Nursing Through Shot Shell

Nursing Through Shot and Shell is the previously unpublished memoir of Beatrice Hopkinson, who served in France as a Territorial Nursing Sister from 1917-19. Beatrice worked close to the front line at casualty clearing stations, and her poignant account reveals the intense strain: 'I never realized what the word duty meant until this War. To stand at one's post, never flinching and trying to keep the boys cheerful; all the time wondering when our time would come.' The memoir reveals the lighter side of wartime life, with entertainments, travel and enduring friendships. Beatrice also describes the practical realities of war in vivid detail sleeping in dug outs, dodging bombs and avoiding rats 'as big as a good sized kitten'. A fascinating, close-up view of one women's life during wartime.

This recently discovered memoir gives an intimate glimpse into the Great War service of Beatrice Hopkinson, a Territorial Forces Nursing Service Sister, who remained steadfastly and true to her profession as she nursed through shot and shell. Dr Vivien Newman's meticulously researched Introduction brings Beatrice's world out of the shadows, juxtaposing her war service against the background of the Army Nursing Service, where dedicated, professional nurses worked closer to the Front Line than women could have ever previously imagined doing. Beatrice was selected for the most onerous type of duty in the bitterest phase of the war. She had arrived in St Omer in the summer of 1917 when the town was being continuously bombed. With her hospital under nightly attack, Beatrice simply got on with the job she had come to France to do: saving the lives and easing the dying of soldiers on the Western Front. For Beatrice, spring 1918 was marked by a sea of blood. Caught up in the British Army's headlong retreat when hospitals and patients risked being captured by the enemy, she and her rapid response team were rushed between several Casualty Clearing Stations in France and Belgium. They operated on thousands of soldiers wounded in Germanys final attempt to win the War. As the fortunes of war finally turned in the Allies favor, Beatrice advanced through Belgium, a land destroyed by war and enemy occupation. This diary gives rare insight into the realities of Front Line nursing through the eyes of someone who had never anticipated working for the Army but who, when her country called, willingly and steadfastly answered.

Nursing Through Shot and Shell is the previously unpublished memoir of Beatrice Hopkinson, who served in France as a Territorial Nursing Sister from 1917-19. Beatrice worked close to the front line at casualty clearing stations, and her poignant account reveals the intense strain: 'I never realized what the word ÒdutyÓ meant until this War. To stand at one's post, never flinching and trying to keep the boys cheerful; all the time wondering when our time would come.' ??The memoir reveals the lighter side of wartime life, with entertainments, travel and enduring friendships. Beatrice also describes the practical realities of war in vivid detail Ð sleeping in dug outs, dodging bombs and avoiding rats 'as big as a good sized kitten'. A fascinating, close-up view of one women's life during wartime.

World War I is regarded as the first modern war, driven by fearful new technologies of mechanized combat. The unprecedented carnage rapidly advanced military medicine, transforming the nature of wartime caregiving and paving the way for modern nursing practice. Drawing on firsthand accounts of American nurses, as well as their Canadian and British counterparts, historian Paul E. Stepansky describes nurses' encounters with devastating new forms of injury--wounds from high-explosive artillery shells, poison gas burns, "shell shock," the Spanish Flu. Comparing nursing practice on the western front with nursing care during the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the Anglo-Boer War, the author is especially attentive to the emergent technologies employed by nurses of the Great War.

This book discusses the experiences of the author, who was known for serving as a nurse and a spy with the Union Army during the American Civil War.

This book is about women in World Wars I & II - women working in factories and on farms, or toiling perilously in field stations just behind the front lines, in inhospitable hospitals and convalescent homes. It is, therefore, about the prodigious contribution women made to the war efforts from 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, standing in for the men who had left their places of work for the various theatres of war from Greece and Italy to Belgium, from Mesopotamia to France. Their tasks were many and various: keeping the troops supplied with shells, bullets and explosives, keeping the nation from starving to death, keeping hundreds of thousands of wounded troops alive so that they might fight another day. The book is, in short, the uplifting but sometimes tragic story of the many women who stepped up to work in the factories, hospitals, field stations, in transport and in civil defense, on the farms and shipyards, or signed up to the various military and civil services during the two world wars of the 20th century, ‘wars to end all wars…’. The book is different because it deals with women’s labour in both world wars and in all occupations, it covers the discrimination and prejudice they faced from men at every level, military and civilian, even when they had demonstrated beyond doubt that they were quick learners, industrious and proficient, and usually as good as any man. The book raises the embarrassing question why it has it taken so long for the prodigious contribution women made in both wars to be recognized, and why some women workers still remain air brushed from our military history after more than a century. As it turned out, little was beyond their capabilities and it is reasonable to suppose that without their huge efforts and accomplishments both wars might have turned out very differently for us.