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.