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It's a Long Way to Tipperary
British and Irish Nurses in the Great War
Yvonne McEwen
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The extraordinary courage, sacrifice and hardship of professional nurses during the Great War are too often overlooked. Mass mobilisation of nurses by professional and voluntary nursing services led to considerable rivalry between the different groups and working environments were very varied. Some nurses were involved in the day-to-day harrowing duties of casualty clearing stations, while others worked with grim determination on barges, in stationary hospitals and in the trenches of the Western Front. The exigencies of war led to nurses pioneering new care practices and inventing a variety of adjuncts that helped with diagnosis and treatment.
Nurses paid a heavy price for their work: death, disease and injuries. The psychological effects of being at the front, war trauma or shell-shock, hitherto considered a combatants’ disease, also affected nurses.
While the main part of the work inevitably focuses on the Western Front, the nurses’ involvement on the Home Front is also considered as is their part in the preparation for Civil War in Ireland in 1914 and the subsequent Easter Rising of 1916.
Yvonne McEwen is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Centre for the Study of Two World Wars where she is currently researching endurance and survival in combatants. She was previously an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool working on Ireland's involvement in Two World Wars. She is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh with degrees in nursing and history.