Obituary Dr James Nicol

Press, 31 October 1984, Page 9

Obituary Dr James Nicol

Dr James Nicol, who won the Military Cross and doubled for Field Marshal Montgomery during World War 11, died in Christchurch recently. He was 78. Dr Nicol won the Military Cross for gallantry as a front line doctor with the British Army in France in World War 11. He was stationed at a hospital at Chateau Fontaine when it was mistaken for an ammunitions dump by the Germans and beseiged. He was deafened in one ear by exploding mortar shells as he tended the wounded. Dr Nicol served throughout Europe during the war and was among the first

doctors to enter the Belsen concentration camp when it was liberated. His daughter, Rachael, said Dr Nicol had a remarkable likeness to Montgomery and people had often snapped to attention when he passed. The likeness earned him the task of standing in for Montgomery on several occasions. Dr Nicol was bom in Alford, Aberdeen, trained as a doctor at Marshall College, Aberdeen, and qualified when he was 22. He spent six years in a practice in the slums of Sheffield before the war, when he joined the 147 Field Ambulance regiment as a

Territorial. He was wounded at Arnhem but stayed in Europe to help repatriate prisoners of war until he was demobilised in 1945. Dr Nicol travelled to Christchurch in 1947 to be reunited with his wife and family whom he had not seen for six years. He then set up a practice in Fendalton, which at one stage was the biggest in Christchurch, and remained there until his retirement in 1974.

Dr Nicol read widely and kept up an association with Scotland through the Canterbury Burns Club. He is survived by his wife and five daughters.