Captain Rupert Chetwynd, soldier and adventurer who helped to run a medical mission in Afghanistan – obituary
He fought terrorists in Cyprus, and was later an advertising executive before becoming a troubleshooter for a hospital in Peshawar
9 June 2021 • 3:20pm
Rupert Chetwynd in Corsica in the 1980s: he lived for a year in a yurt on the island
Captain Rupert Chetwynd, who has died aged 87, was a soldier, advertising executive, adventurer and traveller who, late in life, helped to run a medical mission to Afghanistan.
In 1979, the Soviet Union launched what was to become a 10-year war with Afghanistan. In the 1980s, alongside an intrepid team of volunteers from a British hospital, Chetwynd became the guide, troubleshooter and co-ordinator for a humanitarian medical mission. The team operated on war casualties in small hospitals in Peshawar close to the ill-defined border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.