Arthur Darley was an Irish doctor who worked at the hospital set up by the Irish Red Cross in the French town of St-Lô after the Second World War. I have just written about him in the Irishman's Diary column in the Irish Times newspaper. Read it here.
Photo of Dr Arthur Darley (right). Source 1945 Capuchin Annual.
One of Darley's colleagues at the hospital was the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). While Darley tended to the patients with tuberculosis, Beckett was charged with keeping account of the hospital's supplies. They became friends and when Darley died in 1948, Beckett wrote a poem about his friend, the man with the "gleaming eye".
If you would like to know more about the hospital in St-Lô, there is an RTÉ radio documentary on its history available here.
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