In Memoriam - Colonel Charles Stuart
Colonel Charles Stuart, MC, ED
(1917–2003)
Colonel Charles Stuart—a distinguished medical officer with service in the British, Indian and Australian armies in World War II and in Vietnam—was born on 28 August 1917 in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and studied medicine at Durham University. Graduating in 1941, Stuart spent six months as a resident at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, before being called up for service in the British Army in 1942.
He was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps, and after general army training at Aldershot and a course in Urdu at the School for African and Oriental Languages at the University of London, he joined the Indian Army. Stuart served on the North-West Frontier and in the Punjab as a medical officer and later recalled that he had ‘got wide medical, surgical and cultural training here [in India] and loved [the] environment, medicine and cross cultures’. In 1943, he joined the 1/9 Gurkha Rifles based in Syria and subsequently became medical officer in the 5th Brigade of the 4th Indian Division. In Cairo he treated wounded soldiers from the desert war, recalling ‘[I] was here during the Battle of Alamein. Not in it; but [I] got casualties from it’.
After service in North Africa and the Middle East, Stuart was posted to Italy and served as medical officer to the 1/9 Gurkhas during the fierce battles for Cassino in 1944. From January until May 1944, American, Indian and New Zealand troops assaulted the German Gustav Line, symbolised by the Benedectine monastery atop Monte Cassino, and suffered heavy casualties. Stuart received the Military Cross during the battles for his bravery in retrieving wounded soldiers in terrible conditions from the mountainous terrain. Accompanied in his efforts by ten Gurkha stretcher bearers, Stuart later wrote of his ‘love and respect for them [the Gurkhas] as men, soldiers and [for] their selflessness’. In later years, he named his Australian farm at Boddington Bahadur (Gurkhali for ‘the brave’). On one occasion during the battles for Cassino, he was captured briefly by German troops, but was returned to the Allied lines accompanied by fifty wounded soldiers.
After the war, Stuart undertook postgraduate studies in radiology at the Hammersmith Hospital in London before emigrating to New Zealand in 1949 and then to Perth, Western Australia, in 1953. In Perth, Stuart resumed a military career in the Australian Army Reserve. He rose to the rank of colonel and was appointed Director of Army Medical Services in Western Australia. In 1970, at the age of fifty-three, he volunteered for service in South Vietnam, becoming Commanding Officer of the 1st Australian Field Hospital in Vung Tau. For his service in Vietnam he was awarded the Efficiency Decoration and Clasp. His military medical report relating to the use of radiology was reproduced in the 1996 study Australasian Radiology—A History, and is the only report of its type by a radiologist working in a military field unit overseas to have appeared in print since World War II.
In his civilian life, Stuart was a distinguished consultant neuroradiologist in Western Australia and was a coeditor of the Proceedings of the College of Radiologists of Australasia. From the 1970s, he travelled widely overseas, serving as a radiological consultant in Europe for the Australian Department of Immigration. Stuart also undertook various visiting positions at hospitals in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a man of fine intellect with exceptional leadership skills that were demonstrated in his career as a medical officer. Stuart relished the Australian lifestyle and developed his love of exotic cars (which was legendary in Perth). He was also a devotee of military history and classical music. Colonel Stuart is survived by his wife, Margaret, and by two sisters, three sons and seven grandchildren. The eulogy at his funeral was delivered by former Western Australian cabinet minister Bill Hassell.
Dr Paul Harris
Perth
