Book Review

Edited by Dean Whitehead

Containing Trauma: Nursing Work inthe First World War by Christine Hal-lett. 2010. Macmillan – ManchesterUniversity Press, Manchester, UK.ISBN: 9780719079580. 288 pp. £60Æ00.

While there is a plethora of books andwritings covering health, medicine andnursing during the First World War, fewcover the work and lives of nurses, theirhelpers and voluntary aid detachments(VADs) in as much detail as this text.The author has an erudite and interest-ing style of writing that encapsulatesthis detail. The footnotes are extensivebut not daunting. Through them, it iseasy to trace Hallett’s lines of investiga-tion and see the thoroughness of herwork. Hallett’s voice as both a nurseand historian comes through stronglyand provides an insight into the com-passion of nurses towards those forwhom they care. The primary materialfor this book is from the personal lettersand diaries of the nurses and VADs;novels and other books written at thetime and, postwar, by women whoexperienced nursing at the front line.The material is supported by officialmilitary documentation and war diaries.Hallett has sourced them from severalplaces in the UK such as the ImperialWar Museum; the Army Medical Ser-vices Museum at Aldershot; ChurchillCollege Cambridge; and holdings in theNational Archives, the Red CrossArchive, and the Wellcome Library.Hallett’s reach has been much widerthan just the UK services, though. Shehas used primary sources from theAustralian War Memorial; Library andArchives Canada; Archives New Zea-land and the Alexander TurnbullLibrary Archives in New Zealand. TheAllied nursing services were led byBritain (although the Matron-in-Chief

in France, Dame Maud McCarthy, wasan Australian) and, included womenfrom the colonies and later, the USA.Hallett’s detail of the contribution madeby nurses from the British Empire andits allies, and their motivation to sup-port ‘the Old Country’ makes sense ofsome of the mysteries surrounding thereasons young women from places as faraway as New Zealand were willing tojoin the war.

Containment is the theme that runsthrough this book about nurses inWorld War 1. Hallett has used a ‘publichealth’ approach to describe the nurses,VADs and their work from frontlinecasualty clearing stations (CCS); the first‘port of call’ for wounded soldiers,through the base hospitals in places likeLemnos and Egypt, onto hospital ships,ambulance trains and barges and, final-ly, through to the recovery hospitalsback in Britain. This public healthapproach deals with the work of thesenurses and its effect on a total popula-tion that is the soldiers within themilitary units, and within the locationsin which they served; mainly the battle-fields of Europe. Hallett’s public healthapproach presents a structured andeffective way to examine the effects ofwar on those who were wounded and onthose who gave the care – and on thestructure of that care itself. Hallettdiscusses how, in the CCSs, immediatetreatment meant containment of thewounds and the lives of the soldiersduring the particularly bloody conflictssuch as Gallipoli and the Somme. Shedescribes how infection was containedby the nurses and their treatments, inboth wounds and bodies in this pre-antibiotic era. Containment of death isanother theme which is handled sensi-tively and includes how nurses dealtwith hundreds of young men dying in

their care, and containment of the emo-tional strain on the women themselves.She explains how the nurses containedtheir own feelings to support the menwho often were so maimed both phys-ically and emotionally that theyremained impaired for life.

Hallett’s credentials, which includetwo PhDs (one in nursing and one inhistory), make her eminently qualifiedto write this book. Also, as Director ofthe UK Centre for the History ofNursing and Midwifery at the Univer-sity of Manchester, she is perfectlyplaced to access sources in manycountries. This has enabled her tobring an international scope to herwork. The book is intended to be athorough historical record of nursingactivity in one major conflict, and assuch is written in a style which givesinformation in a scholarly fashion.However, Hallett’s skill with the pen,coupled with her deep knowledge ofthe subject, and, importantly, her obvi-ous acknowledgement of these nursesas real women means the book can beeasily read by an audience wider thanjust nurses and historians. Apart fromthe rather noisome descriptions ofwounds and their treatments this bookis, for general readers, as interesting toread as Rees’s (2008) The Other Anz-acs – which has been well receivedsince its recent publication.

In summary, I believe that Hallett’sbook deserves to be influential with botha populist audience as well as an aca-demic one. Most importantly, however,its detail and insight contributes signif-icantly to the body of knowledgealready known about nursing in difficultsituations and, as such, could beincluded as required reading for allnursing students and would not be outof place on the bookshelves of all

� 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 19, 1193–1194 1193

doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2010.03223.x

interested in the history of the healthprofessions, or war. I will venture to saythat this book will become the definingpublication about nursing by the Alliedforces in World War 1 as it providesknowledge that can be learned andapplied to the context of current nursingpractice.

Linda ShieldsProfessor of Paediatric and Child

Health NursingCurtin Health Innovation Research

InstituteCurtin University

PerthAustralia

Reference

Rees P (2008) The Other Anzacs: Nursesat War 1914–1918. Allen & Unwin,Crows Nest.

1194 � 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 19, 1193–1194

Book Review