Major General Rupert Major Downes, (10 February 1885 – 5 March 1945) was an Australian soldier, surgeon and historian.
The son of British Army officer Major Francis Downes, Downes joined the Army as a trumpeter while he was still at school. He attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with his medical degrees in 1907 and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1911. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1908, and after the outbreak of the First World War he joined the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1914 as its youngest lieutenant colonel. He served in the Gallipoli campaign, and was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed Anzac Mounted Division in 1916, which he combined with the post of ADMS AIF Egypt. In 1917, he became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps. After the war, he wrote articles on medical aspects of the Sinai and Palestine campaign, and the section on the campaign for the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918.
Returning to Australia, Downes became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital. He became a foundation fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne, writing the course textbook. He was also Victorian state commissioner of the St John Ambulance Brigade, which he led for 25 years, and president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years.
In 1934 Downes became Director General of Medical Services, the Australian Army's most senior medical officer, with the rank of major general. He oversaw the construction of major military hospitals in the capital cities. In 1944 he accepted a commission to edit the medical series volumes of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1939–1945 but he was killed in a plane crash in March 1945, before he could begin the work.
Education and early life
Rupert Major Downes was born on 10 February 1885 in Mitcham, South Australia. He was the youngest of fifteen children of Colonel Major Francis Downes—a British Army officer—and his wife Helen Maria, Chamberlin, only five of whom survived to adulthood. After service in the Crimean War, Colonel Francis Downes served as commandant of the Colonial forces of South Australia and Victoria and retired with the rank of major general in the Australian Army in 1902.
Rupert was educated at Haileybury in Melbourne as a boarding school student. In March 1901, at the age of 16, he joined the Victorian Horse Artillery (St Kilda Battery), a part-time volunteer militia unit, as a trumpeter. In May 1901 he served in this capacity at the opening of the inaugural Parliament of Australia by The Duke of Cornwall and York at the Royal Exhibition Building. He left the Army in 1903. That year he became a medical student at the University of Melbourne. A good result in his first year examinations earned him a residential scholarship to Ormond College, and he graduated with the double degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1907.
Soon after graduation, Downes re-enlisted in the Army. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 1 July 1908 and promoted to major on 26 March 1913. He served his residency at Melbourne Hospital and became a general practitioner in Malvern, Victoria, but soon returned to the university to pursue a doctorate. His Doctor of Medicine (MD) thesis, entitled "The anatomical relations of the thymus, especially considered in regard to thymic death with an account of cases of abnormality", was accepted in 1911. He also did the coursework for a Master of Surgery (MS), and this degree was conferred in 1912.
Downes married Doris Mary Robb on 20 November 1913 at St John's Church, Toorak, Victoria. They had three children, all given the same middle name as Rupert: Rosemary Major, born in 1914; Valerie Major, born in March 1918; and John Rupert Major, born in 1922.
First World War
Downes joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 2 October 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, assuming command of the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance with the rank of lieutenant colonel; this made him the youngest officer of that rank in the AIF at the time. Soon after his taking command, the unit was renamed the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance. After training at the Broadmeadows Army Camp near Melbourne, the unit embarked for Egypt on the transport SS Chilka on 2 February 1915.