This Small Army of Women
Subtitle: Canadian Volunteer Nurses and the First World War
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780774830713
Subjects: Nursing; World war, 1914-1918, canada; World war, 1914-1918, women; Women, canada
Description: "With her linen head scarf and white apron emblazoned with a red cross, the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, or VAD, has become a romantic emblem of the Great War. This book tells the story of the nearly two thousand women from Canada and Newfoundland who volunteered to "do their bit" overseas and at home. Well-educated and middle-class but largely untrained, VADs were excluded from Canadian military hospitals overseas (the realm of the professional nurse) but helped solve Britain's nursing deficit. Their struggle to secure a place at their brothers' bedsides reveals much about the tensions surrounding amateur and professional nurses and women's evolving role outside the home."--