Joseph Attie was born in 1891 in Damascus. He lost his father at an early age and moved to Beirut with his mother and brother in 1900. In 1908 he entered the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut) to study medicine, graduating in 1914. On the outbreak of the First World War he was drafted into the Ottoman Army as a surgeon with the rank of captain. Awarded the Turkish Nishan medal and the German Iron Cross during his military service, he was taken prisoner by the British in 1918 and was interned in Lydda (today, Lod, Israel), Pal…