William Reid

He won a Carnegie bursary to study medicine at Glasgow, supplemented by money his father, also William Reid, a carpet loom tenter, earned by appearing in the evening in Glasgow's music halls as song and dance act Harry Albion.

However, money remained tight and Willie, as he was better known, used to run behind the tramcar to university to save "three-ha'pence".

He became president of the university League of Nations Association and of the University Liberal Club, hosting the former Liberal prime minister David Lloyd George. He graduated MB ChB in 1933 and began more than 40 years' professional association with Glasgow Royal Infirmary, interrupted by six years of war service.

At the outbreak of war he enlisted with the Cameronians, seconded as lieutenant to the 4th Scottish Hospital at Buchanan Castle, Drymen. From there, he was posted to the 37th General Hospital at Tamale in the Gold Coast for two and a half years to train the West Africans in jungle warfare ready for action in Burma. He caught malaria, treated leprosy, shot pythons and studied witchdoctors' ju-ju. He was the first successfully to treat Gaboon viper snake bite in the Gold Coast, by using blood transfusion. He loved Africa and retained an admiration for Africans throughout his life.

Captain Reid was posted home to the Tank Corps, in charge of ambulances on the south coast of England, ready for an invasion. "We had one soldier per mile at road junctions a mile inland along the coast waiting for Hitler. Hitler didn't come, " he said.

As ship's surgeon on HM Hospital Ship Aba, he evacuated the wounded from Italy after the Battle of Monte Cassino. To keep hospitals in the south of England free of casualties prior to D-day, the Aba took the wounded across to New York, facing the North Atlantic Run. There, a chance encounter with an American naval surgeon in Jack Dempsey's Bar gave Captain Reid a supply of the new "wonder drug" penicillin, becoming one of the first British doctors in wartime to use it, to great effect.

The D-day landings brought the Aba into Cherbourg. Willie operated non-stop as the ship shuttled back and forth to Southampton, each trip evacuating 800 wounded from the beaches. As the invasion progressed, he followed in with the American Army, taking charge of a captured German field hospital outside Berlin.

In 1945, he returned to Glasgow Royal Infirmary as Dispensary Surgeon and Surgical Pathologist. In 1952, he heard news of an innovative surgical technique performed in Paris: a vascular bypass graft. Immediately, his interest transferred to this specialty, vascular surgery.

He pioneered many novel vascular techniques at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where five years later he set up the United Kingdom's first specialist vascular surgical unit. Innovation was required in those early days. No commercial vascular grafts were available. Willie ordered material from a firm of London shirtmakers which his theatre sister, with her sewing machine fashioned into prototype tube grafts.

Those pioneering years included the first cases of peripheral thrombolysis, the first aortic aneurysm and carotid surgery in Scotland and the original description of chemical sympathectomy. Willie travelled at all hours to operate on cases in other hospitals throughout the west of Scotland. However, it became clear that it was wiser for patients to be transferred to the specialist unit at the Royal.

There, a highly trained team led to unrivalled survival rates for conditions such as aortic aneurysm repair. Surgeons in training benefited from his enthusiastic teaching throughout the pioneering years and up to his retirement in 1975. There are many hospitals throughout the world whose vascular surgeon has been trained by Willie Reid or in his old unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

In the 1960s, Willie's former wartime commander, Sir Ian Fraser, introduced him to membership of The Surgical Travellers, a group of influential surgeons who would visit centres throughout the world to share experiences. Willie became an enthusiastic and regular attender at their twice yearly meetings, gaining a reputation in later life for asking speakers the most pertinent questions.

In 1957 he married Abigail, his former resident in the Royal Infirmary. Their two sons, Allan and Donald, both "followed in father's footsteps" into medicine.

The premature deaths of his two brothers-in-law, Murdoch and later Donald, left young families without a father. Willie stepped into the gap, supporting the two families as they grew up.

On retiral, he was afforded the title Honorary Consulting Surgeon to Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the last ever to be awarded. He wrote two books: The Surgeon's Management of Gangrene and Bush Proper, the latter recounting his adventures and experiences in West Africa. He continued legal, committee and college work, examining at home and overseas for the FRCS. He cofounded with Sir Charles Illingworth, the Senior Fellows Club at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He also co-founded the Battlefield Caring Service for the elderly homebound.

In 1990, aged 80, Willie re-retired, giving up all remaining committee and voluntary work. He was an enthusiastic traveller, attending surgical meetings worldwide into his nineties. He also continued an association with the Isle of Jura for more than 45 years.

There he enjoyed lasting friendships and regular walks and boat trips.

Those advancing years did not limit his enthusiasm. One month before his 90th birthday Willie attended the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance in the Royal Albert Hall and Remembrance Sunday march past at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. He asked to repeat this just before his 93rd birthday "while I'm still fit enough". On that second occasion, he fell back some distance behind the BlackWatch Association with whom he was marching, getting a personal salute from the Duke of York.

His war-time service had played a major part in the moulding of his life, priorities and friendships. He died on June 6, the anniversary of the Dday landings of which he was very much part.

Willie was never happier than in the company of his family. At the head of the table or at a picnic on a sunny day in Jura, he would look round at Abigail, their children and grandchildren, sister Susan, reflecting on a happy day and inevitably on a life well spent. He would smile in contentment and remark: "As my mother used to say: 'Our lives indeed have fallen in pleasant places' . . . and they have!"