Star surgeon

SIR – It is kind of Michael Clemson (Letters, August 7) to pay tribute to the work of plastic surgeons, and in particular to my father, Dickie Battle, who worked as a plastic surgeon at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

Dickie was educated at Gresham’s School, Trinity College, Cambridge, and St Thomas’s Hospital, qualifying as a doctor in 1931 and as a surgeon in 1935. He held junior posts at several hospitals, including Stoke Mandeville.

Having earlier been abroad with the British Expeditionary Force in France before the German occupation, he returned to the Army to command No 1 Maxillo-Facial Unit in Sicily and Italy. He was regarded as “a delightful companion … and he did outstanding surgical work for innumerable British, Commonwealth, and Yugoslav casualties”. He had a special affection for the Yugoslav partisans, to whose country he returned as a surgical visitor after the war.

In 1946 Dickie was appointed plastic surgeon to St Thomas’s. He held a range of other posts at hospitals including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children and the Essex County Hospital at Colchester. The care of children was his main work interest and he developed treatments for cleft lip and palate.

Retirement from the NHS in 1971 meant that Dickie could spend more time with his beloved trumpet, which accompanied him everywhere from Cambridge to Dunkirk and Saigon, and finally to Saxmundham. Tim Battle Tisbury, Wiltshire

SIR – My late husband, Jimmy Wright, crashed in Italy in 1944. His mother was told he had died from his injuries. However, Dickie Battle saved his life.

When Jimmy was fit to be flown home, he was “rebuilt” by Sir Archibald McIndoe at East Grinstead.

I, too, am so pleased that these wonderful surgeons are remembered. Janet Wright Shepperton, Surrey