Rupert Downes

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Rupert Downes
10 February 1885-5 March 1945 (aged 60)
Major General Rupert Downes
Place of birth	Mitcham, South Australia
Place of death	near Cairns, Queensland
Allegiance	Australia
Service/branch	Australian Army
Years of service	1908-1945
Rank	Major General
Commands held	2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance
Battles/wars	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 (4)

Major General Rupert Major Downes CMG, VD (10 February 1885-5 March 1945) was an Australian soldier, general, surgeon and historian in the first half of the 20th century. He rose to the rank of Major General before being killed in a plane crash during World War II.

[edit] Education and early life

Rupert Major Downes, CMG VD KStJ MD MS FRACS was born on 10 February 1885 in Mitcham, South Australia, the youngest child of Major General Major Francis Downes and his wife Helen Maria, formerly Chamberlin. Rupert was educated at Haileybury, Melbourne and Ormond College (University of Melbourne), graduating with an Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1907, Doctor of Medicine in 1911 and Master of Surgery in 1912.^[1]

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 on 1 July 1908 and was promoted to major on 26 March 1913.^[2]

[edit] Great War

Downes joined the First AIF on 2 October 1914 assuming command of the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance with the rank of lieutenant 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 to Egypt for further training and then to Gallipoli, where he served with it for much of the eight-month Gallipoli campaign.^[2]

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 full colonel. This became substantive on 20 February 1917. He combined this with the post of ADMS AIF Egypt from 6 September 1916. On 10 August 1917, he became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps.^[2]

For his service in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, Downes was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George on 1 January 1918 and mentioned in dispatches six times. ^[1]

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.^[3] She survived the sinking and was appointed and Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 4 October 1918 for her work among soldiers' families.^[4]

[edit] Interwar years

Downes became a colonel in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 8 January 1920. He was DDMS (head)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. Downes was honorary surgeon to the Governor-General of Australia from 1 July 1927 to 30 Jun 1931. On 20 August 1934 he became Director General of Medical Services, the Army's most senior medical officer.^[2]

Downes lectured on medical ethics at the University 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.^[5]

Downes became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne and Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital.^[1]

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.^[1]

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 the Venerable Order of Saint John In 1929 and a Knight of Grace in 1937.^[1]

[edit] World War II

In 1939, Downes began a tour of military and other medical centres in India, the Middle East, Britain and the United 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 Sir Thomas Blamey had already appointed Major 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. ^[1]

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 a major general on 27 June 1942,^[2] receiving the AIF serial number VX57673.^[6]

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 accompany Major General George Alan Vasey to New Guinea, where Vasey's 6th Division had encountered an atabrine resistant strain of malaria in the Aitape-Wewak campaign.

Generals Simpson, Blamey, and Morshead pay their respects at the military funeral service for Generals Vasey and Downes in Cairn's.

On 5 March 1945 the RAAF 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 near Cairns. 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.^[7]

Downes became the third most senior Australian officer to die in World War II, after General Sir Cyril Brudenell White and Lieutenant General Henry Douglas Wynter.

[edit] 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 from meningitis. His papers are in the Australian 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.

[edit] 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 Sir Phillip 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

[edit] References

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.

Rupert Downes Memorial Lecturers