Sisters of the Somme

True Stories from a First World War Field Hospital

Following the outbreak WWI, the British Red Cross appealed for volunteers to train as frontline medical staff, and a major volunteer field hospital was built at Etaples in France. Women volunteered for a variety of reasons. Some believed that they were responding to a vocational or religious calling, others were following a sweetheart to the front, whereas others had been carried away on the wave of jingoistic patriotism that had gripped the nation in 1914. One such volunteer was Lily Fielding. Despite her training, however, Lily and the young friends she was to make at the Somme were ill-prepared for the stench of gangrene and trench foot. Isolated as they were from friends and family at home, they forged new and close relationships with one another, establishing a camaraderie that was to last the entire war and beyond.This book is a heartwarming account of life in one field hospital at the Somme, based on the true stories of the nurses who were there.