Publisher's Synopsis
In this history of British women as military nurses between 1854 and 1914, the author combines a detailed account of the origins and development of the regular Army Nursing Service and its successor, the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nusing Service, with a narrative of the early years of the Red Cross and the experiences and adventures of women volunteers in the international war relief movement.;Long before the electoral process gave them the vote, wars offered women many of the social rewards the vote symbolized: valued occupations, badges of honour and distinction, and a recognized position in the machinery of state. Wars represented a combination of citizenship, social legitimation, and personal challenge. Yet, as the author shows in this work, the figure of the war nurse was full of paradoxes: a symbol of motherhood and domesticity, required to play a part on the international stage; a symbol of healing, required to colaborate with a strategy of collective slaughter; a symbol of service and self-abnegation, encouraged to show pluck, initiative and responsibility.;This story of the feminization of a formerly male profession and the militarization of the quintessentially civilian sector of society makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the public roles of women in the 20th century. It illuminates not only the failure of the pre-war feminist movement to construct a pacifist platform, but also the wholehearted and fatal mobilization of western Europe for the catastrophe of World War I.
