A War Nurse’s Diary: Sketches from a Belgian Field Hospital

The true account of a brave British woman’s experiences while volunteering as a nurse with the Red Cross during World War One. Her diary describes in graphic detail the horrors of working on the front in a war-torn Belgium. Right in the firing line in the second battle at Ypres, she states, ‘Our hospital soon became a shambles.our theatre a slaughter house. We started working that day, April 23rd, and we never stopped for about two weeks. Operations continued day and night with two tables occupied all the time…’. However despite everything she maintained her sense of humour and desired to find the beauty in things, rejoicing at finding primroses springing up amidst the ruins and revelling in cantering on convalescent Blue Cross Horses on the sand dunes in the bright spring sunshine. She also refused to let heavy shelling by the Germans spoil her Christmas, or her game of hide-and-seek. While she hid amongst the ambulance cars with the other nurses, the drivers searched for them waving mistletoe