The doctor's hands are old now, but remarkably steady after all their work.
For four decades, in the safety of staid, stable Toronto, they prodded the taut bellies of expectant mothers and deftly brought their babies into the world.
During the Second World War, they toiled 17 months amid the ruins of Italy, delivering young men from the brink of death on the best days, and to their graves on the worst.
At 97, Robert Meiklejohn can do what he wants with his hands, free now from their professional duties. But even freedom has its demands, which is why he now fingers the pages of his wartime diaries and remembers things, some of which he would just as soon forget.
"To me, it means a great deal," Dr. Meiklejohn said, seated in a soft chair in his North Toronto home, his memoirs resting in his lap.
That is why he submitted one of his tiny, weathered diaries to The Globe and Mail and the Dominion Institute, as part of a joint project to foster remembrance of the Italian campaign, a pivotal but under-recognized chapter of the war, overshadowed by the glory of D-Day.
The doctor's war story begins in 1940, when he was 33, single and one year into an obstetrical and gynecological career at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. Already a militia member and military buff, he signed up and shipped out to Ontario's Camp Borden for training, then to England in 1942.
He first tasted danger there, in Aldershot, while training a group of soldiers outside. "While I was talking, we could hear an aircraft coming, and we could see that it had a big [German]cross on it," he recalled. "Then we saw a stick of bombs coming down, and we took cover."
Then nothing. "They were all duds."
That wasn't the case on Nov. 6, 1943, as Dr. Meiklejohn sailed for Italy aboard the SS Santa Elena, with nurses from the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps and about 1,500 troops. As dusk fell on the Mediterranean, a German plane dropped a torpedo that left the ship crippled and listing.
All but four people survived the attack, scrambling into lifeboats and heading for sister ships in the Allied convoy. Dr. Meiklejohn, who stayed to move patients out of the Santa Elena's sick bay, was among the last rescued.
After landing in Naples, the baby doctor from Toronto was soon introduced to the bloody wounds of war when his field surgical unit joined the British 10th Corps on its muddy northward slog. Those casualties were light work compared with what followed in the spring of 1944.
On May 11, at 11 p.m., "the sky lit up like the Exhibition" as the Allies punched into the Liri Valley en route to Rome. "Sixteen hundred guns started a devastating, 40-minute attack on Cassino," he remembers, and the torn bodies quickly followed.
In script so small he can barely read it now, his diary entries were succinct, written with a doctor's detachment.
May 22: On from mid-N. to 0800 & busy. Worked through an air raid. Heavy ack-ack [anti-aircraft fire] No close bombs.
May 26: Got to bed at daylight -- 17 hrs. work. Up for lunch and feeling fine.
May 28: Pontecorvo. Town ruined. Germans and our dead being buried. All the lads pretty cagey of booby traps.
After Rome fell on June 4, Dr. Meiklejohn faced a brief lull. His writings, while terse, convey war's wild swings between the momentous and mundane.
June 9: Very quiet and things almost boring after the activity. Hot sunny days, everyone in shorts and well-tanned.
June 21: Beautiful sandy beach. Water perfect. Nothing to do but eat, swim, read and sleep. Volley-ball.
But before long, he was elbow-deep in blood again, as the Allies forced the Germans up the boot of Italy. The world's eyes, meanwhile, were fixed on Normandy.
Sept. 7: Operating room going strong. 48 cases done. Fighting very tough on Gothic Line. Cdns. taking punishment. Lads here seem to be supplying the casualties and those in France getting the glory.
In December, 1944, the 1st Canadian Corps moved northeast to Ravenna, an area riddled with minefields, and lost 500 men in less than three weeks. Some died where they dropped, others at the casualty clearing station. They were buried outside, under dirt mounds and white crosses, and moved later to proper cemeteries. Death stayed away on Christmas morning, but it was hardly a holiday.
Dec. 24: Cas. still coming in and post-op wards busy. Many Amp[utee].
Dec. 25: No deaths overnight. John Andrews did Santa very well. Two socks to each man including the Amps.
Dec. 28: Smith died.
Dec. 30: Lockhart died. Never came out of anesth. Small poker game.
"We experienced more upsetting situations in Ravenna than in most places," Dr. Meiklejohn said. "We lost more patients there than we'd been accustomed to losing."
Among them were a young Italian woman who had wandered into a minefield, and a 17-year-old soldier, oblivious to his massive injuries, insisting he was fine as he died in a nurse's arms.
As the Italian effort wound down, Dr. Meiklejohn was deployed to northwest Europe, and accompanied Canada's Seaforth Highlanders into Amsterdam as the Germans surrendered in May, 1945.
From the front seat of a truck, he saw defeated enemy troops at the roadside, guns still in their hands, but no longer firing. Then he watched as the people of Amsterdam filled the streets, clutching flowers.
Back home in Toronto, Dr. Meiklejohn worked, as so many veterans did, to put the war behind him.
But it made one final visit a few years later, when a one-legged man showed up in his waiting room. "He said, 'You removed my leg,' " said Dr. Meiklejohn, who was worried that the former soldier had come to complain. In fact, he was there to thank the doctor, and to shake his hand.
REMEMBERING: THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN
Tomorrow: Veterans' voices
On the Web
Visit globeandmail.com for a look at 60 of the artifacts submitted to the Dominion Institute's Memory Project, and an archive of articles about the Italian campaign.