The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
Uberi, Papua, 1942-10. Members of the surgical team attached to 2/4th Field Ambulance carry out the team's first operation, the setting of a fractured femur caused by a gunshot wound in a soldier who has been carried back from the front on a stretcher for three days by a native Papuan carrier team. The surgeon for the operation is VX39117 Captain Douglas Robert Leslie (? fourth from left), while the anaesthetist is NX34655 Captain Alan Oliver Watson (not in view), the unit Dental Officer, who is being given his first practical lesson in the administration of a general anaesthetic by another Medical Officer (MO), NX70195 Captain Alan Victor Day (not in view). The anaesthetic they are using consists of ether from a bottle whose label indicates that it was first issued to an AIF field ambulance in France in 1918. The operating table is a makeshift piece of bush handicraft fashioned out of cut-down saplings, while the sole illumination for the operation is provided by a hurricane lamp (not in view).
Uberi, Papua, 1942-10. In the first operation performed by the surgical team attached to 2/4th Field Ambulance, a Medical Officer (MO), VX39117 Captain Douglas Robert Leslie (centre, left), sets a fra
Myola 1 or 2, Papua, 1942-10. Major Henry Oswald Gerald ('Hal') Selle (left), a Medical Officer (MO) serving with the 2/6th Field Ambulance, assists the surgeon VX39117 Captain Douglas Robert Leslie (
Myola 1 or 2, Papua, 1942-10. Members of a surgical team carry out an operation to repair a wound to the left thigh in an Australian soldier. The surgeon for the operation is VX39117 Captain Douglas R
Myola 1 or 2, Papua, 1942-10. Major Henry Oswald Gerald ('Hal') Selle (centre), a Medical Officer (MO) serving with the 2/6th Field Ambulance, assists the surgeon VX39117 Captain Douglas Robert Leslie
Probably Efogi North, Papua, 1942-10. Members of the surgical team of the 2/4th Field Ambulance perform an operation in the tent that serves as the operating theatre at the unit's Main Dressing Stati
Myola 1, Papua, 1942-10. NX34655 Captain Alan Oliver Watson, a Dental Officer serving with the 2/4th Field Ambulance, administers a general anaesthetic to a patient during an operation in the tent tha
