Edgar Woodall: Surgeon on the Front Line

The correspondence of the eminent surgeon Edgar Woodall (1885-1974), which the Library purchased in 2024, has been catalogued.

Edgar Woodall was born at Eccles and studied medicine at the University of Manchester. He worked in Manchester and London hospitals, and in 1916 achieved the distinction of a Fellowship of the Royal College  of Surgeons (FRCS).

Woodall then served with the Royal Army Medical Corps until 1919, and on demobilisation joined the Manor Park Hospital in North London. This unique institution, owned by the trades union movement, specialised in the treatment of industrial injuries. However, Woodall also treated leading Labour and TUC figures there, and in recognition of his services he was ennobled as Baron Uvedale of North End in 1945, one of only a handful of doctors to become hereditary peers.

Woodall’s correspondence for 1917 is bound into a single volume, containing over 250 letters sent to his parents and his brother James. His letters describe the varied work of a RAMC officer serving on the Western Front in considered and informative detail.

By the time that Woodall was writing, the Army had developed a sophisticated system of hospitals and medical services.  With an unprecedented number of casualties and a desire to rehabilitate men quickly and return them to active duty, surgeons such as Woodall were required to show great flexibility and durability in their work.

RAMC officers operated in a range of locations. Closest to the fighting were the field ambulances and regimental aid posts; these dealt with immediate battlefield casualties. The Casualty Clearing Stations (CCS) provided more specialist care for wounded soldiers evacuated from the front line. They were static hospitals, providing a wide range of medical treatments, including specialist surgery and rehabilitation. More serious casualties were evacuated to base hospitals, usually situated on the French coast, or returned to Britain (‘Blighty’).

Woodall spent most of 1917 at casualty clearing stations,  primarily CCS 50 and CCS 39. These hospitals required surgical experts and Woodall believed his FRCS qualification would ensure he obtained an enhanced posting. In this he was disappointed, and his letters express his frustration and discontent at losing out to less qualified doctors, who exploited their social and institutional connections. Woodall bitterly complained that “the bigger the fool the greater the expert in this most wonderful of all organisations” (letter, 8 November). Instead of advanced surgery, Woodall found himself treating skin diseases, working X-ray machines, and performing anaesthetics.

Woodall’s disappointments may have been due in part to his background. He was a nonconformist, and he expresses distaste for the gambling and drinking culture of his fellow officers. His letters do not reveal any close friendships with these officers, and Woodall comes across as a solitary man who struggled to adapt to his new situation.

After several months of boredom, Woodall was then thrust into intensive activity, when he moved to a field ambulance unit. Most of the summer period was spent on the front line, firstly near Arras and then at Ypres, where the Army was engaged in intensive, and ultimately futile fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele). Here Woodall faced the full horrors of front line surgery; censorship and sensibility prevented him revealing the gory details to his parents, but it was clear he had to work in appalling conditions.

At Arras he reported “Shells at this place are as common as rain in Lancashire” (letter of 14 May), and at Ypres, he operated in dank underground shelters, dealing with the aftermath of intensive fighting around Hill 60. Here he was evidently involved in an intensive surgical workload: “it is three days since I saw the sun” (letter, 22 July). “The trenches are too terrible for words but once away from them we don’t spend time pondering over the horrors” (letter, 31 July).

In mid-August Woodall returned to a CCS (CCS39) and then took a period of much delayed leave, part of which he spent lobbying the politician Lord Emmott, an associate of his father’s, for a better position. In late November, Woodall’s unit, the 39 CCS, was transferred to the Italian Front, where British reinforcements were stabilising the line after the Italian defeat at Caporetto. Here Woodall was based at Istrana, about 20 miles north of Venice and he remained here until the end of the War.

Woodall’s letters reveal his views on the wider War situation. Despite his criticisms of Army bureaucracy, Woodall believed the Allies would win the War, once the USA joined the fight. Although critical of militarists (especially on the Home Front), he expressed little sympathy for Germany due to its conduct of the war. Woodall’s most persistent concerns were not for his own welfare, but that of his brother James, whom he considered unfit for service and so encouraged him to take a medical degree. His brother later worked with him at Manor Park.

Woodall’s letters complement another of our First World War collections, the diaries of Daniel Dougal. Dougal was a near-contemporary of Woodall and was later a distinguished professor of obstetrics at Manchester. He served in the same areas as Woodall in 1917, but enjoyed greater career advancement, becoming Deputy Assistant Director of Medical Services to the 34th Division. A very different character to Edgar Woodall, the insouciant Dougal seems to have coped better with the military bureaucracy, of which he ultimately became a part.