Philip Newman

At the outbreak of the Second World War Philip Newman was posted as a surgical specialist to the 12th Casualty Clearing Station. His unit went to France with the British Expeditionary Force and ended up in Dunkirk in May 1940. For ten days before the port was captured, he worked in an emergency surgical unit treating the wounded from the retreating British and French armies. He stayed on as the senior officer in charge of the patients who were too seriously injured to be evacuated and was...See more

At the outbreak of the Second World War Philip Newman was posted as a surgical specialist to the 12th Casualty Clearing Station. His unit went to France with the British Expeditionary Force and ended up in Dunkirk in May 1940. For ten days before the port was captured, he worked in an emergency surgical unit treating the wounded from the retreating British and French armies. He stayed on as the senior officer in charge of the patients who were too seriously injured to be evacuated and was awarded the DSO. He was held as a prisoner of war in Belgium, France and Germany for twenty months, then escaped through France, Spain and Gibraltar, arriving back in England in May 1942 and was awarded the MC. He returned to the continent in June 1944 serving as a surgeon with the British army during the campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation. After the war he continued to practice as an orthopaedic surgeon at The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and at The Middlesex Hospital in London, where in 1962 he operated on Sir Winston Churchill for a fractured femur. Before retiring in 1976 he became president of The British Orthopaedic Association. In retirement he wrote this remarkable memoir, as a tribute to the French patriots who had aided his escape. It was originally published in 1983 under the title Safer Than a Known Way. Philip Newman died in 1994. See less