Worcester News Feature article
IF you’re a gambler, the odds are you wouldn’t bet on your mild-mannered family doctor having been shot at and shelled in some of the planet’s most deadly troublespots.
But softly spoken, unassuming Dr Jonathan Leach is full of surprises – not least his 25 years in the Army where he rose to the rank of colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Germany and Cyprus.
Dr Leach, who left the Army only three years ago, is now medical director and director of primary care at NHS Worcestershire and a GP at Davenal House Surgery in Bromsgrove.
He may be back on civvy street where he has ditched the combat fatigues for a neatly ironed shirt and a fancy tie but his career was forged in the flames, dust and blood of battle. There he carried medical supplies for friendlies and a pistol for what he calls, with a hint of mischief, ‘the baddies’.
Dr Leach, classed as a noncombatant under the Geneva Convention, said: “In Basra I was shot at and mortared. That’s the most dangerous place I have worked. We were allowed to carry weapons for our own personal protection or for the protection of patients. Thankfully, I never had to fire a gun in anger. I was never injured. Some of the baddies targeted medics but we carried the same risks as everyone else.”
Perhaps it was for the best the 51- year-old father-of-two, who lives near Fernhill Heath, Worcester, never got to pull the trigger. He is, he says smiling, a terrible shot.
Dr Leach provided care in medical centres, in the back of a Land Rover and even in a ditch or trench if circumstances demanded it.
In Iraq, where he performed two tours, he was the senior medical officer and was responsible for other GPs while he cared for soldiers in various bases, some of whom were badly injured.
Dr Leach, who carried out his medical training at the University of Sheffield, decided to do something different and joined the Army when he graduated having decided on a medical career when he was still doing his O-levels.
Although he is not some kind of deranged war-mongering General Melchett character [from TV’s Blackadder Goes Forth], barking orders beetroot-faced from beneath a luxuriant and well-groomed moustache, nor is he one of those bland NHS bureaucrats the Government seems so eager to be rid of in its cost-cutting.
He works as a BASICS (British Association for Immediate Care) doctor and is hardly a desk-bound pen-pusher. He attends some of the most serious medical emergencies in Worcestershire and Herefordshire, from cardiac arrests to car accidents and shootings. In short, he goes to the kind of horrific incidents his military career has equipped him for.
Although the BASICS doctors work very closely with ambulance crews all their equipment is funded by charities, locally by Mercia Accident Rescue Service (MARS), which means they need regular donations from the public.
Many of Dr Leach’s NHS colleagues are oblivious to his military background because, he says, he ‘doesn’t go on about it’. He doesn’t want to blow his own trumpet – or bugle – too loudly.
When a burglar was shot in the leg in Whitbourne this month (the leg was later amputated) it was Dr Leach who treated him and, before I ask, no, he can’t talk about it – something about the Hippocratic Oath. He also attended the aftermath of the Fairfield shootings near Bromsgrove where 29-year-old Craig Hodson-Walker was shot dead and his father, Ken, was shot in the leg.
The majority of BASICS doctors, of which there are 10 or 11 operating in Worcestershire and Herefordshire, are ex-military and work closely with the “excellent”
paramedics of West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust. Dr Leach said: “We’re used to treating patients in strange places – in the middle of the night, often when it’s dark, and frequently when you don’t have many resources.”
Dr Leach uses his black Ford Fiesta, customised with sirens, to attend emergencies and may often travel with the casualty to hospital, whether by land or air, so he can continue to administer care.
He has had 106 callouts in the last year for this voluntary work and is part of a team which receives between 500 and 600 calls each year.
When he goes out on a call his boot is packed with medical kit such as a defibrillator, advanced drugs, airway equipment and even surgical equipment.
How he finds time to read books, visit the gym four times a week and learn to play the piano is a mystery, although he attributes it to his ability to prioritise.
Dr Leach has seen first hand not only the terrible physical scars of war but the psychological scars, including post-traumatic stress disorder. He has the contacts and the military background to be able to get ex-serviceman the help they need and their shared background helps him earn their trust.
He said: “Patients have seen multiple people killed or blown up in front of them. I think, when you see that, you have a duty as a nation, as the NHS, as an individual to try to help those guys.
I know it sounds very old fashioned.
I have seen guys who are seriously psychologically unwell because of what they have seen – friends shot, friends blown up, killed, friends maimed.”
Some, he concedes, use drink or drugs to blot out images of war.
Others live on the edge and, having survived the perils of combat, return home with a false sense of their invulnerability only to die when they crash a high-powered motorbike. Others, accustomed to violence and without the structure of military discipline, may find themselves on the wrong side of the law when they return to civilian life and end up in prison.
He may not be on the battlefield anymore but Dr Leach, alongside his BASICS colleagues, is still around to lend a hand and go beyond the call of duty.