In a new paper this year on the Politics of Nursing Knowledge, Perron and her colleagues [14] criticise what they call the 'militarization of nursing', claiming that: "Many accounts provide angelic portrayals of nurses faced with the devastating effects of war. Such nurses are described as loyal, beautiful, peaceful, healing, comforting, reliable, devoted, and courageous in the face of hardship. These romantic descriptions stand in sharp contrast to the organized killing and destruction of warmaking." [14] I would argue that what Perron and her colleagues have almost studiously overlooked are that these allegedly 'romantic descriptions' also stand in sharp contrast to any respectable historical account of the experiences of military nurses [1] . In such histories, and in particular the growing collection of oral histories of nurses' wartime and conflict zone experiences [3, [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] , we will find not saccharine, sentimentalized, spin-doctoring but vivid recollections and narratives from nurses, who, in addition to thankfully being 'loyal, comforting, devoted, healing, reliable and courageous', are also intelligent, skillful, determined, demanding, creative and resourceful.