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A Nurse at the Front: The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton by Edith Appleton
lucyp21's review against another edition
3.0
This was a book I picked up on a whim from the library and found it interesting enough to carry on. Edith Appleton was a nurse who worked on the front lines during WWI. She wrote in a diary religiously throughout the years and then posted them back to her mother. However, not much was censored, she gave what appears to be an accurate description of what life was like for her during her time in France. There are diaries missing from the middle of the war, so we get her perspective at the beginning and the end of the war. It was a shame we missed out the middle, when she made several great friendships and when the fighting was at the worst (and when she apparently pissed off a matron so much that she was sent off elsewhere).
This was interesting, more for the historical perspective than from what was actually written. Yes, I did like to hear about Edith's life, especially how she felt about the men she cared for, and how she handled being constantly on throughout the years, but it did get repetitive at the end. However, I really enjoyed the little footnotes that were scattered throughout the book, pointing out where Edith's facts were wrong and how propaganda and news could really affect someone's view of what was happening. A point stood out for me when she was talking about how Japan changed its mind about who to support throughout the war and was only supporting the Allies when it looked like they were going to win, but a footnote pointed out that Japan declared war on Germany in 1914, years before the Americans did. In historical fiction, something like that would be pulled up as the author not knowing their time periods but because these were diaries of a real person, it was good to see just how much the public could get wrong because what they saw was filtered through the media and their own prejudices.
Edith was very unsympathetic to the Germans at the start of the war, unsurprisingly, but she softens in the last volume when it looked far more certain that the Allies were going to win. It was so easy to see, even through her view of a compassionate person, how suspicion and prejudice could lead to the very unbalanced Treaty of Versailles and thereafter, to Hitler and his Nazis. Also when the Allies used spies and tricks to get one up on the Germans, it was clever tactics and when the Germans did it, it was 'dirty tricks'. That was another thing you would not get in fiction, such a centred morality as Edith displayed here. She did remark that she wished both sides would stop using gas and by the end she wondered how the German nurses were doing with their patients and these were welcome insights into her as a person.
This isn't to say that Edith was a bad person. She was, by all accounts, a very good nurse. Caring and compassionate, while being practical and pragmatic. She talked about the patients and about how she found the burden of correspondence with their families quite 'heavy' but she felt it was something she had to do. There was one patient who hung on near death for over a month and you could sense Edith's quickly stifled hope every time it looked like he was getting better and she could possibly write to his desperate mother and give her the good news. But while she was busy managing a ward of anything from five to two hundred patients, she wrote about the scenery around her and her days off where she and her friends would explore the surrounding countryside. Nothing particularly dramatic happened to Edith but the constant fear, danger and overwork were present throughout the four volumes.
This book was interesting to give a historical perspective on part of the war we rarely see in media, mostly because while it could be exciting, it could be monotonous but it wasn't a particularly thrilling book.
3.5 stars!
This was interesting, more for the historical perspective than from what was actually written. Yes, I did like to hear about Edith's life, especially how she felt about the men she cared for, and how she handled being constantly on throughout the years, but it did get repetitive at the end. However, I really enjoyed the little footnotes that were scattered throughout the book, pointing out where Edith's facts were wrong and how propaganda and news could really affect someone's view of what was happening. A point stood out for me when she was talking about how Japan changed its mind about who to support throughout the war and was only supporting the Allies when it looked like they were going to win, but a footnote pointed out that Japan declared war on Germany in 1914, years before the Americans did. In historical fiction, something like that would be pulled up as the author not knowing their time periods but because these were diaries of a real person, it was good to see just how much the public could get wrong because what they saw was filtered through the media and their own prejudices.
Edith was very unsympathetic to the Germans at the start of the war, unsurprisingly, but she softens in the last volume when it looked far more certain that the Allies were going to win. It was so easy to see, even through her view of a compassionate person, how suspicion and prejudice could lead to the very unbalanced Treaty of Versailles and thereafter, to Hitler and his Nazis. Also when the Allies used spies and tricks to get one up on the Germans, it was clever tactics and when the Germans did it, it was 'dirty tricks'. That was another thing you would not get in fiction, such a centred morality as Edith displayed here. She did remark that she wished both sides would stop using gas and by the end she wondered how the German nurses were doing with their patients and these were welcome insights into her as a person.
This isn't to say that Edith was a bad person. She was, by all accounts, a very good nurse. Caring and compassionate, while being practical and pragmatic. She talked about the patients and about how she found the burden of correspondence with their families quite 'heavy' but she felt it was something she had to do. There was one patient who hung on near death for over a month and you could sense Edith's quickly stifled hope every time it looked like he was getting better and she could possibly write to his desperate mother and give her the good news. But while she was busy managing a ward of anything from five to two hundred patients, she wrote about the scenery around her and her days off where she and her friends would explore the surrounding countryside. Nothing particularly dramatic happened to Edith but the constant fear, danger and overwork were present throughout the four volumes.
This book was interesting to give a historical perspective on part of the war we rarely see in media, mostly because while it could be exciting, it could be monotonous but it wasn't a particularly thrilling book.
3.5 stars!
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