Nurses at the Front

by Higonnet, Margaret R.; LA Motte, Ellen Newbold; Borden, Mary

• ISBN13: 9781555534844
• ISBN10: 1555534848
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-19
• Publisher: Northeastern Univ Pr

Summary

Ellen N. La Motte (1873-1961) and Mary Borden (1886-1968) are two of the best known American nurses who wrote about their experiences working in the same field hospital on the Western Front during World War I. La Motte's The Backwash of War (1916) and Borden's The Forbidden Zone (1929) present in powerful, vivid, and often haunting prose each woman's acute observations of the stark realities of battle and the severe conditions under which military medicine is practiced. Now representative selections from these classic texts are published for the first time in one volume. Linked by parallel themes and narrative approaches, the episodes recounted by La Motte and Borden expose the intense, horrific world of the surgical wards and operating rooms. Revealing the moral dilemmas faced by those who make decisions about the lives and deaths of soldiers, they describe the ethical contradictions of saving men who will return to the trenches to kill or be killed. Written from the perspective of both observer and actor, these compelling sketches often shift from shocking realism to irony, as they invite the reader to enter the nurses' harsh world and to understand their professional and personal struggles. In addition, the depictions of men's suffering challenge institutional indifference to the human costs of war.

Author Biography

Margaret R. Higonnet is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut and an Affiliate at Harvard University's Center for European Studies

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Glossary of French Terms	xxxix
FROM The Backwash of War
Ellen N. La Motte
Introduction (1916)	3	(2)
Heroes	5	(8)
Alone	13	(8)
A Belgian Civilian	21	(8)
The Interval	29	(10)
Women and Wives	39	(10)
Pour la Patrie	49	(8)
A Surgical Triumph	57	(8)
At the Telephone	65	(4)
A Citation	69	(10)
FROM The Forbidden Zone
Mary Borden
Preface (1929)	79	(2)
Belgium	81	(4)
The Square	85	(4)
Moonlight	89	(10)
Enfant de Malheur	99	(20)
Rosa	119	(10)
Conspiracy	129	(4)
Paraphernalia	133	(4)
In the Operating Room	137	(8)
Blind	145