Diary of a Nursing Sister

Non-Fiction 2010Summary:The quality of medical and nursing care available to British soldiers on
campaign had improved immeasurably since the days of the Crimean War in
the middle of the nineteenth century when Florence Nightingale and her
nurses had cared for wounded men who could scarcely believe that her
presence was not other worldly. By the time of the First World War the
organisation of medical care had become a fixture of the military
establishment, though, of course, this was to be a war like no other.
The reader joins the author of this book in the first days of the
conflict and through the pages of her diary we follow her experiences on
the Western Front as she cared for the wounded from the actions on the
Aisne through the First Battle of Ypres and to the fighting to the
middle of 1915. This book was originally published anonymously during
wartime, but today most sources attribute the diary to Kathleen Luard.
Clearly she was a dedicated nurse and her writings take the reader to
the heart of a war of mud and attrition, revealing the incredible work
she and her colleagues undertook to care for their beloved
'Tommies'-particularly on the ambulance trains which collected the
wounded from the front line to transport them to base hospitals and
close to the firing line in Field Ambulance stations where her accounts
of the plight of the wounded makes poignant and touching reading. An
essential source work of the Great war from the female perspective.