Arthur Anderson Martin (26 March 1876 – 17 September 1916) was a New Zealand surgeon and wartime memoirist. Born in Milton, Otago, he was the son of Thomas Martin, a labourer, and Jessie Anderson. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, taking his MB ChB in 1900 and an M.D. in 1903 with a thesis on surgery drawn from his service in the Boer War, where he had worked as a civilian surgeon attached to the South African Field Force. He returned to New Zealand and settled in Palmerston North, building a general practice and a hospital surgical career, and became particularly noted for his skill in cancer surgery and treatment. In 1914 he enlisted with the Royal Army Medical Corps and served with the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium, earning a reputation both for his surgical skill under battlefield conditions and for repeatedly exposing himself to danger to treat the wounded. He was wounded at Flers on 17 September 1916 and died that same night at the base hospital in Amiens. He was awarded the 1914 Star and the British War Medal, a posthumous Distinguished Service Order, and a Mention in Dispatches. His one notable literary work is A Surgeon in Khaki (1915), a firsthand account of his experience as a military doctor at the front — the book that accounts for his listing as an author despite medicine being his primary vocation. In July 1920 Palmerston North Public Hospital opened a memorial wing in his name, equipped with X-ray and bacteriological research facilities.
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