Sister: The War Diary of a Nurse

by Helen Dore Boylston

Sister: The War Diary of a Nurse, first published in 1927, is Helen Boylston's (1895-1984) moving account of her service as a front-line nurse in France in World War I. She vividly recounts the long, grueling hours in surgery, the devastating German air-raids, the determination of the soldiers. She also injects a good deal of humor, wit, and insight, with stories of her fellow nurses and the officers, her pleasant interludes in the French countryside, and her leaves to Paris and London. The book also serves as a testament to young Boylston's spirit of adventure: after returning to the United States, she cannot bear the thought of 40 years “in a place where nothing ever happens and every day is like every other day.” The book closes with the author boarding the steamship New Amsterdam, bound for Europe where she would again work as a nurse. Boylston would later go on to write the popular “Sue Barton” series of nurse-related novels.

Genres: Memoir, History, World War I, Nursing, Nonfiction

90 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

An only child, Helen Dore Boylston attended Portsmouth public schools and trained as a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. Two days after graduating, she joined the Harvard medical unit that had been formed to serve with the British Army. After the war, she missed the comradeship, intense effort, and mutual dependence of people upon one another when under pressure, and joined the Red Cross to work in Poland and Albania. This work, often in isolation and with little apparent effect, wasn't satisfying. Returning to the U.S., Boylston taught nose and throat anaesthesia at Massachusetts General for two years. During this time Rose Wilder Lane read Boylston's wartime diary and arranged for it to be published in the Atlantic Monthly. - Source

- More information

Series:
* Sue Barton
* Carol Page

Reviews

[Geraldine Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this on line: http://www.worldcat.org/title/sister-...

Loved it. A look back in time...

[SK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read books by Helen Dore Boylston as a teen, but never read any of her non-fiction. So, when I saw available The War Diary of a Nurse, I purchased it in the Kindle format. It is a diary, sometimes she had an entry and other times, she didn’t write for a week. Occasionally the entry was frivolous, slightly juvenile, or naively hopeful, but often, you felt the shear intensity, the blinding carnage inflicted on young men in the trenches and then sent-up to the mobile hospital. Across her diary flashes real pictures from a front-line nurse in France during WWI. She tells of night-upon-night shelling, where she had to grab her gear, blankets, and trudge into a pre-arranged fox hole, hopeful of finding some sleep out in the elements. She experienced sleep deprivation, when there was so much to do and a scarcity of nurses. She treats her injured soldiers as her family and they treat her as family also. You sense that for her, it is not a job or even a vocation, it is a dedicated calling. You also see the many ways, both positive, negative, and humorous that soldiers, nurses, and all, deal with the transient nature of life at this point-in-time. In the midst of the horror, she was able to step-back and view the beauty of nature around her and write convincingly about what she saw. Humorous, as well as sad was the few entries about her dog “Pat.” That dog was a de-stressor for her and when it died; oh, how that told a story. She was not even able to leave her post to grieve. It was well-worth the time spent reading, informative and enlightening. Rate 3.8

[Ethan Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my research for a MA thesis. Helen is captivating. Her story is gripping and it is easy to feel, as the audience, what she is going through. Some of the highs, lows and overall experiences she endured are unforgettable.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some exquisitely written narrative passages describing beauty in nature, so finely done that I was quite transported. However, there was something missing from her accounts, something deeper than the surface adventure that she relays. It came across as a noticeable gap in her personality as no one could be so profoundly perceptive without other aspects of her personality coming across. It almost seemed to be probably the product of a heavy edit.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for World War I buffs and Sue Barton fans. If you're both? Fantastic.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging memoir of a young American nurse, serving in France in WWI with Harvard Medical Unit under the British Expeditionary Force. My own experience in nursing (not in war but critical care) and my interest in early 21st century history led me to read it. Boylston doesn't tell all, but just enough. In emergency and critical care settings nurses protect their deepest emotions, they don't wallow in them or necessarily give voice to them. Boylston's account is stronger because it is the tip of the iceberg. I really identified with the author, who went on to write Sue Barton, a fictional, chronological series about an American nurse.

[P.R. Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful

She is my grandmothers' contemporary but she has given me a different idea of what life was like than I envisioned about my Grandma. And, it was not that different from my days in my twenties or any other age or time. Just because they dressed differently, does not mean they were.

[Beth Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good snapshot of the period by the author of the Sue Grafton books.

[J]

BHW

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needs extensive copy editing

The book is a vivid account of nursing in a war zone during World War I through the eyes of youth.