Premium | Lifesavers

A remarkable true story about saving life in wartime, not taking it’War is often described in terms of blood and treasureThe Lifesavers tells the story of the people who saw blood as treasure. A fascinating look behind the scenes in the efforts and innovations made to keep men alive.’ Al Murray, host of We Have Ways of Making You Talk’A story destined to be told. A fascinating history of blood for the front line. Humbling, awe inspiring and life affirming.’ Sue Black, author of All That Remains The Lifesavers were a little-known band of men and women at the forefront of groundbreaking battlefield care in the Second World War.As part of a new and pioneering service, unconventional and iconoclastic, they pushed and pulled blood from hundreds of thousands of donors into the veins of battle casualties all over the world. Deploying expert teamsofficially the smallest units in the British Armywho risked their own lives to reach the wounded and sick, they transformed survival rates with an impact comparable to that of penicillin.Among them were pre-war GPs, conscientious objectors and a communist doctor who had transfused his first casualty in the Spanish Civil War. Prominent was Gladwin Buttle, a larger-than-life dynamo, who, in North Africa, defied shortages by sending blood into the desert in cleaned-out whisky bottles and sterilizing kit with a broken-down steamroller. Directing was Lionel Whitbythe greatest vampire the world has known he was called in 1945whose own life was saved in 1918 by blood transfused on the Somme.Their skills and innovations saw action in some of the most important battles in recent history, forging lifelines that allies sought to replicate but enemiesto their costdid not. Some continue to inspire life-saving methods of emergency care today.Bestselling historian Roderick Bailey follows their trailblazing work from the start of the conflict to its end, from Dunkirk and El Alamein to Normandy and the Burmese jungle. Unearthed from rigorous research among diaries, letters and other first-hand accounts, The Lifesaversa gripping narrative of the Second World War presented from an entirely new angletells the full tale for the first time.