Thread by @ajcdeane

#Deanehistory 146. Hat tip @_RGArmstrong.

Rick Jolly was born in Hong Kong, into a family that knew both conflict and cure. His Polish father had been a prisoner of war held by the Japanese for five years. His mother was an ambulance driver.

It is easy to read things as predetermined when they are not. Some are born into great fortune and squander it; some are born into families of lovingkindness and become monsters.

But it’s impossible to wonder if boisterous Rick Jolly’s lineage did not guide him into a life that was marked by service, by bravery, by kindness towards prisoners and by healing.

As a military doctor, he undertook 24 years of service in the British military. In Northern Ireland during the Troubles, whilst he didn’t have to, he would go out on patrols with his fellow commandos in case of casualties – after all,

Jolly had completed the insanely tough Royal Marine commando course alongside them, and he didn’t think that his place was back at base waiting for patients amongst his comrades to be produced.

The time for which he will always be remembered came in the aftermath of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982. A leading light in British plans to liberate the islands from the outset, his carefully made arrangements as the senior doctor of 3 Commando Brigade

to convert the commandeered cruise ship SS Canberra into a field hospital had to be binned when his commanding officers decided that the risk of Argentine aerial attacks meant she would have to be parked a minimum of 200 miles offshore,

which is suboptimal for a medical centre. So at zero notice he and his team found themselves ashore with the British troops that landed at Ajax Bay, East Falkland, converting a disused meat processing factory into the central medical facility for the operations to come.

Conditions were suboptimal. There was no heating in the factory, so it was freezing cold, especially at night. Operations were performed by torchlight. They were too close to military facilities to have the sign of the Red Cross painted on the building, so they were bombed

(two bombs from an enemy Skyhawk remained in the roof unexploded throughout their use of it). He and his teams undertook over 200 major operations to save the lives of the wounded.

And the wounded were from both sides. Jolly – in the atmosphere of what one obituary described as “cheerful squalor” in the converted factory – led medical efforts to save every life in front of them, regardless of nationality.

After three weeks of round the clock operations in the factory – which Jolly dubbed “the Red and Green Life Machine” – his teams established further facilities in other parts of the Falklands as the campaign to liberate them developed.

In all, over 650 men from both sides were treated – and only three of their patients died.

When Argentine attacks on HMS Argonaut meant that British casualties needed to be evacuated from the taskforce in San Carlos Water, Jolly went in a helicopter to rescue them.

Spotting survivors of the sunk HMS Ardent in difficulties in the water, even whilst the Argentines continued their attacks, and lacking the usual protective equipment himself as they had scrambled to help, he had himself winched down into the water to pick the men up one by one.

Later the same day he flew to the Canberra with three seriously injured Argentine patients who required treatment there. His patients had expected cruelty on the part of their captors and expressed wonder at the dedicated efforts made to save them.

After the war Jolly was at the forefront of efforts to build veterans’ associations & sent a list of his former patients amongst the Argentine forces to Buenos Aires to see how they had recovered. Only at this point, long after the fall of the Junta that has ordered the invasion,

did the Argentinian authorities learn the truth about the care provided by British battlefield medics during the conflict.

Thus Jolly became the only man decorated by both sides in that war, as the Argentines bestowed upon him one of their highest honours – he became an Officer of the Order of May, at a service attended by many of his former patients.

The Order of May is of course a foreign award – so Jolly had to write to the monarch to request permission to wear it amongst his British decorations. Perhaps he had expected a pro forma response, probably negative –

instead he received a personal reply from Her Majesty authorising him to wear his Argentine medal upon his British uniform from that day forward, alongside the rest.

Over 300 medical practitioners served in the British forces during the Falklands War. When Jolly received permission to wear his Argentine decoration it was explicitly on the basis that in wearing it, he represented the bravery and dedication of them all.