In which we served

I first set foot in one almost 30 years ago. The Royal Naval Hospital (RNH) Gibraltar, a colonial delight perched high on the rock, seemed a perfect place to work: old fashioned, easy going, and distinctly underutilised. I was just visiting, paying my respects as a lowly seaborne reservist to a surgeon captain who welcomed me kindly.

Later I served there as a locum physician. The other three doctors were an anaesthetist, a surgeon, and an obstetrics and gynaecology man, so my remit …