My father, Hugh Hardy, who has died aged 98, was a dedicated and much-loved medical general practitioner in Sussex.
He was born in Birmingham, the third of four children of Lionel, a gastroenterologist, and Elizabeth (nee Ritchie), a nurse. He attended Haileybury school in Hertfordshire and was 15 when the second world war broke out. By the winter of 1943, he was a lieutenant in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps – and heading to fight in southern Italy. After some traumatic experiences on the battlefield he was captured and spent just over a year as a prisoner of war. He was 21.
