A tribute to Australian military medical practitioners

The thousand doors — the Australian doctors at war series; volume four: the Middle East and Far East 1939–42 Robert Likeman Halstead Press, Australia, 2019 ($65; 464 pp) ISBN 9781925043426

In the 2 weeks of fighting during the second battle of El Alamein in Egypt, the 2/17th Australian Infantry Battalion suffered heavy casualties: 59 men killed and another 180 wounded — nearly 40% of the battalion's strength. The battalion's 27‐year‐old regimental medical officer, Captain John Sullivan, had been in the heat of the action for much of the battle, and on 31 October, he was travelling in a lorry carrying wounded soldiers when the vehicle blew up; he suffered a wound to his arm but continued to serve.

A graduate of the University of Sydney who had completed his residency at St Vincent's Hospital, Sullivan had joined the army in 1940 and served with the 2/17th Battalion during the famous Siege of Tobruk. He was awarded a Military Cross for his “utmost coolness and courage” under enemy fire and later went on to serve in the Pacific. After the war, he practised medicine in Newcastle. Sullivan's story is just one of the many told in this volume.

The thousand doors profiles Australian army medical officers who served in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and South‐East Asia. Acting as a companion to Allan Walker's medical volume of the Australian Second World War official history series Middle East and Far East (1953), this painstakingly researched work presents the stories of more than 700 medical officers, including notables such as Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop and Sir Neil Fairley. Biographical entries, similar in style to those published in the Australian dictionary of biography, emphasise the subject's medical training and present a narrative of wartime postings, with individuals grouped by formation and arranged by unit.

Colonel Robert Likeman, a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology, as well as tropical and rural medicine, has published widely in military medical history. The thousand doors is an invaluable reference work and a tribute to those Australian medical practitioners who served our nation.