International conference
War wounds: medicine and the trauma of conflict
- Introduction
- Program
- Speakers
- Abstracts
BAE Systems Theatre,
Australian War Memorial, Canberra
Thursday 24 and Friday 25 September, 2009
The Hon. Alan Griffin MP, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs
Alan Griffin, Member for Bruce (Vic), was born in Melbourne in 1960 and educated at the Australian National University, Canberra. A member of the Australian Labor Party since 1979, he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1993. He was a member of the Opposition Shadow Ministry from October 1998 and served on numerous parliamentary committees and overseas delegations. He has a long-standing commitment to Australia’s veteran and ex-service community, having been Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs since 2005. He has gained an insight into the unique experiences of veterans and ex-service personnel, and the issues that face them and their families, through his active engagement with veterans across Australia. He was appointed Minister for Veterans’ Affairs in December 2007 on the election of the Rudd Labor government. As Minister, he has visited the battlefields of the Western Front and he has a keen interest in the history of the First World War.
Jay Winter is Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University. He is an internationally renowned scholar of the First World War and its impact on the 20th century. His interests range widely, including the remembrance of war in the 20th century, European population decline, the causes and institutions of war, British popular culture in the era of the Great War and the Armenian genocide of 1915. Professor Winter is the author or co-author of over a dozen books, including Socialism and the Challenge of War, Ideas and Politics in Britain, 1912-18, The Great War and the British People, The Fear of Population Decline, The Experience of World War I, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History, 1914-1918: The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, Remembering War: The Great War between History and Memory in the 20th Century, and Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the 20th Century. He has contributed more than 40 book chapters to edited volumes, and edited or co-edited 13 books including a collection of essays entitled America and the Armenian Genocide. His most recent publications include The Great War in history: Debates and controversies, 1914 to the present (with Antoine Prost, 2005), Remembering war: The Great War between memory and history in the twentieth century (2006), Dreams of peace and freedom: Utopian moments in the twentieth century (2006), and Capital cities at war: A Cultural History (2007), the second volume of his two-volume collective history (with Jean-Louis Robert) of Paris, London, and Berlin during the First World War. (The first volume, on social and economic history, was published in 1997.) In 1997, Professor Winter received an Emmy award for the best documentary film series of the year as co-producer and co-writer of The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century, an eight-hour series broadcast on PBS and the BBC, and shown subsequently in 28 countries. Professor Winter is one of the founders and a member of the comité directeur of the research centre of the Historial de la grande guerre, the international museum of the Great War, in Péronne, Somme, France. He is presently working on a biography of René Cassin, author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ashley Ekins is Head of the Military History Section at the Australian War Memorial. A graduate of the University of Adelaide, he has worked as a military historian with the Memorial since 1989, specialising in the history of the First World War and the Vietnam War. He is the co-author (with Ian McNeill) of two volumes of the The Official History of Australian Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948-1975 dealing with Australian army operations in the Vietnam War: On the Offensive (2003), and Fighting to the Finish (forthcoming 2010). He has published widely on the role of Australian soldiers in the First World War and contributed chapters to several books. Ashley is presently completing a comprehensive study of military discipline and punishment in the Australian army of the First World War.
University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy
Kerry Neale is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia. She is currently in the second year of research for her thesis, entitled “Without the Faces of Men:” the Experiences of Facially Disfigured Great War Veterans of Britain and the Dominions.” Kerry has just returned from researching in the UK and Canada, through the support of the Australian Army History Unit, the Canadian High Commission, the Wellcome Trust, London, and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College, where she was an Australian Bicentennial Scholarship holder.
Kerry is a graduate of the Australian National University, BA (Hons), and was awarded the University Medal in History in 2007. She also worked at the Australian War Memorial from 2004 to 2008 in various roles in Visitor Services and the Military History Section.
Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University. He has published Health, Race and German Politics (1989), Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe (2000), and Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials (2004). John W. Thompson, Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Rochester University Press) is in press. He directs a project on victims of Nazi human experiments covering several thousand life histories of victims. He also researches physicians who were refugees from Nazism.
University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy
Debbie Lackerstein is a lecturer in history in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. Her teaching and research interests include the history of the Second World War, occupation and resistance, the Holocaust and genocide in the twentieth century. Her study of France in the 1930s and under German occupation, National Regeneration in Vichy France, will be published by Ashgate in 2010. Debbie is currently engaged in research into different perspectives on the liberation of the German concentration and labour camps in the final weeks of the European war in 1945.
Vietnam Veterans Federation of Australia
Graham Walker graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, into the Royal Australian Infantry. He saw active service attached to the 2/7 DEO Gurkha Rifles in Sabah and Sarawak during Indonesian Confrontation and with the 8th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment in Vietnam where he was Mentioned in Despatches. Graham has been for many years the Honorary Research Officer of the Vietnam Veterans Federation of Australia.
Official historian of the Vietnam War
Peter Edwards is a consultant historian and writer, who has published on Australian defence and foreign policies for more than thirty years. He has held professorial positions at Deakin University in Melbourne, the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, and currently at Flinders University in Adelaide. As Official Historian of Australia’s involvement in Southeast Asian conflicts 1948-75, he wrote the volumes dealing with strategy and diplomacy, Crises and Commitments (1992) and A Nation at War (1997). He is also the author of Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins (2006), Permanent Friends? Historical Reflections on the Australian-American Alliance (2005), and Prime Ministers and Diplomats (1983); the co-editor of Facing North (vol. 2, 2003); the editor of Australia Through American Eyes (1977) and Arthur Tange’s memoir, Defence Policy-Making (2008) ; and one of the founding editors of the series of Documents on Australian Foreign Policy. He is a Member of the Order of Australia and his books have won several literary awards.
Medical specialist and Regimental Medical Officer, 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, South Vietnam, 1966-67
Although Australian born, Tony White was brought up in Kenya. He entered the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps as a medical student via the Undergraduate Scheme. After his Intern year, he was posted to the 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, as Regimental Medical Officer and saw active service in Vietnam in 1966-67. Subsequent postings included RMO to 1 Recruit Training Battalion, Kapooka, and to the British Military Hospital in Singapore. Following return to civilian life, he qualified first as a physician and then as a dermatologist. His appointments have included Visiting Medical Officer, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Clinical Senior Lecturer (University of Sydney) and Colonel Consultant Dermatologist, Army Office Canberra. He is in private practice in Sydney and has a special interest in remote area dermatology, including the Pacific Islands and Arnhem Land. He does an annual circuit with the Royal Flying Doctor Service out of its Broken Hill base.
Libby Stewart has worked at the Australian War Memorial since 1990. She worked for several years as a research officer on the Official History of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948-75 and from 2004-08 was content leader for the Vietnam section of the Memorial’s Conflicts 1945 to today galleries. In 2001 she published (with Gary McKay) the book Viet Nam Shots: A photographic account of Australians at War, and in August this year she published (with Gary McKay) With Healing Hands: the untold story of the Australian civilian surgical teams in Vietnam.
Regimental Medical Officer, 4 Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery, South Vietnam, 1967-68
David Bradford is a sexual health physician, foundation fellow of the Australasian Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine (AChSHM) and AM for services to sexual health medicine. He graduated from Sydney University in 1965. In 1967/68 he was Regimental Medical Officer for 4 Field Regiment RAA in the Australian Army South Vietnam. He studied surgery and obtained Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) in 1972. Later he was a general practitioner in the east end of London. On return to Australia in 1979 he worked full-time as Director of the Melbourne STD Clinic. He moved to Cairns (1993) as Director of Sexual Health and after retirement in 2004 still does occasional clinics. David’s book, The Gunner’s Doctor: Vietnam Letters (published by Random House Australia, 2007) is about his service in Vietnam in the form of letters home.
Royal Australian Air Force
Squadron Leader Sharon Cooper gained her Bachelor of Nursing degree at the University of Tasmania in 1995, followed by a Graduate Diploma in Family, Child and Youth Health in 1998, and a Graduate Diploma in Perioperative Nursing in 2004. After working as a Registered Nurse at Calvary Hospital, Hobart for three years she joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a direct entry Nursing Officer in January 1999. Her first posting was to 3 Combat Support Hospital, Richmond, NSW.
Having joined the Australian Defence Force with the desire to deliver humanitarian aid to the developing world, she was deployed to East Timor in 2000 for 6 months as a perioperative nurse within the RAAF led United Nations Military Hospital in Dili. She returned to 3 Combat Support Hospital as the Officer in Charge of perioperative services, including the Air Force’s deployable surgical assets.
In 2003 the then FLTLT Cooper was posted to 1 Air Transportable Health Squadron, Amberley, where in 2004 she again deployed to East Timor as an aero-medical evacuation nurse. This deployment ended when she was involved in a helicopter crash, suffering spinal injuries and facial fractures. Following 12 months of rehabilitation, FLTLT Cooper returned to unrestricted service. She deployed again on Operation Bali Assist II in October 2005 to aid in the aero-medical evacuation of injured Australians following a terrorist bombing incident.
In 2006 the then FLTLT Cooper was appointed as Aide-de-Camp to the Minister for Defence, Dr Brendan Nelson, for a period of twelve months.
Following promotion in 2007, SQNLDR Cooper was posted as a Military Support Officer to the Townsville office of the Defence Community Organisation, providing welfare support to Defence members and their families affected by Defence service, including those who had suffered serious injury, illness and fatality.
SQNLDR Cooper took up her current post as Officer in Charge of No. 1 Expeditionary Health Squadron, Detachment Townsville in January 2008. In July 2008 she deployed to Tarin Kowt Afghanistan for 3 months as the Officer in Charge of the Australian Medical Task Force providing intensive care and surgical support to the International Stabilisation Assistance Force - Afghanistan.
SQNLDR Cooper has been awarded the Australian Active Service Medal with East Timor and International Coalition against Terrorism clasps, the Australian Service Medal with East Timor clasp, the Afghanistan campaign medal, the Defence Service Medal and the United Nations East Timor medal with a numeral 2 clasp.
Dr Marina Larsson is an award-winning Melbourne historian who has held lecturing positions at La Trobe and Monash universities. She is the author of Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War (UNSW Press, 2009) a study which explores the impact of war disability on First World War returned soldiers and their families. In 2008, she received the Australian Historical Association’s biennial Serle Award for the best postgraduate thesis in Australian History. Marina’s research interests include repatriation history, disability history, public history, and the history of the family.
Veterans’ health specialist
Dr Keith Horsley has recently retired from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. A graduate from Queensland University, he holds degrees in medicine and a masters degree in public administration. During the 1990s he was responsible for developing policy in relation to a number of sensitive issues, including Agent Orange and the mustard gas and malaria experiments during World War Two. As a result of his work with Agent Orange, he became interested in the health effects of dioxins and furans, and has been a consultant to a number of different areas of government in this area. He was also part of a team that undertook a major re-engineering of the compensation program of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which received several awards for excellence in public administration. He has researched the health of Australia’s veteran community, particularly as it relates to cancer incidence and mortality. He is also interested in military medicine, pandemics (particularly influenza) and the effects of exposure to stress. He is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Military and Veteran Health, is an honorary Associate Professor at the Centre for Military and Veteran Health, and a tutor in medicine at the Australian National University. In his retirement he is writing a history of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in Australia.
Vietnam veteran and former MP
Graham Edwards was born in Kalgoorlie on 18 July 1946.
He attended Christian brothers College, Perth and later Leederville Technical College.
Following school Graham was employed by W.A. Government Railways and worked himself up to become a fireman. He served in the regular army for three years (1968 – 1971) and saw service in Vietnam with the 7th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment in 1970. He was wounded twice in Vietnam, the second time losing his legs to a ‘jumping jack‘ anti personnel land mine.
After discharge from the army and a period of rehabilitation he spent ten years with the Commonwealth Public Service in Defence, Veterans Affairs and the Vietnam Veterans Counseling Service. Graham was elected as a Councillor with the City of Stirling in 1980 and in 1983 was elected to the Parliament of W.A. where he served for fourteen years including seven years as a Minister.
In 1998 Graham was elected to the House of Representatives and retired in 2007.
He was recognized by the RSL with the Anzac of the Year award in 1991 for service to the veteran community and has also been awarded the Rotary Paul Harris Fellow and the Lions Melvin Jones Fellow.
Graham was recently made a Freeman of The City of Wanneroo in his home state of W.A, and is a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Veterans.
Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute
Professor Simon Gandevia is a medical graduate and neurophysiologist. He is a founder and Deputy Director of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute. He has received three research doctorates (PhD, MD and DSc), all from the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on how the human brain controls movement. Professor Gandevia’s work has provided insights into pathophysiological mechanisms in several branches of medicine including neurology, rehabilitation and cardiorespiratory medicine. He has served on several editorial boards including the Journal of Physiology, trained many doctoral students, and helped develop concepts about the ethics of experimental studies in humans. Professor Gandevia was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1998.
This conference was convened by the Australian War Memorial. The support of the Australian Government through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs is gratefully acknowledged.
