author
Pat Beauchamp Washington
1892–1972
A wartime memoirist with remarkable grit, she wrote from lived experience as an ambulance driver in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Her work brings World War I close-up, with plainspoken detail, courage, and dark humor.
1 Audiobook
Fanny goes to war
by Pat Beauchamp Washington
About the author
Born Catharine Marguerite Beauchamp Waddell in Cumberland, England, in 1892, she was better known as Pat Waddell and later published as Pat Beauchamp Washington. She joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry before World War I and served in France as an ambulance driver, carrying wounded soldiers under dangerous conditions.
Her life was marked by extraordinary resilience. During the war she lost a leg when her ambulance was hit by a train, but she returned to service and was later decorated for her work. She also served again during World War II, and that same toughness runs through her writing.
She is best remembered for Fanny Goes to War, a vivid memoir of FANY service in World War I. The book is valued not just as a personal story, but as a lively firsthand record of women's wartime work, written with immediacy and wit.