Content area
Full text
Robert Barer, One young man and total war (from Normandy to concentration camp, a doctors letters home), Edinburgh and Durham, Pentland Press, 1998, pp. xviii, 298, illus., L18.00 (1-85821-569-2).
Robert Barer was my Professor of Anatomy, and as such he came across like a "Doctor in the House" character-a nononsense, gruff personality, clearly unapproachable by a lowly undergraduate. He was famous for conducting the introductory, 6-hour practical class in histology, by the end of which we students had been permitted to remove the plastic covers from our microscopes, although actually plugging them in and looking down the eyepieces was not allowed until the second class. It was only when he spent an hour and a half trying to persuade me to read for a BSc in Anatomy that I saw a glimmer of the generosity and genuine kindness underneath that bluff exterior. When his obituaries appeared in 1989, I, my former student colleagues, and indeed many of his professional associates, learned for the first time of his distinguished military career and of the horrific experiences he had had during the latter part of the...