Despite Captivity. A Doctor's Life as Prisoner of War. by John Borrie.
Despite Captivity. A Doctor's Life as Prisoner of War. by John Borrie.
Publisher: Kimber, 1975, First Edition. SCARCE.
Very good hardcover and jacket. Brown cloth boards have some fading to edges, no inscriptions, small bookseller's label inside front board. Pages very good, minor marks. Price-clipped jacket is faded on spine and to rear. 240 pages, maps, b&w photo plates.
John Borrie was captured in Greece in 1941 and remained in German hands until his release in 1945. This is his record, as a dedicated doctor maintaining hospitals in the camps in which he worked, of everyday life in German prison camps. He recounts his fights to obtain essential medical equipment and supplies from the German camp authorities. He shows the humane instinct often put into practice by by some German authorities, and depicts equally vividly the brutality of others. The book is a tribute to the courage, endurance and singular fortitude of men of the fighting forces in privation, fear, sickness and pain. It is a tribute also to the honour and devotion of the medical profession, showing how doctors and surgeons performed complex operations under impossible conditions, and how brilliant improvisation compensated for the lack of amenities. This is a riveting and unusual account of imprisoned life. "Prof Borrie was a former lecturer of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Otago. He founded the postgraduate course for surgical specialists in basic medical sciences in 1957, and carried out pioneering research on lung cancer and transplantation. In 1926, his family moved to Dunedin, In 1932, he was head prefect at McGlashan and graduated proxime accessit .
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