The evocative diaries of a young nurse stationed in northern France
during the First World War, published for the first time. A rare insight
into the great war for fans of CALL THE MIDWIFE.
In April 1915, Dorothea Crewdson, a newly trained Red Cross nurse, and
her best friend Christie, received instructions to leave for Le Tréport
in northern France. Filled with excitement at the prospect of her first
paid job, Dorothea began writing a diary. 'Who knows how long we shall
really be out here? Seems a good chance from all reports of the
campaigns being ended before winter but all is uncertain.'
Dorothea would go on to witness and record some of the worst tragedy of
the First World War at first hand, though somehow always maintaining her
optimism, curiosity and high spirits throughout. The pages of her
diaries sparkle with warmth and humour as she describes the day-to-day
realities and frustrations of nursing near the frontline of the
battlefields, or the pleasure of a beautiful sunset, or a trip
'joy-riding' in the French countryside on one of her precious days off.
One day she might be gossiping about her fellow nurses, or confessing to
writing her diary while on shift on the ward, or illustrating the scene
of the tents collapsing around them on a windy night in one of her vivid
sketches. In another entry she describes picking shells out of the beds
on the ward after a terrifying air raid (winning a medal for her bravery
in the process).
Nearly a hundred years on, what shines out above all from the pages of
these extraordinarily evocative diaries is a courageous, spirited,
compassionate young woman, whose story is made all the more poignant by
her tragically premature death at the end of the war just before she was
due to return home.
