Dr Jack Dumoulin RIP

[Kyt]

Army doctor who tended SOE fighters and partisan guerrillas in wartime Albania and Malaya

Dr Jack Dumoulin -Times Online

Jack Dumoulin was one of a small group of young British Army doctors recruited during the Second World War by the Special Operations Executive for work in enemy-occupied territory. He later enjoyed a distinguished peacetime career as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist based in Plymouth.

He joined SOE in the summer of 1943 and was parachuted into German-occupied Albania as medical officer with an SOE mission commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel (later Major-General) Norman Wheeler (obituary October 2, 1990). There, in appalling conditions, the group worked with partisans led by the country's future dictator, the communist Enver Hoxha.

Dumoulin's task was to do what he could, with the scarce and basic resources he had to hand, to treat sick and wounded guerrillas and the shared sufferings of his colleagues. A fellow SOE officer, Captain Marcus Lyon (obituary, March 12, 2007), remembered Dumoulin as an excellent doctor who remained utterly calm and controlled in the most testing of circumstances.

The struggle in the Albanian mountains between the occupying Axis forces and the local partisans was harsh, with no quarter given by either side. Ruthless reprisals were inflicted on villages suspected of harbouring partisans and bitter rivalries between partisan groups often led them to fight each other as well as the Germans.

Brought out from Albania in December 1944, Dumoulin volunteered for further SOE service. He was assigned to Force 136, the arm of SOE operating in the Far East, and parachuted into Malaya. There the task of SOE was to organise local guerrilla groups, mostly comprising Straits Chinese. After the end of the war in the Far East, he was appointed MBE for his medical work with SOE.

In Albania, he had been assisted by a young local nurse, Drita Kosturi. When a card marked “Captain J. G. Dumoulin RAMC” was found in her possession after the war, she was accused by Hoxha's regime of spying for the British. She was sent to a labour camp where she remained for more than 40 years. As Albania was a closed country under Hoxha, Dumoulin did not learn of her experiences until he met her again on his first return visit in 1990. He immediately arranged for her to be flown to Plymouth for medical treatment.

John Geoffrey Dumoulin was born in Ferriby, near Hull. After school at Malvern College, he studied medicine at St Thomas' Hospital and qualified in 1942. Postwar he worked at Hammersmith and University College hospitals, specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, before being appointed in 1953 as a consultant in Plymouth, where he practised until retirement in 1984.

He had a wide interest in the management of obstetrics and gynaecology at national, local hospital and speciality level, and particularly in research and training. A member of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 1949, he became a Fellow in 1960. He subsequently served on the council of the college, where he was able to influence both training and the maintenance and improvement of standards of care.

He contributed numerous papers to specialist journals, including in 1953 a seminal paper on the use of intravenous ergometrine (a drug that makes the womb contract) to prevent post-partum haemorrhage, which was then the fourth-commonest cause of maternal death.

His wife, Enid, predeceased him. He is survived by two daughters.

Dr Jack Dumoulin, MBE, medical officer with SOE and consultant obstetrician, was born on April 12, 1919. He died on December 10, 2007, aged 88

[spidge]

Another one of the "unknowns" brought to life in death!