Ted Barris

Lost in the WWII story of the Battle of the Bulge lay an account of sacrifice and survival that took historian Ted Barris nearly a lifetime to discover – the story of his own father

Throughout the winter of 1945, sergeant medic Alex Barris waged a battle night and day to save lives in the middle of the bloodiest campaign the US Army faced during the liberation of Europe. But the author’s pursuit of his father’s story revealed an even greater challenge – learning what it was that motivates military medics, surgeons, nursing sisters, stretcher-bearers, orderlies, and ambulance drivers to disregard their own well-being to save the lives of others on the battlefield.

Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire led Ted Barris into fields of fire as diverse as the US Civil War battle at Fredericksburg, where the field ambulance was invented, and to war zones of Iraq, where 21st century flight surgeons attend wounded soldiers inside Black Hawk helicopters.

Using his father’s experiences as a front-line medic in WWII, Ted Barris brings to life the stories of: Victoria Cross recipient Francis Scrimger; gas mask inventor Cluny Macpherson; Congolese nurse Augusta Chiwy in the siege of Bastogne; medics Wesley Clare and Laurence Alexander in the slaughter at Dieppe; the real story of Korean War imposter Ferdinand Demara; Vietnam War orderly Norman Malayney; and decorated Iraq War surgeons Dane Harden and Herb Ridyard.

Not a soldier, but the soldier’s storyteller, not a veteran, but recognized by vets as keeper of the flame, Ted Barris has now published 19 non-fiction books, a dozen wartime histories. For 50 years, he has worked as a broadcaster in Canada and the US. He taught journalism at Toronto’s Centennial College for 18 years.

His book The Great Escape won the 2014 Libris Award for Best Non-fiction Book of the Year. Dam Busters received the RCAF Association NORAD Trophy in 2018.