Blank page Nurse Writers of the Great War This series provides an outlet for the publication of rigorous aca- demic texts in the two closely related disciplines of Nursing History and Nursing Humanities, drawing upon both the intellectual rigour of the humanities and the practice-based, real-world emphasis of clinical and professional nursing. At the intersection of Medical History, Women’s History, and Social History, Nursing History remains a thriving and dynamic area of study with its own claims to disciplinary dis- tinction. The broader discipline of Medical Humanities is of rapidly growing significance within academia globally, and this series aims to encourage strong scholarship in the burgeoning area of Nursing Humanities more generally. Such developments are timely, as the nursing profession expands and generates a stronger disciplinary axis. The MUP Nursing History and Humanities series provides a forum within which practitioners and humanists may offer new findings and insights. The international scope of the series is broad, embrac ing all historical periods and including both detailed empirical studies and wider perspectives on the cultures of nursing. Previous titles in this series: Mental health nursing: The working lives of paid carers in the nine- teenth and twentieth centuries Edited by Anne Borsay and Pamela Dale One hundred years of wartime nursing practices, 1854–1954 Edited by Jane Brooks and Christine E. Hallett ‘Curing queers’: Mental nurses and their patients, 1935–74 Tommy Dickinson Histories of nursing practice Edited by Gerard M. Fealy, Christine E. Hallett, and Susanne Malchau Dietz Who cared for the carers? A history of the occupational health of nurses, 1880–1948 Debbie Palmer Colonial caring: A history of colonial and post-colonial nursing Edited by Helen Sweet and Sue Hawkins NURSE WRITERS OF THE GREAT WAR CHRISTINE E. HALLETT Manchester University Press Copyright © Christine E. Hallett 2016 The right of Christine E. Hallett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 1 7849 9252 1 hardback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Out of House Publishing To Margaret and David Hallett Blank page Contents List of figures ix Preface x Acknowledgements xiii List of abbreviations xvii Introduction 1 Part I Independent ladies 27 1 Heroines in Belgium and Serbia 29 2 Le petit paradis des blessés 48 3 The hell at the heart of paradise 76 Part II Professional women 97 4 In France with the British Expeditionary Force 99 5 American nurses in Europe 124 6 The war nurse as free agent 143 Part III Volunteer girls 171 7 American young women at war 175 8 The British ‘VAD’ 187 9 Epic romance on Western and Eastern Fronts 211 Conclusion 229 Bibliography 246 Index 271 vii Blank page Figures 1 Portrait of Mabel St Clair Stobart (reproduced by permission of the Imperial War Museum, London) 38 2 L’Hôpital Chirurgical Mobile No. 1 (from Anon., My Beloved Poilus (Saint John, NB Barnes, 1917)) 51 3 Portrait of Agnes Warner (from Anon., My Beloved Poilus (Saint John, NB Barnes, 1917)) 60 4 Portrait of Ellen La Motte (reproduced by kind permission of the Alan Mason Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore) 77 5 The Luard family at Birch Rectory, Essex. Kate is on the back row, right-hand side. 101 6 View of a ward inside Hospital Train No. 18 (reproduced by kind permission of Richard Willis and with the assistance of the National Railway Museum, York) 105 7 Portrait of Julia Stimson (reproduced with the kind assistance of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC) 126 8 Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm attend to a patient in their Cellar-House in Pervyse (reproduced by permission of the Imperial War Museum, London) 146 9 Portrait of Violetta Thurstan in her Russian Red Cross uniform (from Violetta Thurstan, Field Hospital and Flying Column (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915); reproduced by kind permission of the Hypatia Trust, Penzance, Cornwall) 155 10 Portrait of Mary Britnieva (from Mary Britnieva, One Woman’s War (London: Arthur Baker, 1934)) 220 ix Preface During the First World War, tens of thousands of women devoted themselves to the care of the wounded. For many, this involved put- ting their lives ‘on hold’ and permitting a military medical machine to control their movements and restrict their freedom. For others, it meant committing themselves – and, for the wealthy, their fortunes – to a ‘mission’ that was both humanitarian and patriotic: a commit- ment to saving lives and winning the war. A few were pacifists, and others came to embrace pacifism as a result of their wartime experi- ences. As a group, they made significant contributions to the care of those damaged by war. Many wrote poignant and moving personal testimonies of their experience – letters, diaries, and narrative accounts. And among them were a few whose writings found their way into print. Some wrote with the deliberate intention of publication. Others found their expe- rience of nursing so powerful that they became determined to pub- lish their memoirs. Still others found themselves under pressure from family and friends to make their personal letters and journals avail- able to a wide audience. This book analyses the published writings of First World War nurses and explores the ways in which authors’ back- grounds and motivations influenced the content and style of their writing. In reading their texts and researching their lives and careers, I found that there were significant connections between their social and professional backgrounds and the ways in which they wrote. One of the most interesting groups consisted of wealthy and well-connected women who funded and directed their own hos- pital units, most operating under the auspices of the French Red Cross. They adopted two distinct approaches: some wrote in highly x Preface traditional styles, emphasising the adventurous and intrepid nature of their ‘exploits’. Their writing was infused with a powerful sense of pat- riotism. Others wrote deliberate exposés of the horrors of war, con- sciously adopting modernist styles to give a jarring and disturbing feel to their accounts; their projects were almost certainly motivated by pacifist conviction. Professional nurses were much more likely to write about their patients’ sufferings than their own exploits, though their narratives do contain detail about the horrors and dangers of war. Volunteer nurses often wrote reflectively, placing themselves at the centre of their own wartime world and focusing on both their extraordinary encounters with the wounds of war and the transformative nature of their experiences. Their accounts are sometimes filled with awe and wonder; at other times they adopt a pacifist tone, relating encoun- ters with German prisoners of war, or exploring their own feelings of dislocation when reality failed to match the myths that had fed their expectations. In writing this book, I wanted to capture the patterns of writing within this field – the different genres, styles, and approaches – and also to offer an analysis of the ways in which nurses’ and volunteers’ backgrounds and pre-war experiences influenced their style. I could have adopted any one of a number of different structures – and did, indeed, experiment with some before deciding on the model here: a structure based on social and professional background. But writers do not fit neatly into categories, and I found myself compromising at times – placing, for example, the important work of professional nurse Ellen La Motte in that section of the book which focuses on the pro- jects of ‘independent ladies’ who formed their own hospitals. By pla- cing La Motte’s work alongside that of Mary Borden, who created and directed the field hospital, L’Hôpital Chirurgical Mobile No. 1; Agnes Warner, who was head nurse of the hospital; and Maud Mortimer, who probably worked there as a volunteer, I hope I have been able to offer a more rounded image of that particular hospital, not only as a centre of healing, but also as a cauldron of literary creativity. The book contains other compromises, and its content has been influenced by a number of constraints. Only English-language pub- lications have been included, and the focus is on allied nurses, rather than on those who nursed the wounded of the Central Powers. The xi Preface space constraints of the volume meant that a decision was taken during the editing process to include only British (including one Anglo-Russian) and North American nurse writers; the book thus became a study of transatlantic, rather than global, nursing culture. This is not entirely disadvantageous. The literary outputs of signifi- cant Australian and New Zealand authors (notably May Tilton, Edna Pengelly, and Ida Willis) deserve detailed analysis in a completely separate study. The narrower focus of this study permitted a closer analysis of the ways in which British and North American women wove their wartime experiences into their life-writing. It also enabled some comparisons to be made and some distinctions to be drawn among them. Ultimately, I hope that – for all of its compromises and con- straints – this book makes a real contribution to scholarship by bringing together into one volume a detailed exploration of the connections between nurses’ social and professional backgrounds and the style and content of their writings.