The First World War diaries of Emma Duffin : Belfast Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse / Trevor Parkhill, editor.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Parkhill, Trevor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

World War, 1914-1918--Nurses--Diaries.

World War, 1914-1918.

World War, 1914-1918--Women--Great Britain.

Nurses--Great Britain--Biography--Diaries.

Nurses.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Biographies.

Diaries.

Physical Description:

xii, 244 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Dublin : Four Courts Press, 2014.

Summary:

Ireland's part in World War I is now receiving long-overdue acknowledgment. The role of Irish women, however, is less well detailed. The diaries of Emma Duffin, born in Belfast and educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College, vividly describe her experiences as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse caring for wounded soldiers brought directly from the battlefield. Sent initially to Egypt, where she tended soldiers, many Irish and Australian, invalided from Gallipoli, she served in northern France from before the Battle of the Somme to the armistice in 1918. She had spent a year in Germany just before the war and what makes her observations all the more poignant is her ability to communicate, more sympathetically than her colleagues, with hospitalized German prisoners. Emma Duffin's journals remain an honest yet caring record of the human cost of an unparalleled conflict in which millions died and millions more were wounded. Her final entry reflects tenderly on the soldiers she unceasingly nursed - 'I was their sister in both senses.' Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Egypt, 1915-16 20

2 France, Le Havre Isolation Hospital and La Gare, May 1916 75

3 Southampton Shed, Quai d'Escale, autumn 1916 104

4 Palais des Régates, late 1916-spring 1917 120

5 Hôtel des Emigrants, autumn 1917 144

6 Back at the Quai, spring 1918 181

7 Calais, autumn 1918 205

8 Armistice, November 1918 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-236) and index.

ISBN:

9781846825224

1846825229

OCLC:

869775699