This book examines the work that nurses of many differing nations undertook during the Crimean War, the Boer War, the Spanish Civil War, both World Wars and the Korean War.
It makes an excellent and timely contribution to the growing discipline of nursing wartime work. In its exploration of multiple nursing roles during the wars, it considers the responsiveness of nursing work, as crisis scenarios gave rise to improvisation and the - sometimes quite dramatic - breaking of practice boundaries.
The book explores the contested position of the female nurse in an essentially masculine environment, partly because of the anxiety provoked by the presence of women in war zones and partly because nursing was considered a humanitarian service and thus antithetical to war. By exploring the work of the ordinary nurse, the book demonstrates that war became an arena in which the value of female nurses and nursing work came to be recognised; within war, nurses could foster new roles and opportunities.
The originality of the text lies not only in the breadth of wartime practices considered, but also the international scope of both the contributors and the nurses they consider. It will therefore appeal to academics and students in the history of nursing and war, nursing work and the history of medicine and war from across the globe.
