effectively a backwater, as the DMS of the Second Army.  This force was based in south east Australia, and lacked a real role after the decline in the direct Japanese threat to the mainland.  This must have been a frustrating period for Downes, but he seems to have taken up with enthusiasm the challenge of becoming the official medical historian for the Second World War, after he retired from the Army on age grounds.  This new role, however, lasted only a short time before he was killed on his way to New Guinea in March 1945, in the same aircraft crash that killed ‘Bloody George’ Vasey.

Dr Howie-Willis expresses some surprise the courts of inquiry into the aircraft crash that killed Vasey and Downes did not ‘take evidence from veteran Lockheed Hudson pilots’.  However, Group Captain Lerew, the chairman of the RAAF Board, was not only the Director of Flying Safety (as might be expected for an inquiry into a crash that killed two generals), but had also commanded squadrons equipped with Hudsons.  He would have been very familiar with the history of the handling issues associated with the Hudson.  As an aside, Lerew was the officer who signalled to Air Force HQ the Roman gladiators’ salute ‘Nos morituri te salutamus’, while awaiting the Japanese landing at Rabaul in 1942.

Dr Howie-Willis quotes (second hand) a British officer complaining in the early 1990s that ‘boastful’ Australians did not acknowledge the non-ANZAC contribution at Gallipoli.  That might have been that officer’s perspective, but ANZAC Day ceremonies attended by this reviewer always make specific mention of the British 29th Division, and the French contribution (although, it must be said, the Newfoundlanders seem to miss out).

One point that stands out in this book is the closeness of relationships in the Melbourne of the first half of the last century.  The daughter of Downes’ commander in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was his wife’s bridesmaid; one of Downes’ daughters later married the son of Sir Neville Howse, the First AIF’s DMS; Kenneth Starr, one of Downes’ critics from the Middle East in the early stages of the Second World War, married a daughter of Howse, linking him to the Downes family.

Dr Howie-Willis notes that Downes’ name does not appear on the bronze tablets of the Roll of Honour in the Australian War Memorial, because he was a civilian at the time of his death.  Somewhat anomalously, however, he is recorded on the electronic Roll of Honour in the War Memorial databases.  Given his formal civilian status at the time of his death, Downes should probably be recorded in the Commemorative Roll, which ‘records the names of those Australians who died during or as a result of wars in which Australians served, but who were not serving in the Australian Armed Forces’.

It is good to read a book that, when quoting statements that might jar on modern ears, accepts that they were made by men of the first part of the last century, who would reflect the mores of their time.  Downes’ matter-of-fact reference in Routine Orders to the execution of two British soldiers for desertion, and his casual (even callous) attitudes to the inhabitants of the Middle East were reflective of the era, and are here accepted without post-modern hand wringing.

There are a few minor editorial quirks in the book.  The Gallipoli landing took place some distance north, rather than south, of the intended landing site (p 82); Gaba Tepe was not the ‘point at the southern end of the … strip … occupied by the Anzac force’ (p 86), but was held by the Turks throughout the campaign; Doris Downes’ OBE made her an Officer, not a Member, of the Order (p 155); Nazareth is south east, not south west, of Haifa (p 185).

Overall, this book is a useful contribution to Australian military (and medical) historiography.

JOHN DONOVAN