Rupert Downes

Major General Rupert Major Downes, (10 February 1885 – 5 March 1945) was an Australian soldier, surgeon and historian.

The son of British Army officer Major Francis Downes, Downes joined the Army as a trumpeter while he was still at school. He attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with his medical degrees in 1907 and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1911. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1908, and after the outbreak of the First World War he joined the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1914 as its youngest lieutenant colonel. He served in the Gallipoli campaign, and was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed Anzac Mounted Division in 1916, which he combined with the post of ADMS AIF Egypt. In 1917, he became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps. After the war, he wrote articles on medical aspects of the Sinai and Palestine campaign, and the section on the campaign for the ''Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918''.

Returning to Australia, Downes became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital. He became a foundation fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne, writing the course textbook. He was also Victorian state commissioner of the St John Ambulance Brigade, which he led for 25 years, and president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years.

In 1934 Downes became Director General of Medical Services, the Australian Army's most senior medical officer, with the rank of major general. He oversaw the construction of major military hospitals in the capital cities. In 1944 he accepted a commission to edit the medical series volumes of the '' Official History of Australia in the War of 1939–1945'' but he was killed in a plane crash in March 1945, before he could begin the work.

Education and early life

Rupert Major Downes was born on 10 February 1885 in Mitcham, South Australia. He was the youngest of fifteen children of Colonel Major Francis Downes—a British Army officer—and his wife Helen Maria, Chamberlin, only five of whom survived to adulthood. After service in the Crimean War, Colonel Francis Downes served as commandant of the Colonial forces of South Australia and Victoria and retired with the rank of major general in the Australian Army in 1902.

Rupert was educated at Haileybury in Melbourne as a boarding school student. In March 1901, at the age of 16, he joined the Victorian Horse Artillery (St Kilda Battery), a part-time volunteer militia unit, as a trumpeter. In May 1901 he served in this capacity at the opening of the inaugural Parliament of Australia by The Duke of Cornwall and York at the Royal Exhibition Building. He left the Army in 1903. That year he became a medical student at the University of Melbourne. A good result in his first year examinations earned him a residential scholarship to Ormond College, and he graduated with the double degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1907.

Soon after graduation, Downes re-enlisted in the Army. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 1 July 1908 and promoted to major on 26 March 1913. He served his residency at Melbourne Hospital and became a general practitioner in Malvern, Victoria, but soon returned to the university to pursue a doctorate. His Doctor of Medicine (MD) thesis, entitled "The anatomical relations of the thymus, especially considered in regard to thymic death with an account of cases of abnormality", was accepted in 1911. He also did the coursework for a Master of Surgery (MS), and this degree was conferred in 1912.

Downes married Doris Mary Robb on 20 November 1913 at St John's Church, Toorak, Victoria. They had three children, all given the same middle name as Rupert: Rosemary Major, born in 1914; Valerie Major, born in March 1918; and John Rupert Major, born in 1922.

First World War

Downes joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 2 October 1914, assuming command of the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance with the rank of lieutenant colonel; this made him the youngest officer of that rank in the AIF at the time. Soon after his taking command, the unit was renamed the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance. After training at the Broadmeadows Army Camp near Melbourne, the unit embarked for Egypt on the transport SS ''Chilka'' on 2 February 1915.

After the early fighting in the Gallipoli campaign, the need for reinforcements became acute, and the commander of British Troops in Egypt, Lieutenant General Sir John Maxwell, decided to ship the light horse brigades to the Anzac Cove lodgement without their horses. The 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance departed Alexandria for Anzac on 17 May 1915. It moved to Lemnos in June, where it operated a hospital, but returned to Anzac for the August offensive. Downes missed this operation, as he remained on Lemnos supervising the hospital until he returned to Anzac on 11 August. He remained with his unit until 13 November, when he departed for Lemnos and then Egypt.

After the evacuation of Gallipoli, Downes was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed Anzac Mounted Division on 15 March 1916. He was given the temporary rank of colonel. Downes combined this post with that of ADMS AIF Egypt from 6 September. Downes therefore had to travel back and forth to Cairo. In November 1916, a Deputy ADMS was appointed to assist him.

Medically speaking, the health of the Anzac Mounted Division was remarkably good, but the Sinai Peninsula still had its challenges—especially for medical officers unfamiliar with conditions in the Middle East. The Battle of Romani revealed the importance of transportation in an area with few roads. A poorly organised casualty evacuation effort caused preventable hardship and suffering for the wounded, and resulted in several avoidable deaths. An inquiry into the matter was held after the battle, at which Downes was called to testify. The Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), General Sir Archibald Murray, declined to assign blame to any individual, but implemented the inquiry's recommendations for improving the casualty evacuation process.

There was also the heat, and the problem of supplying adequate quantities of potable water. Diseases included cholera, typhus and bilharzia. To combat these, Downes obtained the services of Lieutenant Colonel Charles James Martin, and created the Anzac Field Laboratory to investigate these diseases. As a result of aggressively tackling the problem, Downes reduced rates of disease among Australian and New Zealand troops well below those of British troops serving alongside them. Martin advanced the notion that heat exhaustion and heat stroke were not the result of defective evaporation, as had previously been believed, but simply a matter of failing to drink enough water. He in turn converted Downes to the belief that "provided water is available in adequate amount the heat mechanism of the body can defy all ordinary climatic ranges of temperature even under conditions of hard work."

With so many people and horses, sanitation was a challenge, and discipline in this area was initially slack, as it had been with disastrous results at Gallipoli. Downes took measures to improve the situation. Although not normally one to engage in disputes, Downes repeatedly clashed with the British medical officers of the EEF, especially the Director of Medical Services (DMS) EEF, Colonel Alfred Keble, whose attitudes Downes regarded as endangering his troops. Downes's rank of colonel became substantive on 20 February 1917.
Doris travelled to Egypt to visit her husband in March 1917. By June, Rupert was becoming increasingly immersed in preparations for the Third Battle of Gaza and Doris, who had become pregnant during her visit, decided to return home. On her return journey to Australia in June 1917, her ship, the P&O liner RMS ''Mongolia'' struck a mine and sank in the Indian Ocean with the loss of 23 lives. Doris spent 11 hours in a crowded lifeboat, before being rescued by a passing steamer, which took her to Bombay. From there she eventually made her way back to Australia via Singapore and Batavia. In 1918 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her volunteer work among soldiers' families as secretary of the Friendly Union of Soldiers' Wives and Mothers.

On 10 August 1917, Downes became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps, while still retaining the post of ADMS AIF Egypt. He was therefore answerable to three superiors—to Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel, the commander of the Desert Mounted Corps and AIF Egypt; to Major General Neville Howse, the DMS AIF in London; and to the new British DMS EEF, Major General William Travers Swan. As the EEF advanced into Palestine, the major medical problem remained transportation. During the operations in the Es Salt area, Downes experimented with the delivery of drugs and medical supplies by air. In the Jordan valley in 1918, Downes was confronted with an epidemic of malaria and vigorous preventative and prophylactic efforts were required to bring it under control.

In October 1918, with victory near, Downes was confronted by his most serious medical crisis. Damascus contained over 3,000 sick and wounded Turkish soldiers, many of them in appalling condition, who were now prisoners of war. He appointed the DADMS of the Australian Mounted Division, Major W. Evans, as Principal Medical Officer of Damascus, and gave him orders to organise the medical arrangements, bury the dead and provide care for the living. The task was made more difficult by the poor communications and transport shortages, which hampered the delivery of supplies and evacuation of the hospitals; by shortages of medical units; and by the actions of Lieutenant Colonel T. E. Lawrence, who was more concerned with establishing the political authority of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca over Damascus. At this point the Desert Mounted Corps itself began to experience epidemic diseases, particularly of bronchopneumonia, cholera and malaria, putting the medical services under great strain. Through extraordinary measures, including the diversion of lighthorsemen and motor vehicles to medical units, Downes managed to evacuate the sick to Beirut, and the crisis abated.

For his service in the Sinai and Palestine campaign, Downes was mentioned in despatches four times, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George on 1 January 1918. His citation read:

Interwar years

Returning to Australia, Downes was discharged from the AIF, but remained in the Army as a reservist. He became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital. He was a founding fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and became president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935. He established a reputation as one of Melbourne's leading paediatric surgeons, but found himself in disagreement with certain medical practices then in vogue. In a 1922 paper published in the ''Medical Journal of Australia'', he examined 100 cases of tonsillectomy in children, and concluded that the majority of them were unnecessary. It would be another four decades before the medical profession in Australia accepted this. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne from the late 1930s until his death in 1945, and wrote a course textbook on the subject, entitled ''Medical Ethics'', which was published in 1942.

Along with his medical writings, Downes wrote a book-length section on the Sinai and Palestine campaign for Volume I of the '' Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918'', in the late 1920s under the direction of Medical Series editor Graham Butler. The two men had discussed writing a medical history of the campaign during a visit Butler made to Egypt in 1918 to inspect the medical records of the AIF, and again in France in 1919. Downes published an article in the ''Journal of the British Army Medical Corps'' entitled "The Tactical Employment of the Medical Services in a Cavalry Corps" in 1926, which he expanded into one of the chapters of the ''Official History''. His manuscript proved too long for the proposed book, and was extensively edited by Butler before it was published in 1930. Downes was instrumental in supporting Butler's Medical Series and helped obtain the funding necessary to complete the project.

Downes was chairman of the Masseurs' Registration Board, a councillor of the Victorian division of the Australian Red Cross, and chairman of the Red Cross National Council. He was Victorian State Commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade for 25 years. He was also president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years, and chairman of the Victorian Civil Ambulance Service from 1937 to 1938. In 1930, he was appointed a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John, and became a Knight of Grace of the order in 1937. At the same time, Doris became an Officer of the Order of Saint John, in recognition of her fundraising efforts for the Victorian branch. She later served as a member of its council from 1942 to 1953. Downes was instrumental in persuading the state branches to come together as a national organisation, arguing that without a national body, the organisation would be eclipsed by the Red Cross.

Downes remained in the Army throughout the inter-war period. He became a colonel in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 8 January 1920. He was DDMS of the 3rd Military District (Victoria) from 1 July 1921 to 26 June 1933, and Officer in Charge of Voluntary Aid Detachments from 1 July 1921 to 15 March 1940. He also served as head of the medical services of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Although the RAAF had become a separate service in 1921, the Minister for Defence decided in 1927 that the Army's Director General of Medical Services (DGMS) should be responsible for the administration of the RAAF's medical services. In this capacity, Downes was answerable to the Air Board. He was also honorary surgeon to the Governor General of Australia

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