Voices from History: Joyce's War: The Second World War Journal of a Queen Alexandra Nurse

by Joyce Ffoulkes Parry, Rhiannon Evans (Editor)

Joyce Ffoulkes Parry was an Australian nurse who came to Britain in 1937 to rediscover her Welsh roots. When war was declared she signed up as a Queen Alexandra's nurse and from 1940 until 1944, when she left India to begin her married life in Wales, she served as a sister in France, on hospital ships and in hospitals in Egypt, India and the Far East. Her journal came to light after her death in 1992.

Out of the chaos of war emerges a unique voice telling a vivid, compelling and honest story of adventure, bravery, friendship, homesickness and war-time romance. Edited by her daughter and published here for the first time, Joyce's wry observations about everything from the bureaucracy of the army to how shopping helped sustain her through four difficult but extraordinary years, offer a fascinating glimpse into a vanished world.

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2015

Reviews

[Shahira8826 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt pretty conflicted in reading "Joyce's War" by Joyce Ffoulkes Parry: on the one hand, it's blatantly clear that this journal was never meant for publication, contrary to what the author's daughter claims in the foreword. As a consequence, the whole book is packed with a large cast of characters who are repeatedly mentioned without any proper introduction or description, just like you or I would never bother with introducing or describing our long-standing friends when casually mentioning them in our own private journal. This also means there is no discernible plot or even attempt at making the story cohesive: storylines are abruptly opened, in medias res more often than not, and then closed just as abruptly (like when the author curtly announces she has broken up with a boyfriend of whose existence we had been barely aware). Those would all be bad narrative choices if the book had ever been meant for publication, but they make perfect sense in a private journal written only for one's own entertainment.
Even more oddly, a larger part of the book is preoccupied with the author's shopping trips and her squabbles with the bureaucrats who are constantly withholding her wage rather than with her actual work as a war nurse, which kind of makes the title of the book "clickbait". I guess that Joyce probably had to face so much suffering during her workday that she preferred to think of anything but her work whenever she took some time to herself to write in her journal.
On the other hand, there are some brilliant reflections interspersed here and there, such as this beautiful quote:

"With what utter stupidity mankind has brought about, and has allowed to grow, this dreadful, wanton waste and killing."

which in my opinion make even reading the less interesting parts worthwhile.
And through it all, there's the slightly guilty pleasure of reading someone else's private journal.
So overall I can say it was an interesting reading, although certainly not what I was expecting.