Nurses at the Front: Writing the Wounds of the Great War
Higonnet (English, Univ. of Connecticut) brings together  excerpts from the graphic, sometimes horrifying, accounts of two  nurses' experiences in World War I: Ellen N. La Motte's The  Backwash of War (1916) and Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone  (1929). Both women recognized the futility of nursing at the  front, where the objective was to heal soldiers so that they  might go back to kill or be killed. Indeed, La Motte's writing  was so forceful that her book was censored for a time.  Higonnet's introduction gives context to the women's writing and  notes the parallels in their lives, the incidents they sketched  and their observations of the conduct of war, and the place of  women in particular. Their vivid descriptions and critiques of  the war provide another viewpoint to those of combatants. Since  the two original books are no longer in print and are not widely  available, this volume would be a useful addition to academic  and public libraries with interests in World War I and  especially in women's accounts of the war. Patricia A. Beaber,  Coll. of New Jersey Lib., EwingCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.