The book’s author was one of a select number of fully trained professional nurses who worked in hospital trains and casualty clearing stations during the ward, coming as close to the front as a woman could.
Kate Luard was already a war veteran when she arrived in France in 1914, aged 42, having served during the 2nd Boer War. The author’s intention was to bear witness to the suffering of the ordinary soldier. Kate was the best. At the height of the Battle of Passchendaele, she had a staff of forty nurses and nearly 100 nursing orderlies (the normal nursing workforce for a CCS ws 7); and she was facing the worst abdominal wounds, up to that point a death sentence.
