CHAPLAIN AS SURGEON

Grey River Argus, 2 June 1943, Page 3

CHAPLAIN AS SURGEON

PRIEST EYE SPECIALIST. WORK AT DARWIN;. - - - c SYDNEY, June 1. The dual functions of military chaplain and eye surgeon are carried out by a Roman Catholic padre in the Darwin area. He is Father Frank Flynn, a brilliant Sydney opthalmic surgeon, who in 1936 gave up his Macquarie Street practice, to join the Sacred Heart missionaries. He was ordained priest last year. He is one of the Australian Army’s three opthalmologisls, who have largely defeated the endemic eye disease which formerly cost the Commonwealth forces thousands of man hours on vital supply route linking Southern Australia with the Northern Territory. Army, authorities early became concerned at a number of truck drivers who reported sick with eye troubles on the long desert road link. Preventive treatments designed bv specialists, however, reduced the incidence of the disease by 50 per cent.

Father Flynn is one of six brothers, all of whom are doctors, and five of whom are serving with’ the armed forces. An Australian war correspondent remarks that “when Fr. Flynn retired from medicine, a joking colleague said he was doing so ‘because ho could preach better than he could practice.’ To-day, however, he is givinp- medical as well as spiritual assistance to hundreds of servicemen in the Darwin area.”

Surgeons in New Guinea SAVING GREAT MANY,

(Rre.- 9 n.m.) MELBOURNE, June 1 Out of six thousand casualties that were attended by one field ambulance dressing station in New Guinea, only three men died. This is revealed by the Army Minister, Mr. F. M. Forde, when telling of remarkable achievements by Army surgeons in saving the lives of Australian soldiers in this theatre. Working within live hundred yards of the battle areas, he said, surgeons operated on men who often had been wounded only thirty minutes earlier. Surgical teams worked under the most difficult conditions. For their operating theatre, they l'rec[uently had mm-eiy an overhead canvas covering. Often they improvised their own operating tables, and sterilising plants. Sometimes they worked ankledeep in mud.