A very complex, informative, detailed book. I personally found the detail too much, but it was an interesting account of the MO.
There was a lot of abbreviations to military life and much geographical names in the French country which unfortunately I have not much knowledge. I can understand that readers who are of that era or knowledgeable readers would certainly appeal to this account. There has been much research and recounting of memories that have made this book.
I will give it a sore from my perspective but actually many will give it a different score which I understand.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

This book was VERY informative. History isn't normally my go-to genre of book, but I do love the topic of medical careers / medical stories. So I figured why not!
And I'm so glad I did!

Keep in mind that this is a memoir, so it is a tad difficult for me to review this in some ways. I often feel like leaving a less than amazing review for memoirs is in a way discrediting the person's life experience / story.

This book was indeed well-written and kept my interest quite easily. I left this book feeling like I learned quite a bit about this era / time period / war in general. I felt for Parker's experiences and hardships.

This isn't a book that one can like or dislike, exactly: Parker's memoir, proper, falls into the category "valuable primary source document" and consequently isn't to be evaluated on any of the criteria one normally applies to a history of WWI or any aspect thereof.

It's remarkably revealing, often in ways that Parker surely didn't intend. I was struck, for example, by the passages in which he details some rugby matches between officers and men during the post-Armistice occupation of Germany:

In the first minute we scored behind the posts. Thwaites took the kick. The ball sailed straight for the goal, and then unaccountably curved outside the left-hand post. One minute from time we still held the lead but, thirty seconds later, the CT got over in the corner and our supporters gasped with relief as the kick failed.


The quality of attention here is no different from the quality of attention Parker gives to the casualties he treats, right down to the quality of overt emotion. (In fact, Parker devotes at least as much space to bureaucratic and chain-of-command matters -- COs he did or didn't get along with; army stupidities such as a rebuke received one day for failing to requisition supplies that a few days earlier he had been specifically told not to requisition -- as he does to the men he cares for.

Or take this bit, also from Germany after the Armistice:

One of our officers had been a prisoner and he used to make a practice of hitting the first German he saw on the way home, exclaiming at the same time You made me eat grass’ or ‘You spat on me behind the barbed wire’. Sometimes the German would hit back, and a good scrap would follow.

It's hard to read descriptions of rugby games (okay, I skimmed, because those passages were frankly boring) or about the punching of random Germans and ensuing "good scraps" without seeing a huge neon sign that says "UNPROCESSED TRAUMA INCOMING." Not for nothing does Parker mention that the one time he wept during the war, he took it as proof positive that he was physically ill -- I mean, why else would he cry? (He had trench fever.) The phrase "toxic masculinity" gets a lot of play these days, for good reason.

I don't mean to say that Parker struck me as callous. The stupidities and failures that anger him most are the ones that get in the way of caring for his patients -- for example, the powder used to treat trench foot being in short supply. He remarks on how the soldiers' garments -- specifically, the long underwear/trousers/puttees layering on their lower legs -- were hospitable to lice. More than once he lets some rule slide out of compassion for the soldier who would otherwise suffer. Most tellingly, perhaps, the further along he gets in the war, the shorter his temper seems to grow.

Lorraine Evans's ancillary material is in my opinion a mixed bag. She supplies a useful introduction to the organization and work of the Royal Army Medical Corps, as well as a number of appendices, including such fascinating items as the classification of wounds used by the Royal Army Medical Corps, and a number of photographs and drawings (medics at work in trenches and hospitals; ambulance trains; dressing stations and stretcher bearers). Somehow, in all my reading about WWI, I've never before happened on a clear explanation of why the trenches were mud pits. (Two words: water table.) But a book like this one really doesn't need a detailed chronology of battles. A general reader with an interest in the war -- me for example -- can follow Palmer's narrative well enough without, and a serious historian of the war will have all that information at their fingertips already.

This isn't the first book anyone should read if they're looking for an introduction to WWI, or even for an introduction to medicine and surgery as practiced in the war. (Emily Mayhew's Wounded is that book.) But it will be valuable to readers who interested enough to dig into primary source material.

Lorraine Evans' The Life of a Medical Officer in World War One: The Experiences of Captain Harry Gordon Parker presents the memoirs of Captain Parker for his world war I service for the British army as part of the Royal Army Medical Corps alongside supplementary materials to contextualize the account.

In Evans' Author's Note, they state the purpose of the book is to "give the reader an informed outlook on the medical process at hand." (Pg. IX). And in this goal the book amply succeeds, particularly in the supplementary materials detailing the wound care process from the front line to the homefront, both in text and with additional art and photographs showing some of the different stages.

However, the memoir section is clearly written with the intent to entertain, less than to record history. Gordon Parker presents himself as an 'old hand' suffering the vicissitudes of red tape and army life. Most of the chapters of the memoir discuss where Gordon Parker was assigned and his difficulties in getting to these points with a vignette about that time to highlight Gordon Parker's moral superiority, humor or pathos. He served for the full duration of the war, and the memoir traces his service from location to location with some interruptions for leave or illness.

For a work billed as The Life of a Medical Officer in WWI I had anticipated more of a focus on day to day life of medical treatment in the army, especially tied to large battles. Gordon Parker does discuss these things, but seems much more interested in storytelling. Fortunately, the supplements and make up for this short coming. Included are timelines of the development of the Army Medical Services and WW1 battles of Flanders and France. Gloassaries for place names, military abbreviations and British Army wound classifications. There is a section detailing the dreaded 'trench foot' and brief history of the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Manchester Regiment.

Of most interest to those with an abiding interest in World War I, but those seeking an understanding of western front wound care would be better served by: E.R. Mayhew's Wounded : a new history of the Western Front in World War I or Leo Van Bergen Before my helpless sight : suffering, dying, and military medicine on the Western Front, 1914-1918.

The author has done a terrific job of translating an account from the time into an ordered and engaging representation of a conflict which we must never forget. Some of the information seems unfathomable now, with modern medicine advancing so much since then, and this makes the book more than a memoir of war but also an important social and medical history. Really well written and with plenty of useful reference material to delve into.

Heartbreaking, inspirational, it tells of a doctor at war and is all the more shocking for the quiet way he tells of young men who were injured and died. No dramatisation or exaggeration, just the facts as he saw them. We also see the role of medical personnel, some good, some not so, and their endless struggle with the nonsensical red tape in the army.

If I may quote from his conclusion 'Tending the wounded, in the abstract, is a valiant occupation, but the reality is far from idea, as shown on the battlefields of the Western Front. It is a trade with no romantic side, a business of dirt and sorrow, of danger from fire with no chance of retribution, such as the ordinary soldier has against his enemy. It is work not suddenly of heroic deeds, but of stolid endurance in the face of great and unrelenting adversity'.

Mr Parker was an exemplary, kindly and modest doctor, who did his utmost for the men in his care. I felt privileged to read his service record which has been produced in a sympathetic style, with a minimum of abbreviations so that it is very readable, but also using the language of the day which makes it very authentic..

Thank you to NetGalley and Pen & Sword for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.