In Conversation with our Alumni: Dr Alan Eric Thomas, MBBCh (1944), MRCS, LRCP
Alan, known as Eric, is retired and recently celebrated his 100th birthday by visiting his old practice in Carmarthenshire where he met some of his old patients.
A normal day now involves reading and relaxing, says Eric. However, prior to retiring, Eric spent 40 years in general practice. Eric describes: “After World War Two, it was difficult to find a practice. But eventually I found one on the Carmarthenshire coast (Kidwelly and Burry Port) and spent 16 happy years there with my wife, children, horse and dog. We lived 300m from a long beach and Pembrey Forest.
When my partner moved away, I was left alone with a large practice and no support. At nights and weekends I was on call from home. My wife was an unpaid receptionist, taking calls, and there were no mobile phones or even pagers in the 60s. After a year of being on call every day, I decided to move to a practice in Bishopsworth, Bristol where there was a new service: a doctors’ deputising service.
My new patients in the peripheral estate of Hartcliffe were very different to those of a rural Welsh practice. Many worked for Wills Tobacco, where employees were given free cigarettes as a staff perk. In 1974, they built the largest cigarette factory in Europe in Hartcliffe.”
Eric chose to study at Cardiff University, as his family lived in Caerphilly, so it was a 20-minute train journey. It also had a good reputation. Eric recalls that his time at Cardiff was a hard slog. He says:” My favorite memory is of the postman calling at my house with a letter to say I’d passed my final exams.”
Eric recalls being a Cardiff student during the war: “We had to go and sit exams in London - Tavistock Square, I think. Whilst sitting them we heard the sound of approaching buzz bombs and everyone had to jump under their desks. Afterwards the invigilator joked ‘don’t think this is going to pass you!”
After graduating, Eric spent 6 months as a house surgeon at Whitchurch Military Hospital. He describes: “The work involved waiting for convoys to come in by train from the war zone and treating them. There were Brits and Germans. I remember we did a lot of blood transfusions and I took a few bullets out.
After 6 months, I was called up and one cold January day I took P&O liner Strathnaver from Southampton via the Suez Canal to Mumbai/Bombay, then a train to Calcutta. First I was stationed in a hospital 100 miles from Calcutta (Ranchi), and then to Midnapore in West Bengal.
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