Sisters of the Somme

Dramatic and heart-warming tales of nursing from a First World War field hospital Following the outbreak WWI, the British Red Cross appealed for volunteers to train as frontline medical staff, and a major volunteer field hospital was built at Etaples in France. Women volunteered for a variety of reasons. Some believed that they were responding to a vocational or religious calling, others were following a sweetheart to the front, whereas others had been carried away on the wave of jingoistic patriotism that had gripped the nation in 1914. One such volunteer was Lily Fielding. Despite her training, however, Lily and the young friends she was to make at the Somme were ill-prepared for the stench of gangrene and trench foot. Isolated as they were from friends and family at home, they forged new and close relationships with one another, establishing a camaraderie that was to last the entire war and beyond. This book is a heartwarming account of life in one field hospital at the Somme, based on the true stories of the nurses who were there. AUTHOR: Penny Starns has a PhD in the history of medicine from the University of Bristol and is an established historian and writer who has written about many of the female heroines of the twentieth century. She is the author of ‘Odette: World War Two’s Darling Spy’ (2009), ‘Surviving Tenko: The True Story of Margot Turne’r (2010) and ‘Blitz Families: The Children who Stayed Behind’ (2012), all published by The History Press. SELLING POINTS: . An intimate account of life working in the Etaples WWI field hospital near the Somme . Told through the diaries and anecdotes of volunteer nurses and her friends and colleagues . Based on primary sources from the Red Cross Archives that have never been published