Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

HARDING Philip Ernest BMedSc (Hons) MBBS FRACP

1941-

Philip Ernest Harding was born on 4th November 1941, in Turvey, Bedfordshire, England. He was the only son of Ernest Harding and Mary Elizabeth ‘Molly’, nee Pearson.  His mother had been evacuated from London due to the bombing raids by the Luftwaffe during WW2. Sadly Harding never knew his father who was serving in the Royal Navy and went down with HMS Penelope when she was sunk in the Mediterranean, in February 1944, with dreadful loss of life. Harding’s mother subsequently remarried to William (Bill) Orton who had been serving in the Middle East with the Royal Corps of Signals. They were to have two children. Harding retained his father's name at the Harding family's request. Tiring of the austerity of postwar Britain, the family decided to emigrate to Australia in 1951.  The long sea voyage was made in the SS Largs Bay.  They arrived in Fremantle appropriately on New Year’s Day 1952. The family finally disembarked in Melbourne. Harding had his first air flight, in a Convair, to Hobart as his stepfather was contracted to work in Tasmania as a teacher.  Growing up in New Norfolk, Harding attended St Virgil’s College as a boarder. This was a challenging experience for a 10 year old new immigrant of whom there were then very few. He subsequently attended Hobart High School as a day boy.  After two and a half years the parents decided to move to Adelaide where they both continued their teaching careers, initially, in Salisbury North.  Harding then attended Adelaide Boys High School, from 1954 to 1957. He gained a Commonwealth Scholarship and Leaving Bursary, as well as the Hugh Cairns scholarship, to study medicine at the University of Adelaide.  These well-resourced scholarships enabled him to take up residence at Aquinas College in 1958.

Harding joined the Adelaide University Squadron, based at Barton Terrace, North Adelaide in the second year of his medical course, with his university friends; Peter Jolly, who became a RAAF pilot, and Ian Favilla, who served in Vietnam. This was obviously a good recruiting exercise as all three had careers of some duration in the Air Force. During  his university years Harding was accepted and commissioned into the RAAF Undergraduate Scheme. He completed his preclinical studies, in 1960, and spent a University vacation in Alice Springs with fellow third year student John Campbell. The visit to Alice Springs was a particularly important life event as it was when he met his future wife, Rosemary McGrady, a member of the well-known central Australian Gorey family. It also opened the way to a long professional association with Alice Springs in later life. Harding completed a B Med Sc (Hons) in physiology, in 1961, and graduated MB BS in 1964.  He and Rosemary were married in January that year.

Following his residency at the RAH in 1965, Philip was promoted to Flight Lieutenant and posted to 4 RAAF Hospital at Butterworth, Malaysia.  Butterworth was a multiservice base with Army as well as Air Force personnel, both Australian and British as well as some Malaysians.  The Malayan Emergency was long over by then and life generally pleasant in the tropical environment of Penang island.  There were some reminders of terrorist activity, a particularly stark one being the Harding’s’ car which was purchased from the widow of a RAF officer who was killed riding his motorcycle home from the base when he encountered a wire strung at neck level across the road.

Most of 1966 was spent at 4 RAAF itself in the role of medical registrar.  The CO was Australian, Group Captain H Hardy, but the medical and surgical consultants were both RAMC, Maj A K Davies and Maj WC Moffat respectively.  The inpatients had a mixture of medical, tropical diseases and casualties from Vietnam who had been evacuated back to Butterworth for treatment.  It was during this time that Harding touched briefly upon the Vietnam conflict by being the MO on a medevac flight to retrieve injured soldiers from Saigon.  This involved flying at low level over the rice paddies of the Mekong delta, a potentially hazardous situation as Viet Cong snipers were known to be active in the ditches.  However, no holes appeared in the aircraft floor!  The scene at Tan Son Nhut was extraordinary, with every variety of aircraft parked wherever there was space and an enormous polyglot of people in the buildings.  Unbeknown to Harding, his former University Squadron friend, now Flight Lieutenant and later Squadron Leader Peter Jolly was to start such medevac flights a few months later as a C130 Hercules captain flying back and forth to Australia via Butterworth and Saigon, and also Vung Tau. Had he known, he might have met the third of the trio, Ian Favilla, who was serving there at the time. Harding worked at the families’ clinic on Penang Island, in the latter part of 1966.  During this time his young family was beset with medical misadventure firstly in the shape of their second child was the subject of an obstetric catastrophe and secondly with Rosemary developing a serious illness which necessitated evacuation back to Australia with Harding was posted to RAAF Edinburgh as Senior Medical Officer, a post he occupied until discharge from the service in March 1968.  He was issued with the Australian Active Service Medal 1945-75 with Clasp VIETNAM, the Vietnam Medal, the Australian Service Medal 1945-75 with Clasp SE ASIA, the Australian Defence Medal and the Pingat Jasa Malaysia.

Thus began the next phase of Harding’s life with physician training as a medical registrar, at the RAH, gaining his MRACP in 1969 and then winning a Commonwealth Medical Fellowship for specialty training in endocrinology in London, where he undertook research programs at St Mary's Hospital.  A further year was spent undertaking similar work at the University of Pittsburgh before the family returned to Adelaide. Harding took up a consultant post in endocrinology at the RAH; this association continued for the rest of his professional life as Head of Department, chairman of medical staff and now emeritus consultant.  During this time, and in private practice, following retirement from the full-time RAH staff in 1997, he continued a commitment to the RAAF as a civilian consultant both for clinical problems and, with his service knowledge, on medical reclassification issues.  In the mid-1980s he was invited to join the specialist reserve with senior rank but interminable and frustrating delays with ASIO, caused the arrangement to falter which, for Harding, was a great disappointment.

Family connections with military medicine re-emerged when Harding's younger brother, who had followed him into the RAAF as a new medical graduate, was deployed to the Middle East during the first Gulf War as specialist intensivist Wing Commander John Orton. More recent professional activities have included presidency of the SA Branch AMA  (1990-1992) and a long-term role as editor of the branch magazine, medicSA.  Following retirement from clinical practice Harding acts as an external consultant to the Therapeutic Goods Administration on regulation of new medicines. Philip and Rosemary Harding have now been married for 52 years and have four children and eight grandchildren. None of whom have been exposed or, they hope, will ever be exposed to military conflict.

Source

Blood, Sweat and Fears II: Medical Practitioners of South Australia on Active Service After World War 2 to Vietnam 1945-197.

Summers, Swain, Jelly, Verco

Uploaded by Annette Summers AO RFD