- Rupert Downes
Infobox Military Person
name=Rupert Downes
lived=10 February 1885 -Death date and age|1945|3|5|1885|2|10|df=yes
placeofbirth=Mitcham, South Australia
placeofdeath= nearCairns, Queensland
caption=Major General Rupert Downes
nickname=
allegiance=flagicon|AustraliaAustralia
branch=Australian Army
serviceyears=1908-1945
rank=Major General
commands=2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance
3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance
unit=
battles=World War I :
*Sinai and Palestine Campaign
*Battle of Gallipoli World War II
awards=Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George Volunteer Decoration Mention in Despatches (6)Major General Rupert Major Downes CMG KStJ VD MD MS FRACS (10 February 1885 -5 March 1945 ) was anAustralia nsoldier ,general ,surgeon andhistorian in the first half of the 20th century. He rose to the rank of Major General before being killed in a plane crash duringWorld War II .Education and early life
Rupert Major Downes, CMG KStJ VD MD MS FRACS was born on
10 February 1885 inMitcham, South Australia , the youngest child ofMajor General Major Francis Downes and his wife Helen Maria, formerly Chamberlin. Rupert was educated atHaileybury, Melbourne andOrmond College (University of Melbourne) , graduating with aBachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1907,Doctor of Medicine in 1911 andMaster of Surgery in 1912. [http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A080356b.htm 'Downes, Rupert Major (1885 - 1945)', Australian Dictionary of Biography] ]Downes married Doris Mary Robb on
20 November 1913 at St John's Church,Toorak, Victoria . They had three children: Rosemary Major, born 1914; Valerie Major, born 1918; and John Rupert Major, born 1922.While still at school, he joined the Victorian Horse Artillery (St Kilda Battery) as a trumpeter. Soon after graduating in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1907 he enlisted in the militia (part-time army). He was commissioned as a
captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps on1 July 1908 and was promoted tomajor on26 march 1913 ."AMF Gradation List of Officers",18 January 1945 ]Great War
Downes joined the First AIF on
2 October 1914 assuming command of the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance with the rank oflieutenant colonel . Soon after taking command the unit was renamed the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance. After training the unit at the Broadmeadows army camp near Melbourne, he took it toEgypt for further training and then to Gallipoli, where he served with it for much of the eight-month Gallipoli campaign.After the evacuation of Gallipoli, Downes was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed
Anzac Mounted Division , with the temporary rank of fullcolonel . This became substantive on20 February 1917 . He combined this with the post of ADMS AIF Egypt from6 September 1916 . On10 August 1917 , he became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of theDesert Mounted Corps .For his service in the
Sinai and Palestine Campaign , Downes was appointed Companion of theOrder of St Michael and St George on1 January 1918 . [LondonGazette|issue=30450|supp=yes|startpage=6|date=1 January 1918 |accessdate=2008-08-02] [LondonGazette|issue=30514|supp=yes|startpage=1802|date=5 February 1918 |accessdate=2008-08-02] He was also mentioned in dispatches six times. [LondonGazette|issue=29845|supp=yes|startpage=11807|date=1 December 1916 |accessdate=2008-08-02]Doris travelled to Egypt to visit her husband in 1917. On her return journey to Australia in 1917, her ship, the P&O liner "Mongolia" struck a mine and was sunk in the
Indian Ocean with the loss of 23 lives. [ [http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/pando.html Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company / P&O Line] ] She survived the sinking and was appointed and Officer of theOrder of the British Empire for her work among soldiers' families. [LondonGazette|issue=30935|supp=yes|startpage=11772|date=4 October 1918 |accessdate=2008-08-02]Interwar years
Downes became a
colonel in the Australian Army Medical Corps on8 January 1920 . He was DDMS (head)of the 3rd Military District (Victoria) from1 July 1921 to26 June 1933 and Officer in Charge ofVoluntary Aid Detachment s from1 July 1921 to15 March 1940 . Downes was honorary surgeon to theGovernor-General of Australia from1 July 1927 to30 Jun 1931 . On20 August 1934 he became Director General of Medical Services, the Army's most senior medical officer. Downes lectured onmedical ethics at theUniversity of Melbourne . He wrote the section on the Sinai and Palestine campaign in Volume I of the Official history of the Australian Army Medical Services. [ [http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/chapter.asp?volume=13 Volume I – Gallipoli, Palestine and New Guinea] ]Downes became an honorary consulting surgeon at the
Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne andRoyal 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 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 became State commissioner (head) of the St John Ambulance Brigade, which he led for an Australian record period of 25 years; and he was president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years. He was appointed a Commander of theVenerable Order of Saint John In 1929 and a Knight of Grace in 1937.World War II
In 1939, Downes began a tour of military and other medical centres in
India , theMiddle East , Britain and theUnited States . The outbreak of war forced him to curtail the North American leg of his tour, and return to Australia in October 1939.Downes foresaw a major war, fought in the islands to the north of Australia. While in London, he took steps to obtain the services as consultants of two eminent Australian physicians, the surgeon Sir Thomas Dunhill and
Neil Hamilton Fairley , an expert on tropical diseases.Downes pressed for the construction of major military hospitals in the capital cities. He argued that after the war they should be handed over to the Repatriation Commission for the care of sick and disabled ex-service personnel. Despite strong opposition on the grounds of cost, Downes won his case in October 1940. Time vindicated his judgment: the major military hospitals in the State capital cities, for instance the vast
Concord Repatriation General Hospital ,Austin Hospital, Melbourne and Greenslopes Hospital, Brisbane, stand in tribute to his foresightedness.Downes was appointed director of medical services (DMS), AIF (Middle East), but
General SirThomas Blamey had already appointedMajor General Samuel Burston to that post. Instead, the Minister of the Army,Percy Spender appointed Downes Inspector General of Medical Services (IGMS). As IGMS he toured extensively, visiting all the Australian States and overseas locations where Australian troops had been sent, including Papua and New Guinea, Malaya, the Middle East and North Africa as well as the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), India and East Africa.When Blamey reorganised the Army on his return to Australia in 1942, he appointed Burston as Director General of Medical Services. Downes became DMS of the Second Army on
6 April 1942 . He joined the Second AIF as amajor general on27 June 1942 , receiving the AIF serial number VX57673. [ [http://www.ww2roll.gov.au/script/veteran.asp?ServiceID=A&VeteranID=465312 WW2 Nominal Roll] ]He held this post until
22 August 1944 . Now nearly sixty, he accepted an invitation to write the medical history of Australia in the war. In March 1945, he decided to accompanyMajor General George Alan Vasey to New Guinea, where Vasey's 6th Division had encountered an atabrine resistant strain ofmalaria in theAitape-Wewak campaign .On
5 March 1945 theRAAF Lockheed Hudson aircraft Downes was travelling in crashed into the sea about 400 yards out from Machan's Beach, just north of the mouth of the Barron River nearCairns . Downes was killed along with all ten other Australian service personnel on board , including Vasey. The Mulgrave Shire Council erected a plaque in a brick memorial wall to commemorate the eleven lives lost. [ [http://home.brisnet.org.au/~dunn/5mar45.htm Crash of a Hudson into the sea at Machan's Beach, just north of the Barron River, killing Major General George Alan Vasey] ]Downes became the third most senior Australian officer to die in
World War II , afterGeneral Sir Cyril Brudenell White andLieutenant General Henry Douglas Wynter .Legacy
Downes was recovered and was buried in
Cairns War Cemetery with full military honours. He was survived by his wife and two daughters, his son John having died in 1933 frommeningitis . His papers are in theAustralian War Memorial .The
Royal Australasian College of Surgeons established the triennial Rupert Downes Memorial Lecture in his honour. The subject of the Lecture is related to some aspect or aspects of military surgery, medical equipment (military and civil), the surgery of children, neurosurgery, general surgery, medical ethics or medical history; these being subjects in which Major General Downes was particularly interested.In 2008 a book-length biography of Downes by the Canberra historian Dr Ian Howie-Willis is due for release. It will be jointly published under the title "Surgeon and General: A Life of Major General Rupert Downes 1885-1945" by Australian Military History Publications and the Army History Unit.
Awards and Decorations
Rupert Downes Memorial Lecturers
* 1950 S.R. Burston "Some Medical Aspects of Atomic Warfare"
* 1954 A.S. Walker "The Following Wind of History"
* 1957 F.K. Norris "Be strong and of good Courage"
* 1961 Sir Albert Coates "The Doctor in the Services"
* 1965 D. Waterson "Œsophageal Replacement in Pædiatric Surgery"
* 1970 J.H. Louw "The Scientific Method in Surgery"
* 1972 H.E. Beardmore "Pædiatric Surgery - Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"
* 1976 P.P. Rickham "Nephroblastoma - a new Look at an old Problem"
* 1978 C.M. Gurner "Military Medical Preparedness"
* 1980 D.G. Hamilton "One hundred Years of Pædiatric Surgery in Sydney"
* 1983 G.B. Ong "The trifacetted Nature of Surgery in Hong Kong"
* 1988 B.A. Smithurst "Distinguished Australian Military Surgeons"
* 1990 Patricia K. Donahoe "The Development of Tumour Inhibitors"
* 1994 General SirPhillip Bennett "Medical Aspects of Australia’s Defence"
* 1996 Professor Averil Mansfield "Arterio-venous Malformations and their Treatment"
* 1998 D. Trunkey "I am giddy, Expectation whirls me round"
* 2000 A. Wyn Beasley "Of Scurvy and Shipwreck - the Dutch Discovery of Australasia"
* 2002 Colonel D. Beard "The Music of Warfare"
* 2005 Robert Pearce "Trust me, Claudius"References
External Links
[http://www.surgeons.org/Content/NavigationMenu/WhoWeAre/AwardsLecturesandPrizes/rupert_downes.pdf Rupert Downes Memorial Lecturers]
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