Rupert Downes - Interwar Years

Interwar Years

Returning to Australia, Downes was discharged from the AIF, but remained in the Army as a reservist. He 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 was a founding fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and became president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935. He established a reputation as one of Melbourne's leading paediatric surgeons, but found himself in disagreement with certain medical practices then in vogue. In a 1922 paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia, he examined 100 cases of tonsillectomy in children, and concluded that the majority of them were unnecessary. It would be another four decades before the medical profession in Australia accepted this. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne from the late 1930s until his death in 1945, and wrote a course text book on the subject, entitled Medical Ethics, which was published in 1942.

In addition to his medical writings, Downes wrote a book-length section on the Sinai and Palestine campaign for Volume I of the Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918 in the late 1920s under the direction of Medical Series editor Graham Butler. The two men had discussed the prospect during a visit Butler made to Egypt in 1918 to inspect the medical records of the AIF, and again in France in 1919. Downes published an article in the Journal of the British Army Medical Corps entitled "The Tactical Employment of the Medical Services in a Cavalry Corps" in 1926, which was expanded into one of the chapters of the Official History. Downes' manuscript proved too long for the proposed book, and was extensively edited by Butler before it was published in 1930. Downes was instrumental in supporting Butler's Medical Series and helped obtain the funding necessary to complete the project.

Downes was chairman of the Masseurs' Registration Board, a councillor of the Victorian division of the Australian Red Cross, and chairman of the Red Cross National Council. He was Victorian State Commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade for 25 years. He was also president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years, and chairman of the Victorian Civil Ambulance Service from 1937 to 1938. In 1930, he was appointed a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John, and later became a Knight of Grace of the order in 1937. At the same time, Doris became an Officer of the Order of Saint John, in recognition for her fund raising efforts for the Victorian branch. She also later served on the as a member of its council from 1942 to 1953. Downes was instrumental in persuading the various state branches to come together as a national organisation, arguing that without a national body, the organisation would be eclipsed by the Red Cross.

In 1930, Downes' son John, then in his first year as a boarder at Geelong Grammar School, fell seriously ill with meningitis. Despite the best efforts of two eminent medical practitioners, Dr Keith Fairley and Dr Reginald Webster, John succumbed to toxaemia and died in 1933, at the age of 10. The failure of modern medicine to save his son affected Downes deeply, and led him to abandon his medical career in favour of a military one.

Downes remained in the Army throughout the inter-war period. He became a colonel in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 8 January 1920. He was DDMS of the 3rd Military District (Victoria) from 1 July 1921 to 26 June 1933, and Officer in Charge of Voluntary Aid Detachments from 1 July 1921 to 15 March 1940. He also served as head of the medical services of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Although the RAAF had become a separate service in 1921, the Minister for Defence decided in 1927 that the Army's Director General of Medical Services should be responsible for the administration of the RAAF's medical services. In this capacity, Downes was answerable to the Air Board. In addition, he was honorary surgeon to the Governor General of Australia from 1 July 1927 to 30 June 1931.

On 20 August 1934 Downes became Director General of Medical Services (DGMS), a full-time post and the Army's most senior medical officer. His priority was a recruiting campaign to increase the number of medical professionals in the Army. The Munich Crisis caused people to believe that another war was imminent, and an Army-wide recruiting campaign led by Major General Sir Thomas Blamey doubled the size of the Army from 35,000 in 1938 to 70,000 in 1939. Downes' efforts at recruiting were far more modest. In 1934, there were 299 part-time officers in the AAMC; by 1939 there were 394, and increase of only 32 per cent. This included 320 medical practitioners, 37 dentists and 13 pharmacists. Downes was acutely aware that a large Army would require mobilisation of the country's doctors, and pushed for all doctors to be prepared for either military service or direction by civil authorities. He presided over a major effort to stockpile drugs and medical equipment required for a mobilisation. With the help of the Department of Health and the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, most of this was delivered by July 1939.

In 1939, Downes began a tour of military and other medical centres in India, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, France, the United States and Canada. While in London, he arranged for Doris and Valerie to be formally presented to the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace by Ethel Bruce, the wife of Stanley Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Downes foresaw a major war, fought in the islands to the north of Australia. While in London, he took steps to obtain the services as consultants of two eminent Australian physicians, the surgeon Sir Thomas Dunhill and Neil Hamilton Fairley, an expert on tropical diseases. The outbreak of the Second World War caused Downes to curtail the North American leg of his tour, and return to Australia in October 1939.