Brexit Britain is not a country which would have welcomed an old émigré called Michal Giedroyc

In 2016, Lord Dubs sponsored an amendment to the Immigration Act 2016 to offer unaccompanied refugee children safe passage to Britain amidst the European migrant crisis. Originally rejected by the House of Commons, the amendment was accepted by the Government following a second vote in favour by the Lords. In February 2017, the Home Office abandoned the scheme after accepting 350 out of the planned 3,000 child refugees.

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Michal Giedroyc, who has died at the age of 88, came to Britain as a refugee at the age of 18 in 1947 and has played his part as an active citizen and has contributed to the life of the country ever since, not least as being the father of his tv personality daughter Mel.

'Mel' : Melanie Clare Sophie Giedroyc, was born in the summer of 1968, the youngest of four children, when Michal was 39. After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge with a degree in Italian language and literature, she forged a career as a tv presenter and actress, best known for her work with Sue Perkins, co-hosting series including 'Light Lunch' for Channel 4, 'The Great British Bake Off' for the BBC and chat show 'Mel and Sue' for ITV. Last year she took on the role of co-presenter on the BBC show 'Let It Shine.'

In 2016 Mel said of her Dad :

'He and I have a lot in common. We’re as tough as old boots and both have a good sense of humour. For such a cerebral man – he speaks seven languages – it always surprises me that he shares my love of Les Dawson, Eric Morecambe and Danny La Rue – ribald, end-of-the-pier humour.'

He was born Michal Jan Henryk Giedroyc'in 1929 in Lobzow, Poland, the son of Prince Tadeusz Giedroyc who was a judge and senator in the Polish Second Republic and lived in an 18th century manor house inherited by his mother, Anna. In his book 'Crater’s Edge', he described an idyllic pre-Second World War childhood at the manor with its gardens and an ice-house that allowed the cook to produce ice cream and the wild birds that flocked to its surrounding woods and fields.

It was not to last. After the outbreak of War in September 1939 and as a result of Hitler's pact with Stalin, Poland was invaded by the Red Army from the East. The house was plundered and an officer pulled a gun on the 10-year-old Michal, threatening to kill “this Polish puppy.” His father was jailed and Michal, along with his mother and two sisters, were evicted and thrown onto the streets. Then, in 1940, after being classified as 'enemies of the people,' they were taken to the railway station and locked in a sealed cattle truck and were dispatched for farm work in Siberia, where as scions of the old order Stalin's decree was that they should “toil and die.”

As an eleven year old, the memories were etched forever on his mind and as he recalled : “We were locked 40-plus in a cattle truck, old men, women and children. There were no facilities, just a hole in the floor. Once a day we were allowed water. It took a fortnight and only twice were we given gruel. It was cold, especially when we crossed the Urals. Most people sat on the floor for warmth, but not my mother. There was a plank by the window which was access to fresh air. We sat there.”

As the train passed through Minsk, the family was able to look up at the prison where their father was being held. In Nikolaevka, a small town in northern Kazakhstan, his mother was put to work on a collective farm and the family found shelter in the cottage of a former soldier of the Imperial army, sharing one room with two other Polish families.

Their fortunes changed in 1941 when, under an agreement with the 'Polish Government-In-Exile' in London, Stalin ordered the release of Polish prisoners and deportees so that a Polish Army could be formed on Soviet territory under General Wladyslaw Anders.

In September 1942 they travelled to Tehran where his mother found work as a seamstress and in  1944, at the age of 15, Michal joined the Polish Army and left for training in Palestine. but his hopes of fighting to liberate Poland were dashed when the Yalta Agreement ceded Poland to the Soviet Union. The family sailed for asylum in Britain and the following year,1948, heard that their father, after being tortured by the the NKVD had been executed when he fell by the roadside while on a forced march.

The family settled in Britain and Michal studied for a degree in Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics at Southampton University and then got his first job designing wings for the Vickers Vanguard and when he became a naturalised British subject, was no longer able to use his inherited title as a 'Prince.'


In 1956, at the age of 27, he moved to Folland Aerospace, where his work on the air intake of the Folland Gnat. Two years later he married Rosy, a trainee nurse, and for a few years they lived in Hong Kong, where he was in charge of aircraft maintenance at the Airport before they returned to Britain in 1966, settling first in Surrey, then in Oxford.

It is testimony Michal's multitalented nature that he later left engineering and worked as an economic consultant to developing countries. In his fifties in the 1980s, he served as an adviser to the Oxford Union, which was then struggling financially and within two years had restored the accounts to a modest surplus.

He demonstrated his academic prowess after researching his family background in medieval Lithuania led to his contribution of articles to the Oxford Slavonic Papers. When he was 63 in 1990, as a result of his scholarship, he was invited to visit Lithuania and while there took up an offer to travel in an official car over the border to Belarus, to visit his childhood home. It proved to be a traumatic experience and he recalled :  “The KGB followed us, in case we caused trouble. I knew how to find my way to where the manor had been, but it was no longer. It had been wiped out by Soviet guns in the war. There was nothing, just the sheds of the collective farm … By the end of the day I had developed the shakes.”

Michal found that by his memoir he exorcised some of the ghosts which had haunted him from the past, as indeed, as they have done for the thousands of refugees, pre-Brexit welcomed to its shores. It was published in 2010 as 'Crater’s Edge' and translated into Polish, Lithuanian and Russian. A Times critic described it as 'the epic tale of a brave and enterprising young boy coming of age and surviving extraordinary events.' He himself admitted :  “Now the book is finished, the nightmares have gone. Vanished.”

Apart from his professional contribution to the economic and cultural life of Britain, Michal also enriched it in having fathered, in addition to Mel, three more remarkable children. If Britain had not opened its doors to him and his family in 1947, it would not have :



'Miko' : Michal Graham Dowmont Giedroyc, was born in 1959 a banker and gospel musician. He composed the music for sister Coky's bizarre tale of Fanny Cradock, 'Fear of Fanny' in 2006, the story of Britain's famous and maligned tv chef from 50s to the 70s.

Kasia, married to British ambassador in the UAE. Philip Parham and, mother of seven children and working as a special needs teacher at the British School of Al Khubairat.




'Coky' : Mary Rose Helen Giedroyc, was born in 1962 and had jaundice as a baby and a little tuft of hair growing out of the top of her head. Miko took one look at her and said : “That’s not Mary Rose. That’s Mary Coconut” and the  name stuck. She became a film and tv director, known for her work on 'Women Talking Dirty', 'The Virgin Queen,' 'The Nativity' and 'Penny Dreadful.'

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"While Great Britain had a proud history of providing sanctuary for children in the past, we seem to have forgotten to not only love our neighbour, but the stranger too."
Lord Dubs

Britain is no country for old men with prostate cancer

BBC News : Prostate cancer deaths overtake those from breast cancer

Despite the fact that, every hour, one man dies from prostate cancer, most British men still have no idea what the gland does and some don’t even know they have one.

For years campaigners have warned that British survival rates for most cancers are way behind those in Europe and the US and studies suggest 10,000 deaths could be prevented each year if Britain merely hit the European average. The analysis shows Britain is also left trailing by developing nations such as Jordan, Puerto Rico, Algeria and Ecuador.

A study, published in The Lancet Medical Journal, analysed the records of 37.5 million patients with 18 of the most common cancers, comparing survival rates for 71 countries and found that Britain languished in the bottom half of the league table for 7 of the 18. Because women do not have a prostate gland, prostate cancer is a disease which affects only men and mostly old men at that and Britain is ranked 27th for survival rates out of the 61 countries for which data was available. 

The figures indicate that in Britain almost 11 old men in 100, diagnosed with prostate cancer will die with 5 years of diagnosis and they would have had a better chance of survival in 26 other countries.

Figures from a 'Prostate Cancer UK' public awareness study last year indicated :

* Men enter a period of 'poor health management' in Britain their fifties and sixties, just when they become higher risk of prostate cancer.

* 45% of men aged 50 – 69 will only see their GP either when ill or in an emergency, yet we know men with early diagnosed prostate cancer often have no symptoms.

* Less than 20% of men in Britain know where the prostate gland is and what it does.

Angela Culhane, Chief Executive of Prostate Cancer UK has said : ”Ignoring your prostate can be lethal. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it, and shockingly many men only realise they have a prostate when it starts to go wrong. If men really knew what the prostate can do to them, they wouldn’t ignore it. As a country, we need to wake up and stop men dying needlessly. Ignoring prostate cancer won’t beat it – only fighting it will. Now is the time to join the fight to beat this disease."

A survey of 2,000 men by Prostate Cancer UK in 2016 found a 92% of men had no idea that the prostate helps make the fluid sperm swims in and contains muscles for ejaculation, with more than half not knowing where it was in their body and 17% were unaware of it altogether.

In addition, and of more concern, is the fact that 88% of men from higher risk groups : those over 50, black or with a family history of the disease, were unaware of their increased danger. 11% of them believed they were actually at lower risk of developing prostate cancer, and 86% of black men didn't know they were twice as likely as any other racial group in Britain.

Former England footballer, who lost his grandfather to the disease, the 52 year old Les Ferdinand, has played a role in highlighting the problem : "I'm not surprised so many men don't know what their prostate does - it's an easy gland to ignore. However when it goes wrong, it can be deadly. Prostate cancer affects one in four black men - double the risk faced by all men, and it kills a man every hour. Don't ignore the statistics and don't ignore your risk."

One old survivor of prostate cancer is the 83 year old TV broadcaster Michael Parkinson who has said : "Luckily for me I was aware of the potential threat my prostate posed to me long before I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I had regular check-ups and thankfully my cancer was picked up at an early stage and I was successfully treated. However, too many men are still reluctant to go to the doctors and too many turn a blind eye to their risk of the disease. But ignoring prostate cancer won't beat it. Speak to your doctor, if not for you, for your family."

https://prostatecanceruk.org/

Should Britain's isolated old men and women, "take heart" that their Government has given them a brand new 'Minister for Loneliness' ?

According to research by the Co-op and the Red Cross, loneliness affects at least nine million people in Britain and the lion's share will be old. The Campaign to End Loneliness reports that over three-quarters of GPs say they are seeing between one and five patients a day who have come in mainly because they are lonely and most of them will be old.

Peter Coville expressed the essence of loneliness, when he said in his article : 'A 'Minister for Loneliness' is a sticking plaster for the ills of neoliberalism' :

'Anyone who really knows what loneliness is knows it well : that permanent vague aching sensation in your chest when you haven’t meaningfully engaged with another human being for days or weeks or even months, and yet here you are, alone once again. When it finally comes, that moment when someone says something to you that goes beyond work orders or neighbourly pleasantries, or touches your hand, or hugs you, can be so powerful that you fear your legs will give way under you, or that you will start sobbing uncontrollably. But you manage - more or less - to maintain appearances.'

Following the murder of MP Jo Cox, who campaigned energetically on loneliness, the 'Jo Cox Commission On Loneliness' was set up by the Government last year and has recently published its recommendations and has given responsibility for 'loneliness' as an add on to the Minister for 'Sport and Civil Society,' Tracey Crouch, who will be acting as the champion of old people in England, but not Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Will Tracy Crouch follow in the footsteps of William Beveridge, who after the Second World War, set out to slay the five giants who stood in the way of social progress : Want, Disease, Squalor, Ignorance and Idleness. Will she slay the new Giant of Loneliness ?

In order to slay this new giant, will Tracy set her civil servants the task of addressing his historical roots ? 

Will they consider the fact that loneliness in Britain today has its roots in the 18th century ? That it is, to some extent, the negative corollary of the modern desire for individual freedom from the restrictions and constraints of traditional institutions and forms of life, like :
* religion
* family
* village
* tyrannical bosses

Will they consider the fact that loneliness in Britain today is also the negative corollary of the fact that British people have wanted to exercise greater choice over :
* their work
* the place where they live
* their moral and political beliefs

Will they consider the fact that loneliness in Britain today is the downside of this desire is the creation of the more mobile and restless individual people, who choose to opt out of traditional communities like the :
* extended family
* neighbourhood
* church
* union.

The answer to all these questions is, of course, "No." :
Brexit Britain in 2018 is not the optimistic, reconstructive Britain of 1945.
There is no real determination to solve social problems.
Tracey Crouch is no William Beveridge.

The numbers of old men and women living in loneliness will continue to increase and :

Britain will continue to be : No country for more and more lonely old men

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Farewell" to an old artist, the 'Lowry of the Potteries', Sid Kirkham who left behind a legacy of love

'An affectionate look at The Potteries through the eyes of Sid Kirkham' gives, with 69 of his paintings, a beautiful evocation of his memories of a Staffordshire boyhood in the 1950s.

Page views : 2876

A Google search reveals over 200 images of Sid's watercolours and a number of references to his work in recent years, but there is very little meat on the bones as to answering the question : who was Sid Kirkham ? Even the tribute to him published yesterday in Stoke-on-Trent's newspaper, 'The Sentinel' contained little more, but did quote his friend and colleague Alan Gerrard, of Theartbay Gallery, Fenton, who said : "Sid’s paintings of industrial depictions adorn the walls of so many, near and far, in terraces and mansions. His gift was the ability to story-tell through the medium of watercolour. Hence the North Staffordshire landscape became almost secondary at times, a backdrop to illustrations of play, affection, work, devotion, family life and other activities taking place within the painting."

We know that he was born during the Second World War in 1943. in Porthill, a prosperous suburb of Newcastle-under-Lyme. The Frith photos from 1955 give a good idea of the streets he would have played on when he was 12 years old. It was, however, the view from the surrounding fields overlooking the industrial powerhouse of Etruria and Shelton which would provide him for his inspiration to paint over 50 years later.

What he did between when he left school, probably when he was 15 or 16 in 1958/59 and when he retired, to take up painting at the age of 60 in 2003, remains a bit of a mystery, although in his appearance on BBC Midlands Today in 2009 he was described as : "A former company boss who was made redundant on his 60th birthday has forged a successful new career as an artist" and also as a former director of "the Tyre company" who had taught himself to paint 30 years before. It would be safe to assume that the company in question was the Michelin Tyre Company, based in Stoke-on-Trent. In addition, it indicates that he picked up his brushes for the first time in the 1980s and his pastime occupation as a painter couldn't have been further removed from his day time occupation in tyre manufacture.

Stanley Matthews, the legendary footballer, had been born in Stoke 28 years before Sid and lived in a terraced house in Seymour Street, Hanley, the third of four sons born to Jack Matthews, a local boxer who was also known as the 'Fighting Barber of Hanley.' He played for Stoke before Sid was born and returned to Stoke to play at the age of 46 in 1961 and was the inspiration behind Sid's paintings and the exhibition 'The Father of Football' in 2015, of which Sid said : "I tried to show that as a lad, he was brought up in a terraced house in Hanley. His father was a barber and he used to practise his football in the backyard. He would put a set of chairs or dustbins or whatever out, get a bundle of rags, tie sting round them and dribble for hours on end just to develop the skill."

Sid said :

"We all dream of doing something that we love doing, but very few of us have that opportunity. But I've been given that opportunity, late in life, but better late than never."

Britain is a little bit more of a country for an old lecturer called Noel Conway who edges towards achieving his 'Right to Die'

Noel Conway, who, at 68 years old, is scarce 'old', but wants to die, or rather, he wants the right to die at a time of his own choosing, but as the law stands in Britain at the moment, he cannot do this. If a doctor was to help him end his life, he would face 14 years in prison.

Noel has said : “The option of an assisted death should be available to me, here in this country, in my final six months of life – this is what I am fighting for. It would bring immense peace of mind and allow me to live my life to the fullest, enjoying my final months with my loved ones until I decide the time is right for me to go."

He wants this right because he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2014. His condition is incurable and he is not expected to live beyond the next 6 months. He has said : “I am going to die, and I have come to terms with this fact. But what I do not accept is being denied the ability to decide the timing and manner of my death. I am not prepared to suffer right to the end, nor do I want to endure a long, drawn-out death in a haze of morphine."

Noel is supported by 'Dignity in Dying' and other organisations, campaigning to change the 1961 Suicide Act. Last summer several hundred supporters staged a protest on a Thames river boat outside the Houses of Parliament after which he said at the time : “In the past months I have been struck by the number of people who, like me, want the right to choose how we die. Today has shown the huge strength of feeling of people who want the right to a dignified death.”

People like Noel, who seek help to end their lives, are currently forced to travel to a clinic in Switzerland and at the moment one person a fortnight travels to Dignitas from Britain to do just that.

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, said : “It is completely wrong that people who are of sound mind but terminally ill or incurably suffering are denied the choice to die with dignity. The deliberate extension of suffering as a matter of public policy is a stain on our humanity. The majority of the public want change but as long as Parliament is unwilling to act, it is up to brave individuals such as Noel to fight for all our rights. We will always stand with such courageous and public-spirited champions.”

Last year Noel's lawyers asked the Supreme Court to declare that : The blanket ban on assisted dying under the Suicide Act is contrary to the Human Rights Act. They argued that as a terminally ill, mentally competent adult, his right to a private life, which includes the right to make decisions on the end of his life, was unnecessarily restricted by current laws.

Noel's aim was and still is :

To bring about a change in the law that would legalise assisted dying for those who are terminally ill and are assessed as having six months or less to live.

The last time 'a right to die' case was considered in detail by the courts was in 2014 when the Supreme Court asked Parliament to reconsider the issue and after debating the subject, Parliament rejected making any changes to the law. Last October, three judges sitting at the High Court rejected his case.

Now, however, at the Court of Appeal, Sir Ernest Ryder (left) and Lord Justice Underhill, granted Noel a full appeal against the earlier ruling. No date has been set for the full hearing, but his lawyers asked for it to be listed quickly as the latest advice of his doctors is that he has “not much more” than six months to live.

Noel said : “I am pleased that my case will now proceed to the Court of Appeal. I brought this case not only for myself, but on behalf of all terminally ill people who believe they should have the right to die on their own terms. Our voices deserve to be heard. I have accepted that my illness will rob me of my life, but how it ends should be up to me. Why should I have to endure unbearable suffering and the possibility of a traumatic, drawn out death when there is an alternative that has been proven to work elsewhere?”

https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/feature/im-with-noel/

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Farewell" to a rare and remarkable old soldier called 'Doc' Rick Jolly

In 1999, in Argentina, at the age of 53, as Ex-Surgeon Commander Rick Jolly, leader of a team which saved the lives of hundreds of British and Argentinian land casualties in the Falklands War and on a visit to encourage reconciliation, said to the assembled Argentine veterans : "We are the people who understand how nasty and miserable war is."

In 2012 he recalled : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YmxwCnJv4A&t=1m0s

Rick, who has sadly died at the age of 71, was born following the end of the Second World War in 1946 in Hong Kong where his father served as a gunner in the Colony's Voluntary Defence Corps and had been a prisoner of the Japanese during the War and his mother was an Auxiliary Yeomanry ambulance driver. He was schooled in the Far East and on coming to Britain, was educated at Stonyhurst College and subsequently studied Medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College in London where he qualified as a doctor, at the age of 23, in 1969.

Rick's life would have probably followed a conventional course as a GP, if it had it not been for the fact that, when he was working as a houseman in his final year,  a senior colleague suggested he join the Royal Naval Reserve as a Royal Navy doctor. He followed the advice and joined the Reserve which he enjoyed "but found it a bit stiff and formal." As he recalled : "Then I tried the Royal Marines and right from the start I loved it. What I liked about them and the Paras, with whom I worked closely for many years, was that officers and men were required to do the same training. In fact, the officers were expected to do it a little bit faster and further." 

He became Medical Oficer to 42 Commando RM, then deployed in North Belfast at the height of 'The Troubles.' Their neighbours there were the men of the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, with whom he built a strong friendship. It was his first taste of action : "No textbook can prepare you for the aftermath of a bomb, nor how the sounds and smell can impact on you when you arrive to help. I was interested in the forensic effect of munitions so two or three times a week I'd go to the morgue and take pictures and use them to train my own battlefield first-aid teams in 42 Commando. It became known as 'Doc Jolly's Horror Show.' It sounds gruesome, but a battlefield first-aider can't be trained to deal with bullet wounds unless he knows what a bullet wound looks like."


Like many servicemen and women, his life changed irrevocably with the outbreak of the Falklands War in 1982, which began in such a matter of fact way with : "We were plucked out of our pre-Easter leave and told to prepare to go to the Falklands. With the rank of acting surgeon commander, I went on an advance party on the SS Canberra."


The Ajax Bay Field Hospital was set up a few days into the War. Initially, it was on a ship out to sea, but Doc Jolly wanted to be nearer to the wounded. Within 24 hours his team turned a disused slaughter house into a fully functioning, if incredibly, basic, hospital. ­Rick credited his success to his team which had to act fast, cleaning wounds, amputating limbs, treating dreadful burns, removing bullets and patching up the walking wounded before they were transferred to a hospital ship, the SS Uganda.


During the three-and-a-half week ­conflict, despite working in terrible conditions, with poor lighting and close to two unexploded bombs, only three of the 580 British soldiers and Royal Marines wounded in action during the land battles subsequently died of their wounds. For this reason it was affectionately known as the 'Red and Green Life Machine' because of the parachute medics wore a red beret and the Royal Marines medics wore green.

He recalled : “I said to the boys at the start that we are here for one thing only, to make sure anyone who comes to us with an injury leaves us alive. The rest is irrelevant. We certainly achieved that.” "We lifted morale among the fighting soldiers because we were their friends and they knew it. Word got around that if they arrived alive at the field hospital they would leave alive."

What made the achievement even more remarkable was the fact that the hospital was under constant threat from Argentinian ­bombers and fighter jets and his insistence that 200 Argentinian casualties were also treated.

Offered a weapon to carry day and night, he chose not to because he was there to save lives, not take lives. In addition, hospitals usually had red crosses painted on their roofs to identify them to enemy planes, but because his hospital was next to ammunition dumps, which were ­legitimate targets, he insisted it was “not cricket” for them to be ­protected, so the cross was left off. In fact : “My men showed incredible bravery when the aircraft came into attack. They’d lean over and cover the patient they were working on with their own body until the raid passed and then get back to work."


At the height of the Battle of Goose Green four bombs were dropped in the area, killing five people as the hospital was swamped with severely injured soldiers. Two of the bombs got stuck in the ­hospital roof, but failed to ­detonate but Rick and his team continued to operate despite fears that they could have gone off at any moment. “We realised the bombs in the roof were on timers and could go off at any moment. We worked out the maximum timer was 37 hours, so I said let’s withdraw, sandbag the bombs and get on with our jobs. Then the casualties from Goose Green started streaming in. We treated 47 casualties, some with terrible injuries, but they all survived. After most had been treated I said, "By the way, we’ve got two unexploded bombs in the back. They could be on 37-hour timers, but we’re on 46 hours now so we’re all right". Everybody roared with laughter.”

Interviewed at the time, Rick at 36, said : https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/commander-rick-jolly-is-interviewed-he-talks-about-news-footage/112227696

Rick later said : "Our attitude was simple : to treat the injured Argentinians in a way we would like to be treated. Before the battle of Trafalgar Nelson wrote a prayer in his cabin, saying : ‘May humanity after victory be the ­predominant feature in the British Fleet.’ As a naval officer those words meant a lot to me so looking after the enemy’s wounded as though they were your own was instinctive. People assume you’ve got to hate your enemy but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The only people who know what you’re going through are the people on the other side." He recalled : "We treated many Argentine Special Forces as well and we even persuaded Argentinian soldiers to give blood to help us save their injured."

In 2012 Rick recalled his favourite patient had been a terrified fighter pilot, rescued from the freezing waters of the South Atlantic who turned out to be the same pilot who let his unexploded bombs on the hospital roof : “His name was Ricardo Lucero. He was coming in to attack one of our ships when he got a missile right up his tail pipe. He ejected at the last minute, badly broke his knee and was fished out of the water. When he came to us I said to him,"Welcome, you’re a pilot, I’m an aviation doctor and we admire you. You’ve got this broken knee and we are going to try to mend it." I told him I would send a message to his wife in Cordoba to let her know he was OK and he thanked me. During his treatment I made a bet with him that he would never fly again but he proved me wrong. Yet it was very sad when I heard he’d died three years ago after a midair collision.”

Rick insisted that all his men follow his example and such was the esprit de corps withing his team that they were happy to do so, treating the wounded enemy with complete respect as the conflict raged across the Falklands in South Georgia, Goose Green and Port Stanley. After the Sir Galahad was hit, killing 48 soldiers and crewmen, the tiny field hospital was deluged with more than 120 injured men.

In 2012, with complete self-effacement he described his being winched from a helicopter and saving two men from the sea : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llxHm3k850s&t=0m10s


Rick also played a role with those who would not be going home. At Ajax Bay, the dozen dead Paras from Goose Green were lined up on stretchers side by side on a concrete strip. It was a grim, sad business as their clothes were cut away and their personal possessions bagged to be returned to their relatives and as Surgeon Commander he had to examine each body, pronounce on cause of death and complete a field death certificate. He crouched as he went from man to man and called out his conclusions to a clerk, who scribbled them down : gunshot wounds to the heart, multiple wounds to chest and abdomen, blast injury. On the face of the dead Colonel ‘H’ Jones, the 2 Para Commander whose heroic, but fatal dash, had played a large part in breaking the Argentinian resistance, he saw a quizzical smile. His eyes were open, but he looked peaceful and single bullet had killed him. ‘I closed his eyes gently. Then we lifted him, placed his body into a plastic shroud and then into a body bag.’

Rick, who spent a total of 25 years in the Royal Marines and the Fleet Air Arm was awarded the OBE in the months following the War, but what was more surprising was the honour that came in 1999 on a trip to Argentina with someone he considered, a friend, Prince Charles. He recalled : “Before the trip I wrote ahead to the Argentinian authorities saying we’d operated on just under 80 of their men and asking what became of them ? Then when I got there I walked into this room full of all these familiar faces. It was all the people we’d treated. I was presented with the 'Order of May', their equivalent to the OBE. I ­accepted it on behalf of the work of all my medics.” In fact, because it was a foreign decoration, Rick had to write to the Queen for permission to wear it and was personally authorized by her to wear it 'on all occasions.'

He once said : 

“Over the years I’ve been asked what I’d do if I had to choose who to treat first, an Argentinian or a Brit. My answer was always whoever needed attention more urgently. As far as I am concerned you have to be able to look into your soul and like what you find there.”