John Graham Holmes-Smith

bmj;386/aug30_6/q1869/FAF1faJohn Holmes-Smith, who was orphaned as a teenager, followed his brother Pop into medicine. He found much fellowship at medical school where he captained Guy’s rugby B team for five years. He met up with other members of the Guy’s Hospital ’59 Club every year for 60 years. After qualification John was conscripted into national service, just as it was ending in 1960. He was not demobbed until 1991.After a promising start in paediatrics, with house jobs at Guy’s and the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children, both in London, John and his wife Jennifer (a Guy’s nursing graduate), embarked on a military flight to Hong Kong with their infant firstborn. They had erroneously imagined colonial life in a Nissen hut, but enjoyed time off sailing Olympic class dinghies.John’s Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) career overlapped with that of Alan Reay, also a paediatrician, from whom the junior doctor gained good…
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