Veiled Warriors: Allied Nurses of the First World War
Veiled Warriors: Allied Nurses of the First World War By Christine E. Hallett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) (384 pages; $34.95 hardcover)In her book, Veiled Warriors: Allied Nurses of the First World War, author Christine E. Hallett deconstructs both the myths and the legends surrounding Allied nurses during World War I. Through the telling of individual nurses' stories, Hallett constructs a very readable narrative that reflects the diversity and eclectic nature of their nursing experience and reveals a complex reality in their relationships to the organizations or groups to which they belonged, the soldiers for whom they cared and the military hierarchy in which they practiced. Hallett opens her comprehensive text with a preface where she includes an unnecessary apology, acknowledging that although she covers much of the Allied nursing experience, there is much that remains untold. Instead of apologizing, Hallett should revel in the contributions she has made in this text to the relatively new field of nursing historical scholarship that focuses on World War I nursing. Hallett's book brings to the forefront of nursing scholarship a much needed and exhaustive analysis of the contributions made by Allied nurses during World War I. The main thesis of this work is that Allied nurses of World War I were "veiled warriors" who waffled between society's ideals of subservience to the dominant male culture and their role as trailblazers who bucked the system at every turn; and this is well developed throughout both the introduction and the main portion of the book.In each of her seven smartly organized chapters, Hallett ends with a formal conclusion section that summarizes the main points of the chapter. The first chapter is named "A Call to Action: August December 1914" where Hallett describes a world awakened and shaken by war and where volunteers and trained nurses from around the globe joined forces and quickly found themselves in convalescent hospitals, field dressing stations, or on hospital ships, as part of novice but well organized medical teams. Chapter 2, "A Nursing Service on the Western Front: 1915," focuses on the harsh reality of trench warfare and its fallout in relation to the human mind and body, both from the nurses' perspective and the soldiers they cared for. This section is arguably the most graphic in detail and delves into the experience of patients suffering from "shell shock." A topic that seems to transcend time is found in Hallett's inclusion of the debate that ensued between medical contemporaries about whether the condition has a physical basis or whether it is merely a psychological phenomenon.Chapter 3, "Nursing on the Russian and Serbian Fronts: 1914 1916," offers the reader a well articulated synopsis of a complicated and intricate history of the Eastern Front of this war. In this section, Hallett compares and contrasts the experiences of Russian nurses who served in letuchka or flying columns where they treated dressing changes like religious rituals and expressed their heartache surrounding their care of many "hopeless cases.