Field Hospital and Flying Column Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia

A vivid diary opens with the night of a torch‑lit military tattoo on Salisbury Plain, where the promise of war hangs in the cool mist and a young English nursing sister feels the first stir of duty. She is swiftly summoned by the Red Cross, thrust into the frantic hubs of London’s streets, train stations and the Red Cross centre at Vincent Square, where volunteers crowd the aisles hungry for purpose. Amid the clamor of recruits, bandaging classes and impassioned pleas to “go to the front,” she begins to understand the stark gap between formal nursing training and the brutal demands of wartime care.

The narrative then follows her journey from the orderly halls of the home front to the improvised field hospitals of Belgium, where she confronts wounded soldiers amid the tangled chaos of a rapidly moving front. Her observations blend practical medical challenges with the emotional weight of tending to strangers under fire, offering a rare, firsthand glimpse into the compassion and resilience that sustained the early days of the Great War.