[1] In 1918 he became a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and in 1919 resumed his medical training, graduating in 1921 MB BS (Lond.)
He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps throughout the second world war, during which he was appointed consulting physician to the Middle East Forces.
Brigadier Bedford became known as an efficient if demanding officer among the medical divisions, from Aleppo on the Turkish frontier to the hospitals behind the Eighth Army in Cyprus, Malta, and Khartoum.
[2]During the war, he kept a detailed diary, chronicling notable events such as his treatment of Winston Churchill, who became ill while visiting Tunis.
Evan Bedford and William Somerville worked closely with cardiac surgeons such as Thomas Holmes Sellors and Russell Brock.
He was intimately familiar with the history of cardiology and often quoted from memory such sources as Rokitansky’s Die Defecte der Scheidewande des Herzens, Lower’s Tractatus de Corde, or the writings of the Irish Victorians, Adams, Stokes and Corrigan.