HEROIC DOCTOR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 141, 16 June 1936, Page 8

HEROIC DOCTOR

' 0 DEATH AFTER WAR SERVICE ; I Dr. Andre John Mesnard Melly. of j Dravtfm Gardens, London, whose selfsacrificing work in Abyssinia as leader of the British Red Cross unit led to I his death, was thirty-seven years of [age. says the Daily Telegraph. { A brave man, actuated by the highest ideals, he had gained the Military Cross for the courage he showed in France during the war. at the close of which he was under twenty. !i A son of the late Colonel Hugh Melly, f of Liverpool, he thought at one time f of becoming a medical missionary, and a while an undergraduate at Oxford r after the war. frequently preached n sermons at the Martyrs’ Memorial. After becoming a surgeon, he spent u two rears in America as instructor in L surgery at the University of Michigan t Hospital. In 1934 he went on a visit b to Abyssinia. f Appalled at the lack of a medical w service there he discussed with the fi Emperor a scheme that was to result s in lhe establishment of*a well-equipped t< hospital in Addis Ababa—a kind of t medical mission. He stayed in the n country for several months, but re- ii turned home seriously ill- ' ii Plans Changed. r I Later, he returned to Abyssinia but his plans had to be altered because of the warlike attitude of Italy. Comling back to England last summer, he determined that if war broke out he would head a Red Cross unit. I He organised it in London and last • November left for Abyssinia. The unit was a mobile one, and his intention was to place it. as near to the firing line as possible. All kinds of difficulties, however, had to be surmounted. It proved impossible, on most occasions, owing to the ground conditions, to get near the fighting. He and his workers, how- a »ever found themselves fully occupied r |in attending to the victims of aerial o bombing raids. a His camp was wrecked more than n once by bombs, but when his ter.ts and C equipment were destroyed from the air he made his headquarters in a cave. He t had several escapes from death, and the a evidence he was able to give as to r Italian methods of warfare formed c part of the British memorandum to the v League of Nations. C Throughout the war in Abyssinia he v earned the highest praise for his calm r devotion to duty, but in his letters h home to his mother and sister in Lon- v don he dwelt but little on it. c ~ f