Philip Harker Newman an orthopaedic surgeon and a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps was left behind to man a casualty clearing station during the evacuation of Dunkrik in 1940. Newman was made a Prisoner of War and studied the adverse psychological effects of incarceration on his fellow officers. He escaped from Germany eventually returning to Europe for its liberation in 1944. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross for his bravery. In 1946, Philip Newman was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to The Middlesex Hospital and The Royal National orthopaedic Hospital, London. He became an internationally recognised authority on the management of spinal conditions including spondylolisthesis. In 1962, he operated with Sir Herbert Seddon (1903–1977) on Sir Winston Churchill who had sustained a fractured neck of femur following a fall in the South of France. Newman became President of The British Orthopaedic Association in 1976 and chairman of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. In 1976, he was also awarded a CBE and wrote his wartime memoirs, Safer than a Known Way published in 1983.
PHN Diaries: there were originally six volumes of diaries made by Newman during the war. At the beginning of Volume 6 he records; “Of the six volumes, of which this is the last one, two are in England, one remains in Brussels, one in Germany God knows where and one somewhere between Madrid and London, perhaps at the bottom of The Bay of Biscay…if I get one of these back I shall consider myself very lucky”. Only volumes 1, 2 and 6 remain in existence.
BricknellMCM. The evolution of casualty evacuation in the British army in the 20th century (Part 1) Boer War – 1918. J R Army Med Corps2002; 148: 200–207.
6.
BricknellMCM. The evolution of casualty evacuation in the British army in the 20th century (part 2) – 1918 to 1945. J R Army Med Corps2002; 148: 314–322.
7.
London Gazette, 12 September 1939 Suppl 34680, p.6241.
8.
Op cit (Note 2).
9.
Ibid.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Jonathan N, personal communication.
14.
PHN diary papers.
15.
Doctors of the Great War, www.1914-1918.be/inf_jeanne_de_launoy.php (accessed 12 April 2018). de Launoy (1881–1953) the daughter of a Brussels physician was a Belgian graduate nurse who spent the whole of the First World War at the military Ocean Hospital, a converted hotel looking out to sea at La Panne, Belgium a few miles from the Maritime Hospital at Zudycoote. Dr Antoine Depage founded the Ocean Hospital having previously established a surgical institute, the Berendael Institute in 1903 where Edith Cavell became head nurse in 1907. It seems possible that Jane de Launoy may have known Edith Cavell as Newman claims. Depage was later to be appointed the first head of surgery at the Brugmann Hospital, Brussels. Jeanne de Launoy had trained at the Catholic School of St Camille and was one of only two graduate Belgian nurses working at the hospital where the majority of nursing staff were English. During the First World War, she kept a diary which in 1936 she published as a book, Infermieres de Guerre en service commande. Memogrammes 2015.
16.
Army Awards Gallant Conduct with B.E.F. Acts of Heroism in the withdrawal. Distinguished Service Order. Newman Lt (Major) PH FRCS RAMC. The Times, 11 July 1940, p.2.
17.
Wegnez P, Archives-Archief, CPAS de Bruxelles, personal communication. Rene Dumont was born on 23 June in Anderlecht. He qualified as a doctor in 1936 and was appointed surgeon at Hôpital Brugmann in 1938.With colleagues from the Brugmann Hospital, Dumont helped to organise field hospitals for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War earning him the nickname “Dumont l’Espagnol”. In June1943, he was arrested by the Germans and sent to captivity in Germany until May 1945. After the war, he resumed his post in the Brussels Hospitals but resigned in 1946.
18.
Wegnez P, Archives-Archief CPAS de Bruxelles, personal communication. Suzanne Simon was born on 8 May 1901 in Brussels. She graduated in medicine magna cum laude in 1926. After several academic stays abroad (including France, Germany and USA, Master of Arts Columbia University 1928), she became a radiotherapist at the Brugmann Hospital in the Centre for Tumours. In 1948, she became head of the department of radiotherapy in the new Bordet Hospital specialising in the treatment of cancers and directed by Dr. Albert Claude (Nobel Prize 1974). Suzanne Simon retired in 1967 and died in 1989.
19.
The Service Casualties in the Medical Services RAMC. Missing believed prisoners of war Acting Major Philip Harker Newman. Br Med J1940; 2: 173–173.
The WW2 Escape Lines Memorial Society. The Pat O’Leary Line, www.ww2escapelines.co.uk/?page_id=103 (accessed 12 April 2018). The PAT line was named from the nom de guerre, Pat O’Leary of a Belgian resistance worker called Major General Comte Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse GC, KBE, DSO (5 April 1911 – 26 March 1989), who was a doctor by training and who had set up the escape network.
25.
Airey N. They have their exits. Chapter X111. Barnsley, England: Leo Cooper, 1953.
26.
Anthony N, personal communication.
27.
The London Gazette, Supplement Friday, 12 June 1942.
28.
The Times, 12 October 1943, p.1.
29.
NewmanPH. Prisoner of war mentality. Br Med J1944; 1: 8–10.
30.
Ibid. (Note 29), p.8.
31.
JonesMTannerJM. The clinical characteristics, treatment and rehabilitation of repatriated prisoners of war with neurosis. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry1948; 11: 53–60.
32.
LundenWA. Captivity psychoses among prisoners of war. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology1949; 39: 721–733.
33.
Richardson BillingsB. The prisoner-of -war mentality. Br Med J1944; 1: 90–90.
34.
JonesEWesselyS. British prisoners-of-war: from resilience to psychological vulnerability: reality or perception. Twentieth Century British History2010; 21: 163–183.
35.
ShephardBA. War of nerves: soldiers and psychiatrists 1914–1994, London: Pimlico, 2002, pp. 314–315.
36.
NewmanPHStoneKH. The etiology of spondylolisthesis. J Bone Joint Surg1963; 45: 39–59.
