One of the first Drs in to Bergen Belsen concentration camp

The contributor's father, Captain Godfrey Malcolm "Mac" Baker, in the RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps), despatched to Bergen Belsen to help with the evacuation of the prisoners. The family had a lot of photos that as children the contributor looked at (piles of bodies) but his Dad was very reticent. Mac contracted Typhus as a result of his work at the camp and was very ill. The certificate is a mention in despatches received for extracting a round from a colleague's shoulder - the story is that this was a live round. The text reads: "By the KING'S Order the name of Captain G.M.Baker, Royal Army Medical Corps, was published in the London Gazette on 18 October 1945, as mentioned in a Despatch for distinguished service. I am charged to record His Majesty's high appreciation. J.J. Lawson Secretary of State for War."

Mac met his wife in about 1940, at medical school. Dorothy Joan Mary Baker nee Readman continued her studies during the War before becoming a GP. She was fire-watching on the roof of the medical school at the University of Birmingham, Edgbaston. Once she had to throw from the roof incendiary devices that had been dropped.

Mac's father-in-law was called Edgar Platt Readman, he served in the First World War, and as a reservist in the Second World War he was Major General, CBE, in charge of Chillwell logistics headquarters, Nottingham.