IN THE FRONT LINE - A History of Nurses in the Great War

« Our wounded are admirable, wonderful. Not a single complaint. They let themselves have their arms and legs cut off, their skulls opened without a murmur. (…) It is for France. »

« I hurry towards the dressing room, and there unfolds the harrowing procession of hideous wounds, atrocious destruction, a pulp of flesh, bones and splinters. »

From the battlefield to the collective imagination, how did the figure of the nurse take shape, and how has it evolved?

In this gripping and thoroughly researched narrative, the fates and words of women from all walks of life are interwoven — women who, by the thousands, during the Great War, left their homes to enter new fields and become nurses. By turns idealised, sexualised and rendered invisible, excluded from knowledge, power and the sphere of war, shaped and confined within the framework of the home and then the hospital, these women make their voices heard here.

Through numerous testimonies, hurried notes taken in emergency situations, personal diaries and writings intended for publication, Françoise Coquillat tells us the story of the birth of a profession, the determination, the exhaustion and sometimes the despair of these women thrown without preparation into the horror of war.

She also describes the relationships between men and women at the beginning of the 20th century, tinged with self-abnegation, tenderness, admiration and anger.

To discover these heroines, to listen to them, to pay tribute to them, is an act of commitment.