Frank Ryding - Memoirs of a Red Cross Doctor

Memoirs of a Red Cross Doctor

Better to Light a Candle

Frank Ryding

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Pen & Sword History

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Frank Ryding, 2017

ISBN 9781526716880

eISBN 9781526716903

Mobi ISBN 9781526716897

The right of Frank Ryding to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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This book is a true memoir of the 35 years of work by the author as a doctor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the British Red Cross

I t was during one of the worst times, one of the seemingly hopeless times. As I was crouching for safety under an operating theatre table in a godforsaken part of Somalia, while shells exploded around us, I seriously questioned why I worked for an aid agency at all and what little use we were with violent death surrounding us. We were helping such a very small number of the victims here. My attention was illogically distracted from the gunfire outside to some graffiti written above an arched doorway in Somali script. A local nurse translated for me:

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

It seemed to offer an explanation, some purpose to the years I spent before and after working with the International Red Cross in many of the most horrific wars on earth. Often it was the only motivation I had.

T he forest in Cambodia was noisy with exotic birdsong but the makeshift hospital in a clearing was quiet as always. Peaceful wasnt the right word: the atmosphere was subdued and wary. Already by noon I had seen more than fifty patients with malaria. Some were severely affected and I knew that two of them, despite treatment, would die before tomorrow morning. I hadnt expected that within the next hour I would see five people killed by shell and gun fire.

It could hardly be called a hospital. The wards were just four huge bamboo shelters open at the sides and covered with palm leaves for a roof. It had been built in an isolated part of western Cambodia by refugees fleeing from the chaotic and brutal fighting to the east but it was only 200 metres from the border with Thailand.

The air was hot and humid and I was so used to the incessant rasping of crickets that I hardly heard them now. The constant rhythm was suddenly broken by a deep, booming sound which I thought was thunder, but this was the wrong time of year. Everything stopped in the hospital as people listened; even the birds fell silent. The sound came again, and again. Was it getting closer? Out of the forest from the direction of a refugee village, people were running. Men with armfuls of AK-47 assault rifles were handing them out. Women were carrying babies or small children. Other older children followed them crying. The Cambodian nurse, Chantrea, who was helping me with the patients, pulled me out of the bamboo ward ...

Come with me. Its the Vietcong, she shouted. Theyre attacking the village. Theyre shelling it. Get to the bridge, get into Thailand.

What about the patients? I asked. Most of them were running with us but some, the very ill, were left behind.

Go. This is not safe for you, she said, as she pushed me towards the narrow bamboo bridge over a small ravine which marked the border with Thailand.

As I crossed the bridge with the three other members of the Red Cross team, I expected the Cambodians to follow, but a number of armed Khmer Rouge soldiers, the infamous communist fanatics who, it was said, had murdered over three million of their fellow Cambodians, stood like sentries preventing them from passing. There would be no deserters here. Everyone would have to turn and fight.

I heard shooting from the direction of the village, then distant machine-gun fire. We waited and after twenty minutes there was silence. It was an hour before the tension eased. We tentatively made our way back over the bridge and work was resumed.

Chantrea told me the attack had failed but there had been casualties. Many had been killed and they were bringing the wounded to the hospital. The first was a woman of maybe 25 who had been hit in the chest by shell fragments. It was hard to see the blood which had soaked her black shirt but a tear in the fabric showed where a large piece of metal shrapnel had entered her right lung from the front. I suspected it had hit her aorta or one of the other main blood vessels near her heart; her face was white, her voice was weak and I could hardly feel the rapid, feeble pulse in her neck. There was nothing much I could do. We could only give basic first aid here, but I doubt if even a specialized surgical unit could have saved her. As I crouched over her trying to find a vein to set up an intravenous drip, her breathing stopped, her pulse disappeared and her frightened eyes looking at me became lifeless as she died.

We dealt with ten wounded Cambodians that afternoon and five died. I asked if there had been any Vietcong casualties to deal with. Chantrea seemed surprised at the question but said that some of them had been wounded by the personnel mines that protected the forest trails leading to the village. I asked where they were.

She paused and looked straight at me. There will be no prisoners.

Six weeks before, I had been working in the UK as a junior doctor in anaesthetics and intensive care in Reading. It was September 1980, I was 32 and tired. Junior doctors hours were very long in those days often 90 hours per week, sometimes more. The operating theatres were windowless, lit by harsh fluorescent light. In the coming winter months I would arrive in the dark and leave for home in the dark. It was all becoming stale. I felt I needed and deserved a short break.

I listlessly scanned the advertisements for appointments in the British Medical Journal but saw nothing at all that appealed to me until I glanced at an advertisement by the British Red Cross for general medical officers to go to Thailand for three months. I looked out of the window at the cold, rainy and gloomy dusk outside. I longed for some sun, warmth and fresh air and a short working holiday in Thailand was very appealing.