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War-Torn Exchanges: The Lives and Letters of Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes
Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes, an inseparable duo, set off from Montreal in June 1915 to serve as nursing sisters in the Great War. Over the next four years, the two cared for each other through sickness and health, air raids and bombings, unrelenting work, and adventurous leaves. This thoughtfully curated collection of their letters home paints a vivid account of nursing through the battles of Gallipoli, Passchendaele, and beyond. Mildred and Laura were remarkably forthright, revealing how they relied on friendship, humour, and professional ethics to carry on in the face of mismanagement, discrimination, deprivation, and trauma.
- GenresNonfiction
268 pages, Hardcover
Published May 15, 2016
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July 13, 2017
In June 1918 Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes, two nursing graduates of The Montreal General Hospital School of Nursing, sailed from Montreal to Europe to serve four years in the Great War. They looked forward to adventure and travel as well as the opportunity to obtain a unique nursing experience. The two were close friends and gave up promotions and other assignments to stay together during this time period, counting on their friendship to help provide the support they knew each would need to survive the experience. They endured privation, illness, horror and emotional trauma during their long workdays providing care to injured soldiers, avoiding air raids and bombs and the loneliness of separation from their families, friends and the live style they were accustomed to at home. War nursing was traumatic and friendship was often a means of maintaining a sense of equilibrium amid the chaos.
Each of the women wrote letters home, Laura to her widowed mother and Mildred to her close childhood friend Cairine Reay Wilson. Laura was by far the more prolific writer, penning over 180,000 words compared to Mildred’s 20,000. These wartime letters have been separated for decades, Laura’s kept in British Columbia and Mildred’s in Ottawa. The author has skillfully integrated the correspondence to provide a record of their individual and often different perspectives of their war experience. It also tells of their close friendship, one that was so important in sustaining their physical, mental and emotional health over those years. It is fascinating to read their different accounts and to appreciate their different styles. Where Mildred gives only short narrative accounts and is terse about her criticisms, Laura supplies pages of vivid detail on her observations of the people, places and events around her, and provides a more open version of her complaints. Both had one common concern: amid the chaos and confusion around them, they never knew what the overall situation of the war was at any point in time. It was a common experience as everyone was kept in the dark with snippets of information, rumour and speculation their only source of information.
While both women came from prominent social, cultural and economic backgrounds, Mildred was related to some of the wealthiest and most influential families in Montreal. The social circle of the two women included many of Canada’s elite and both grew up in a context of prestige and respectability. These family connections and the respect of the nursing hierarchy for Mildred’s administrative competence, helped the two women stay together throughout their overseas assignments. And when their experience was over in May of 1918, they both returned to Canada on the same ship.
The women’s letters detail the conditions of hospital life and the experience of the soldiers they cared for, presenting a picture of both that was often contradictory to the publicized accounts found in newspapers and heard on radio. Those accounts emphasized the heroism and sacrifice of soldiers injured on the battlefield, but both women found they spent just as much time nursing soldiers who were ill from poor sanitary conditions and infectious disease.
Mail delivery was often sporadic and letters travelling in both directions across the sea sometimes arrived in batches or out of sequence. Laura and her mother dealt with this by carefully numbering all their correspondence. Both women skirted the rules for censorship, Laura more openly than Mildred. They both recognized the importance of avoiding information in their letters that might be helpful to the enemy but they could not understand why any criticism of military matters was considered an offence. Laura honored the prohibition about military information but saw little sense in eliminating descriptions of hospital life in her letters home. The two sent a number of uncensored letters to England and Canada through returning personnel and Laura found two officers ready to sign her letters unread based on the honour system. Laura also had a way of burying her criticisms deep in her many long lengthy letters, knowing few of the censors had the patience to read through all of them.
Both women bristled at being thrust into the patriarchal military hierarchy after the years they had spent at home as more independent professionals. At this time, Canadian nursing had grown in prestige and respectability and was viewed as a profession. Nurses held the relative pay and rank of officers and enjoyed some of the same privileges, very different from the British nurses who were expected to defer to authority rather than wield it. This disparity did not help the relationships between the Canadian and the British nurses, who viewed them as “colonials” but at the same time were jealous of their rank and pay.
The nurses worked with physicians providing treatments, assisted in the operating rooms, provided bedside care for those physically and emotionally traumatized and performed the administrative work necessary to maintain the flow of medications, food, supplies and equipment. As they carried out their work, the two women experienced a life very different from their privileged lives back home. They were unaccustomed to hunger and the shortage of supplies both for themselves and their patients. In addition they had to deal with depression, both that of their patients and their own.
Laura was an accurate and perceptive observer and little escaped her eye. She questioned the privilege of gender and the status of officers who had so many luxuries while the enlisted men often lacked bare necessities. She criticized what she referred to as “the colossal mismanagement of military matters” which caused unnecessary sacrifices for the men. In one example she questions the logic of locating a clearing station on an island where there was no steady supply of food, potable water or medical supplies and where the evacuation of men was hampered by weather and a harbour without a dock. In another, she rails against the location of a field hospital with no way to connect to the battlefield. Wounded men could not be transported to hospitals on rut filled goat paths and roads had to be constructed on hilly, rocky and very difficult terrain.
The 164 letters the two nurses wrote have been edited and well organized into chapters based on the physical location of their postings. The first chapter documents their initiation into war nursing by a posting to a hospital in England where they waited for their assignment. Chapter 2 includes letters from Lemnos where the nurses were shocked by the conditions they encountered. Chapter 3 details a period of recuperation in Cairo, Egypt where they took advantage of the opportunity to sightsee (only when they could be accompanied by an officer), finding an exotic and multicultural city where the sunsets were gorgeous, the people fascinating and the filth and dirt beyond description. They were constantly besieged by beggars, noise and confusion as the hired boats, took trains, wandered the bazaars, rode camels and donkeys and visited mosques, temples and pyramids. They were frantic to see everything they could, knowing they might never have such an opportunity again. Chapter 4 covers their posting on Salonika in Greece where most of their patients were affected by enteric diseases and malaria rather than wounded by the fighting. Chapter 5 details their experience in England after being recalled in 1916 just in time to experience the largest Zeppelin air raid of the war. In July 1917 they were posed near Ypres, just in time for the horrors of Passchendaele. The final chapter tells of the year Mildred acted as acting matron and their transfer to more peaceful hospitals in France away from the battlefields.
As the nurses headed home, they both predicted that many of those involved in the war effort would be so changed that ordinary existence would be very trying. What they had seen and experienced made some of the problems at home seem very petty. Mildred notes that the returning soldiers were not just heroes with glorious wounds but young men who had lost arms, legs, hands, feet, who were mutilated and disabled and had potentially lost their ability to work.
The conclusion and epilogue reflects on the post war lives and accomplishments of the two women and it becomes clear their wartime experiences influenced their later life choices. Both had accomplished careers and the changes they helped bring about ultimately improved the lives of children, women and families through new long term health and welfare policies.
This book of letters presents a vivid description of nursing during World War I. It takes the reader into the lives of two women who had a modern outlook, enjoyed cocktails, adventure, laughter and music and who spoke out on behalf of themselves and their patients. They felt no remorse in raging against the men slaughtered and sacrificed because of the ignorance and incompetence of the military administration. Mildred in particular depicts the military as indifferent and neglectful, responsible for the awful conditions in the trenches and the subsequent illness of the soldiers who died from sickness rather than the “supreme sacrifice of death on the battlefield” often quoted in the popular media.
This is also a book about the intense friendship of two nurses in the Great War. It distinguishes itself from other memoirs or diaries in that it contains personal details, complaints and thoughts, some of which never saw the eyes of censors. It is an interesting and thought provoking collection and the idea of putting these two collections of letters together provides a striking record for others to read and study.
Each of the women wrote letters home, Laura to her widowed mother and Mildred to her close childhood friend Cairine Reay Wilson. Laura was by far the more prolific writer, penning over 180,000 words compared to Mildred’s 20,000. These wartime letters have been separated for decades, Laura’s kept in British Columbia and Mildred’s in Ottawa. The author has skillfully integrated the correspondence to provide a record of their individual and often different perspectives of their war experience. It also tells of their close friendship, one that was so important in sustaining their physical, mental and emotional health over those years. It is fascinating to read their different accounts and to appreciate their different styles. Where Mildred gives only short narrative accounts and is terse about her criticisms, Laura supplies pages of vivid detail on her observations of the people, places and events around her, and provides a more open version of her complaints. Both had one common concern: amid the chaos and confusion around them, they never knew what the overall situation of the war was at any point in time. It was a common experience as everyone was kept in the dark with snippets of information, rumour and speculation their only source of information.
While both women came from prominent social, cultural and economic backgrounds, Mildred was related to some of the wealthiest and most influential families in Montreal. The social circle of the two women included many of Canada’s elite and both grew up in a context of prestige and respectability. These family connections and the respect of the nursing hierarchy for Mildred’s administrative competence, helped the two women stay together throughout their overseas assignments. And when their experience was over in May of 1918, they both returned to Canada on the same ship.
The women’s letters detail the conditions of hospital life and the experience of the soldiers they cared for, presenting a picture of both that was often contradictory to the publicized accounts found in newspapers and heard on radio. Those accounts emphasized the heroism and sacrifice of soldiers injured on the battlefield, but both women found they spent just as much time nursing soldiers who were ill from poor sanitary conditions and infectious disease.
Mail delivery was often sporadic and letters travelling in both directions across the sea sometimes arrived in batches or out of sequence. Laura and her mother dealt with this by carefully numbering all their correspondence. Both women skirted the rules for censorship, Laura more openly than Mildred. They both recognized the importance of avoiding information in their letters that might be helpful to the enemy but they could not understand why any criticism of military matters was considered an offence. Laura honored the prohibition about military information but saw little sense in eliminating descriptions of hospital life in her letters home. The two sent a number of uncensored letters to England and Canada through returning personnel and Laura found two officers ready to sign her letters unread based on the honour system. Laura also had a way of burying her criticisms deep in her many long lengthy letters, knowing few of the censors had the patience to read through all of them.
Both women bristled at being thrust into the patriarchal military hierarchy after the years they had spent at home as more independent professionals. At this time, Canadian nursing had grown in prestige and respectability and was viewed as a profession. Nurses held the relative pay and rank of officers and enjoyed some of the same privileges, very different from the British nurses who were expected to defer to authority rather than wield it. This disparity did not help the relationships between the Canadian and the British nurses, who viewed them as “colonials” but at the same time were jealous of their rank and pay.
The nurses worked with physicians providing treatments, assisted in the operating rooms, provided bedside care for those physically and emotionally traumatized and performed the administrative work necessary to maintain the flow of medications, food, supplies and equipment. As they carried out their work, the two women experienced a life very different from their privileged lives back home. They were unaccustomed to hunger and the shortage of supplies both for themselves and their patients. In addition they had to deal with depression, both that of their patients and their own.
Laura was an accurate and perceptive observer and little escaped her eye. She questioned the privilege of gender and the status of officers who had so many luxuries while the enlisted men often lacked bare necessities. She criticized what she referred to as “the colossal mismanagement of military matters” which caused unnecessary sacrifices for the men. In one example she questions the logic of locating a clearing station on an island where there was no steady supply of food, potable water or medical supplies and where the evacuation of men was hampered by weather and a harbour without a dock. In another, she rails against the location of a field hospital with no way to connect to the battlefield. Wounded men could not be transported to hospitals on rut filled goat paths and roads had to be constructed on hilly, rocky and very difficult terrain.
The 164 letters the two nurses wrote have been edited and well organized into chapters based on the physical location of their postings. The first chapter documents their initiation into war nursing by a posting to a hospital in England where they waited for their assignment. Chapter 2 includes letters from Lemnos where the nurses were shocked by the conditions they encountered. Chapter 3 details a period of recuperation in Cairo, Egypt where they took advantage of the opportunity to sightsee (only when they could be accompanied by an officer), finding an exotic and multicultural city where the sunsets were gorgeous, the people fascinating and the filth and dirt beyond description. They were constantly besieged by beggars, noise and confusion as the hired boats, took trains, wandered the bazaars, rode camels and donkeys and visited mosques, temples and pyramids. They were frantic to see everything they could, knowing they might never have such an opportunity again. Chapter 4 covers their posting on Salonika in Greece where most of their patients were affected by enteric diseases and malaria rather than wounded by the fighting. Chapter 5 details their experience in England after being recalled in 1916 just in time to experience the largest Zeppelin air raid of the war. In July 1917 they were posed near Ypres, just in time for the horrors of Passchendaele. The final chapter tells of the year Mildred acted as acting matron and their transfer to more peaceful hospitals in France away from the battlefields.
As the nurses headed home, they both predicted that many of those involved in the war effort would be so changed that ordinary existence would be very trying. What they had seen and experienced made some of the problems at home seem very petty. Mildred notes that the returning soldiers were not just heroes with glorious wounds but young men who had lost arms, legs, hands, feet, who were mutilated and disabled and had potentially lost their ability to work.
The conclusion and epilogue reflects on the post war lives and accomplishments of the two women and it becomes clear their wartime experiences influenced their later life choices. Both had accomplished careers and the changes they helped bring about ultimately improved the lives of children, women and families through new long term health and welfare policies.
This book of letters presents a vivid description of nursing during World War I. It takes the reader into the lives of two women who had a modern outlook, enjoyed cocktails, adventure, laughter and music and who spoke out on behalf of themselves and their patients. They felt no remorse in raging against the men slaughtered and sacrificed because of the ignorance and incompetence of the military administration. Mildred in particular depicts the military as indifferent and neglectful, responsible for the awful conditions in the trenches and the subsequent illness of the soldiers who died from sickness rather than the “supreme sacrifice of death on the battlefield” often quoted in the popular media.
This is also a book about the intense friendship of two nurses in the Great War. It distinguishes itself from other memoirs or diaries in that it contains personal details, complaints and thoughts, some of which never saw the eyes of censors. It is an interesting and thought provoking collection and the idea of putting these two collections of letters together provides a striking record for others to read and study.
February 8, 2017
Interesting account from two Canadian Nurses serving in WW1
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews