The first year of war on the Western Front
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.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.