Overview

The remarkable true story of the trailblazing men and women of Britain's blood transfusion service in World War Two The Lifesavers were a little-known band of men and women at the forefront of groundbreaking battlefield care in the Second World War. As part of a new and pioneering service, unconventional and iconoclastic, they pushed and pulled blood from hundreds of thousands of donors into the veins of battle casualties all over the world. Deploying expert teams - officially the smallest units in the British Army - who risked their own lives to reach the wounded and sick, they transformed survival rates with an impact comparable to that of penicillin. Among them were pre-war GPs, conscientious objectors and a communist doctor who had transfused his first casualty in the Spanish Civil War. Prominent was Gladwin Buttle, a larger-than-life dynamo, who, in North Africa, defied shortages by sending blood into the desert in cleaned-out whisky bottles and sterilizing kit with a broken-down steamroller. Directing was Lionel Whitby - 'the greatest vampire the world has known' he was called in 1945 - whose own life was saved in 1918 by blood transfused on the Somme. Their skills and innovations saw action in some of the most important battles in recent history, forging lifelines that allies sought to replicate but enemies - to their cost - did not. Some continue to inspire life-saving methods of emergency care today. Bestselling historian Roderick Bailey follows their trailblazing work from the start of the conflict to its end, from Dunkirk and El Alamein to Normandy and the Burmese jungle. Unearthed from rigorous research among diaries, letters and other first-hand accounts, The Lifesavers - a gripping narrative of the Second World War presented from an entirely new angle - tells the full tale for the first time.

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9780241744079

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Reviews

'The dazzling story of the heroic, extraordinary efforts by small groups of doctors to overcome every impediment to achieve a remarkable aim: to save lives by introducing blood transfusions on the battlefield . . . This account by a master historian is fresh and vital, history at its best.' -- Rob Lyman, author of Victory to Defeat 'A story destined to be told. A fascinating history of blood for the front line. Humbling, awe inspiring and life affirming.' -- Sue Black, author of All That Remains 

Author Information

Roderick Bailey is a Research Fellow in the history of medicine at the University of Oxford. His previous books include the Sunday Times bestseller Forgotten Voices of the Secret War and, as one of the SOE's official historians appointed by the Prime Minister, Italy- The Secret War against Mussolini. In 2011 he deployed to Afghanistan as a British Army reservist and was awarded a Queen's Commendation.

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