Roses of No Mans Land

by Lyn Macdonald

Book Overview

'On the face of it, ' writes Lyn Macdonald, 'no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of Edwardian drawing rooms into the manifest horrors of the First World War'. Yet the volunteer nurses rose magnificently to the occasion; in this book they tell their own stories

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014017866X
• ISBN13: 9780140178661
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Deserves all its praise:

THE ROSES OF NO MAN'S LAND provides a history of the casualties and medical services of the First World War, through the oral history of the survivors: the medical personnel and the wounded soldiers. It's not exclusively the VAD's experience that is covered - it's the nursing sisters; the doctors, the ambulance drivers, that Ms. MacDonald spoke to, who give us their experience. It's not exclusively the British experience either - the American medical personnel who volunteered before the U.S. entry into the war provide their stories. And what stories they are. Expertly set forth by Ms. MacDonald and bracketed with her usual crisp and well-researched historical details, THE ROSES OF NO MAN'S LAND is essentially tragic but is also a testament to the strength and honor of these women and men, who "first did no harm".

Angels in a War Zone

Author, Lyn MacDonald, has collected the stories of the British Volunteer Aide Detachments who served as nurse's aides in World War I. It's all here: grueling training, long hours, strict matrons, the horrors of the battlefield, and their devotion to the wounded men who they cared for. These dedicated women labored in a world before antibiotics where a simple cut could turn gangrenous in the manure-laden fields of Flanders and France. They were often the last person a solider saw before dying, and Ms. MacDonald has preserved their stories for posterity.