Introduction: New Perspectives on First World War Nursing

Anyone reading the histories of the First World War produced in the five decades that followed it could have been forgiven for assuming that participation in the conflict was an exclusively masculine experience. A pivotal moment in this trend was the publication in the 1970s of Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, ¹ which is widely viewed as representing the apotheosis of this male-dominated perspective, yet which simultaneously opened the way for a new genre of writing about the First World War as a culturally transformative event.² Responding to both the challenge and the prompt posed by Fussell’s work, women’s historians have, from the 1970s onward, worked to rectify the imbalance within the historical record: to restore women to their place in the history of the First World War. Their works collectively introduced new sources, as well as contributing to an innovative gendered understanding of war and its consequences. In a search for women who can be understood as active participants rather than passive observers of war, many historians and cultural critics began to research and consider the role, image, and experiences of First World War nurses.³.