Medical Officers on the Thiepval Memorial

Commonwealth War Graves Foundation Guide shares some moving stories of Royal Medical Corps officers commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial. 

Medical Officers of Thiepval

Hello, I’m Esme, and I’m one of the CWGC guides at the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. 

With this blog, I hope to shine a light on the Royal Army Medical Corps, and specifically three of the regimental medical officers who can be found on the Thiepval Memorial. 

Doctors on the Front Line – The Regimental Medical Officer

In 1898, the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) was established by royal warrant, bringing together the British Army’s fragmented medical services, and centralising all medical operations under one organisation. 

While the Second Boer War was the Corps' first taste of warfare, it was the First World War which transformed the RAMC. The corps saw a huge expansion, growing from 9,000 officers and men in 1914 to 113,000 by the war’s end. 

Within this huge organisation, there were stretcher-bearers, ambulance drivers and nurses, to name just a few. But today I would like to focus on one position in particular: the regimental medical officer (RMO).

The RMO was a doctor attached to a specific infantry battalion. He was responsible for several important duties, including taking care of sanitation and advising the commanding officer in all medical and health-related matters. 

On top of this, he managed the regimental aid post (RAP), the first port of call for any soldiers wounded on the front line. The RAP was as close to the front line as was considered ‘safe’.

Image: A Regimental Aid Post near Courcelette, operating out of a ruined Chateau (Copyright unknown)

They were usually set up in dugouts, deep shell holes or ruined buildings, and were mostly small, damp and poorly lit workspaces.  

It was within these conditions that the RMO saw to the wounded men who had been brought in by the stretcher-bearers. The treatment they offered ranged from cleaning shallow cuts to even amputating limbs in more serious cases. 

But the RMO’s most important duty was to ensure that the casualties brought into the RAP were in either a well enough condition to be returned to the front, or were given suitable treatment to then be moved along the chain of evacuation.

As the men who needed further care would be taken on to a dressing station, casualty clearing station, and finally a base hospital, much further away from the frontline. 

Image: Doctors at work at an Australian aid post in Becourt Chateau, July 1916 (© Imperial War Museum/Robert Hunt Library/Mary Evans)  

But like all soldiers who went to the front, the RMO’s proximity to the enemy line meant that he was never far from danger.

German artillery could reach the RAPs, and uncertainty over the exact risks that the RMOs were supposed to take meant that officers would sometimes rush to the aid of the wounded before the battle was finished. 

As a result, the RMOs suffered high casualty rates. By 1917, it was reported that, per month, the death rate among RMOs was as high as 40 per 1,000. 

Fourteen medical officers can be found on the Thiepval Memorial, and you can read three of their stories below. 

Captain Alfred Maurice Thomson

Image: Alfred Maurice Thomson (© IWM)

Alfred Maurice Thomson was born in Brussels in 1885, the fourth child of Alfred and Florence Thomson of Northumberland Street, London. After spending the first seven years of his life in Belgium, Alexander, his parents, and his two younger sisters settled on Marlborough Avenue, in Belfast. 

At 17, he began his journey to becoming a doctor. After matriculating at the Royal University of Ireland, he continued his medical studies at Queen’s University, Belfast, King’s College London, and finally the University of Manchester.

Shortly after graduating, he moved to Middlesex, and entered the profession with his first surgical position at the West Kent hospital in Maidstone. 

Alfred immediately enlisted with the RAMC upon the outbreak of war. He was attached to 7th Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment, and on 31 May 1915, he left England for the Western Front. 

On 7 July 1916, Alfred’s battalion was responsible for continuing the attack on Ovillers-la-Boisselle, after two previous attacks had been repulsed by fierce German machine gun and artillery fire. It was here that Alfred was killed, after he crossed into no man’s land in search of the wounded, while the battle was still ongoing. 

According to a fellow officer, Lieutenant Stocks, he spent the night time attack, ‘continuously attending to the wounded’. 

When Lieutenant Stocks himself was hit by a bullet through the right leg, 80 yards from the British frontline, Alfred went to his aid. After using his own cane as a temporary splint, he then proceeded to drag the Lieutenant back towards the British trenches on a waterproof sheet. 

Lieutenant Stocks described his death:

‘With an entire disregard for the enemy’s heavy shell and machine gun fire he managed to haul me onto [the sheet], and was having me pulled to cover on this improvised sledge when he suddenly fell forward almost on top of me, without uttering even a groan, apparently shot through the heart by a sniper’.

It was the day before his 31st birthday. 

Unfortunately, it is not known what happened to Alfred’s body after the attack. He was likely either recovered after the battle, and buried in a grave that has since been lost, or he was never recovered from no man’s land. 

As a result, Alfred is commemorated on panel 4C on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. 

Captain Alexander Petrie Low

Image: Captain Alexander Petrie Low (Arbroath Roll of Honour, copyright unknown)

Alexander Petrie Low was born on 15 May 1875, to William Low and Helen Petrie. He grew up in Arbroath, a fishing town in Angus, Scotland. 

Aged just 15, he began studying medicine at University College, Dundee, and in 1896, he qualified as a doctor at Edinburgh University.

After moving to Dundee, he spent some time as a General Practitioner, before becoming an assistant surgeon, and later a lead surgeon, at Dundee Royal Infirmary. 

In 1907 he married Ella Boyd, and together they had two sons, Albert and Maurice.

Alexander joined the RAMC in 1912, and after war was declared, he began his service as a surgeon in the 1st Scottish General Hospital, a territorial hospital in Aberdeen.

In 1915, he was sent to France, and after working at two causality clearing stations, he became the regimental medical officer for 7th Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders.

When the battalion arrived at the Somme in July 1916, they saw fierce fighting at Longueval and Delville Wood. In the face of significant artillery and machine gun fire, Alexander went to the aid of the wounded. 

His Lieutenant Colonel described how they were ‘each struck with his sense of duty in following so soon. The shelling at the time was very heavy.’

Another private within 7th Battalion wrote that Alexander, ‘walked about from one wounded man to another with the utmost coolness. He was with us in the front line when one shell wounded several of us, and if anybody showed bravery and coolness it was Captain Low. There was a quiet nobility in the way he did what he would have said was only his duty, that one was forced to wonder at it even in the heat of action’.

But it was during this act of bravery on the 14 July that Alexander was killed, after reportedly suffering a direct hit to the head by a shell. 

Sadly, Alexander’s body was never recovered, and he too is commemorated on Panel 4C on the Thiepval Memorial. 

Captain Reginald Joseph Wooster

Reginald Joseph Wooster was born on 7 October 1886, the fifth of eight children born to John and Ellen Wooster of Chiswick, Middlesex. He was educated at St Paul’s School, London, before beginning his medical studies at St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.

After qualifying in 1911, he was appointed in quick succession to the roles of house surgeon, house physician, and lastly casualty surgeon within the hospital.

Despite rising up the ranks at St Mary’s, Reginald quickly enlisted upon the outbreak of war.

By 31 August 1914 he had joined the RAMC, and in the following year he left for France, serving first at no. 9 General Hospital in Rouen, before joining the 43rd Field Ambulance a few months later. 

Just prior to the Battle of the Somme, Reginald became the regimental medical officer for 9th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. With the battalion, Reginald saw action at Delville Wood and Flers-Courcelette, and it was at Flers were he was killed in action. 

The medical officer usually waited until an attack was complete to see to the wounded. Even then, not all RMOs entered no man’s land, as stretcher-bearers were usually given the task of bringing the wounded back to the regimental aid post. Despite this, on 15 September 1916, in the heat of battle, Reginald ‘gallantly went forward with the attack’. 

His commanding officer wrote: ‘I last saw him busy dressing the wounded after crossing the first line of German trenches; after that he must have gone right forward, and I hear that he was working magnificently when he and his medical orderly were both killed instantly by a shell’.

Addressing his family, the officer added, ‘I know you will have pride in the fact that he fell when working right out in the open, and nearly a mile inside what had been German ground less than an hour before. It is not every Medical Officer who volunteers to go right forward, just as he did’.

Like Alexander and Alfred, Reginald’s body was never recovered from the Somme’s battlefields. He is commemorated on panel 4C on the Thiepval Memorial, alongside 132 men of the Royal Army Medical Corps.  

Image: The fourteen medical officers on the Thiepval Memorial (Photo by Esme Smith)

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