| History | Francis Joseph O' Meara was born in county Cork in July 1900 to a medical family. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College Dublin, where he received his MB in 1923. O' Meara joined the British Army in 1918 in the Officer Training Corps, he left to study medicine, rejoining the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1923, serving in Egypt and India. On the outbreak of the Second World War O' Meara was with a casualty clearing station in France, where he established an Ambulance Corp. In June 1940 he was captured by German soldiers and spent the next four years in captivity in various internment camps in France and Germany. Following his release and recovery O' Meara returned to Germany as the consulting physician to the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) from 1945-1950. From 1950 onwards he served positions in the near and far East, in 1954 he was appointed as director of the Middle East Land Forces and in from 1956-1959 he was director of medical services, Western Command. O' Meara retired to Herefordshire where he died in 1967. |