Medical staff with whom he had
dealings include American surgeon Edward Barsky, British surgeons Tudor Hart
and Bradsworth and Dimitrov surgeon Minkoff. Also he works with British
nurses Joan Harrison and Nan Green and Australian nurses Fay McFarlane and Una
Wilson.
He serves on several battlefronts including Jarama, where he meets the two Australian
nurses; Brunete, where he is injured and Teruel and Aragon, where a British nurse,
Joan Harrison accompanies him in the ambulance for more than three months.
When she is not attending the wounded, she finds relief in his memories of
an unusual childhood on Tyneside and of his world-wide travels in the merchant
navy.
Sixty One Years recounts his World War II activities as
a tank driver and instructor and after the war, his exploits training Arabs in
the use of heavy earth-moving machines in an increasingly violent Palestine and
in Iraq, Qatar and Sudan.
In 1956, he migrates to Australia with his wife and two teenage children and
finds work with the Weapons Research Establishment in South Australia.
He takes part in a mapping expedition which involved Len Beadell along the
intended trajectory of the British Blue Streak Rocket, helps establish a base-camp
close to the expected impact zone and assists in the triggering of nuclear devices
at Maralinga.
His later years, although not so adventurous, still display his remarkable
tenacity of spirit.
Sixty one years after his service in the Spanish Civil War, The King of Spain,
Juan Carlos 1, invests Richard Bryant with a Spanish knighthood 'Caballero de
la Orden del Mérito Civil'
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