Agnes Warner and the Nursing Sisters of the Great War (19 page)

Bomb damage at a hospital.
Queens University Archives

Propaganda poster of the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell.
CWM 19960034-008

Propaganda poster depicting the German U-boat attack on the Llandovery Castle.
CWM 19850475-034

Mike Bechthold

Nurses and staff of Ambulance 16/21, including Warner.
British Journal of Nursing

Nurses and patients at the Physiotherapy Department, New Brunswick Military Hospital, Fredericton.
NBM1990.11.78

Doctor and nurse examining several children at the School Clinic at the Saint John Health Centre.
NBM NANB-SJHealthCentre-pg8

Endnotes

Chapter 4

1
Nurse Florence Nightingale and her staff worked in a hospital in Scutari, Turkey, caring for wounded and sick British soldiers during the Crimean War.

2
The town of Dinant in Belgium was destroyed by the Germans on August 23, 1914, and nearly seven hundred civilians killed.

3
The 1st Canadian Division fought in the 2nd Battle of Ypres, April 22-26, during which it suffered more than six thousand casualties.

4
The 26th (New Brunswick) Battalion, which was raised throughout the province, sailed from Saint John on June 13, 1915.

5
Throughout June 1915, the French army launched several secondary attacks along its front in support of its main offensive in May and June on Vimy Ridge, near Arras.

6
The Germans launched a major offensive against the French at Verdun on February 21, 1916. The campaign lasted until December.

7
The 26th Battalion helped to capture the village of Courcelette, on the Somme, on September 15, 1916. During the attack it lost about 325 men.

Acknowledgements

I first encountered Nurse Agnes Warner's remarkable story as part of a project initiated by Lianne McTavish, for which I was investigating the contributions of women to the New Brunswick Museum in the late nineteenth century. At that time, Dr. Stephen Clayden, Head of Botany and Mycology at the N.B.M. introduced me to Warner's exceptional collection of botanical specimens, pointed to her intriguing book of First World War letters, and generously shared what he had uncovered about Warner and her family. I am so grateful to him for that introduction to Miss Warner and for encouraging me to dig deeper into her life.

Thanks to Marc Milner for expanding the scope of the project and connecting me with the New Brunswick Military Heritage Project, thereby launching this glimpse into the great work of our province's nursing sisters. I am very grateful to Marc and to Brent Wilson for answering questions and facilitating the project through many phases. Special thanks to Brent, who patiently edited the manuscript, obtained the images, coordinated all input, and handled dozens of other tasks prior to publication. I'm grateful to Mike Bechthold for creating the maps that follow Nurse Warner's path through France and Belgium. Doug Knight and Susan Ross of the Canadian War Museum assisted in obtaining photos. And I owe many thanks to the staff at Goose Lane Editions for their editorial and design expertise.

For his impeccable judgment and serene endurance, I thank Greg Quinn, without whose advice and encouragement this project would have languished. And finally, I remember with appreciation every heartening word from family and friends who took an interest in this undertaking.

Selected Bibliography

Adami, J. George.
War Story of the Canadian Army Medical Corps
. London: Colour Ltd., 1918. Available online at:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/adami/camc/camc.html

Anonymous.
Mademoiselle Miss: Letters from a First World War Nurse at an Army Hospital near the Marne
. Cornwall: Diggory Press, 2006. Originally published 1916, Macmillan.

British Journal of Nursing
, volumes 53-62 (1914-1919). Available online at:
http://rcnarchive.rcn.org.uk/
and
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=british%20journal%20of%20nursing%20AND%20collection%3Atoronto

Bruce, Constance.
Humour in Tragedy: Hospital Life behind 3 Fronts by a Canadian Nursing Sister
. London: Skeffington, 1918.

The Canadian Nurse
, volumes 10-11 (1914-1915). Available online at:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=the%20canadian%20nurse

Hallett, Christine E. “The Personal Writings of First World War Nurses: A Study of the Interplay of Authorial Intention and Scholarly Interpretation,”
Nursing Inquiry
14 (4, 2007): 320-329.

Higonnet, Margaret R., ed.
Nurses at the Front: Writing the Wounds of the Great War
. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001. Includes two primary texts: Ellen N. La Motte,
The Backwash of War
(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1916); and Mary Borden,
The Forbidden Zone
(New York: Doubleday, 1929, 1930).

Higonnet, Margaret Randolph, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret Collins Weitz, eds.
Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars
. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1987.

Macphail, Andrew.
Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War 1914-19: The Medical Services
. Ottawa: F.A. Acland, 1925. Available in print or online at:
http://www.archive.org/details/medicalservices00macpuoft

Mann, Susan.
Margaret Macdonald: Imperial Daughter
. Montreal and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.

———, ed.
The War Diary of Clare Gass
1915-1918
. Montreal and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000.

———. “Where Have All the Bluebirds Gone? On the Trails of Canada's Military Nurses, 1914-1918,”
Atlantis
26 (1, 2001): 35-43.

Morton, Desmond.
When Your Number's Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War
. Toronto: Random House, 1993.

Nicholson, G.W.L.
Canada's Nursing Sisters
. Toronto: Stevens, 1975.

Quiney, Linda. “Assistant Angels: Canadian Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurses in the Great War,”
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History
15 (1, 1998): 189-206.

Scott, Eric, ed.
Nobody Ever Wins a War: The World War I Diaries of Ella Mae Bongard, R. N.
Ottawa: Janeric Enterprises, 1998.

Smith, Angela K.
The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism and the First World War
. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Stuart, Meryn. “War and Peace: Professional Identities and Nurses' Training, 1914-1930,” in
Challenging Professions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Women's Professional Work
, edited by Elizabeth Smyth, Sandra Acker, Paula Bourne, and Alison Prentice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

Veterans Affairs Canada.
Canada's Nursing Sisters
. Ottawa, 2005. Available online at:
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/content/history/other/Nursing/nursingsister_eng.pdf

Warner, Agnes.
My Beloved Poilus
. Saint John, NB: Barnes & Co., 1917.

Wilson-Simmie, Katherine M.
Lights Out! A Canadian Nursing Sister's Tale
. Belleville, ON: Mika, 1981.

Web pages and Virtual Exhibitions:

Canadian War Museum. “Canada and the First World War.” Available at:
http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/guerre/home-e.aspx

Library and Archives Canada. “The Call to Duty: Canada's Nursing Sister.” Available at:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/nursing-sisters/index-e.html

New Brunswick Museum.
“Mark Our Place”: World War I
. Virtual Exhibit. Available at:
http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/MOP/english/ww1/index.asp

Veterans Affairs Canada. “Canada Remembers.” Available at:
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/

Photo Credits

/

The photos on the
front cover
(top) (LAC-PA-002562) and bottom (LAC-PA-006783), pages
9
(LAC-PA-5230),
25
(LAC 1970-163), and
128
(LAC-PA-002562) appear courtesy of Library and Archives Canada (LAC). The drawing on page
11
appeared in the book
Humour in Tragedy
. The photos on pages
14
(19920085-102),
20
(19920044-811),
22
(19590034-002), posters on pages
30
(19920143-009) and
39
(19900076-809), photos on pages
56
(19720102-061),
59
(19920085-529), the bottom photo on page
131
(19960034-008), and the photo on page
132
(19850475-034) and back cover (19700046-012 — illustration; and 19590034-002 — uniform) appear courtesy of the Canadian War Museum (CWM). The photo on pages
18
and
19
(V28 Mil-Hosp-10) appears courtesy of Queen's University Picture Collection. The posters on pages
21
(WP1.F12.F2) and
49
(WP1.B12.F2) appear courtesy of McGill University. The photos on pages
34
and
35
(1990.11.4),
36
(NANB-Military-7),
44
(VP-02816),
149
(1990.11.78), and
150
(NANB-SJHealthCentre-pg8) appear courtesy of the New Brunswick Museum (NBM). The photos on pages
40
,
53
,
69
,
73
,
75
,
93
,
95
,
104
,
108
,
114
,
115
,
120
,
124-125
, and photo of Agnes Warner on back cover from
My Beloved Poilus
. The maps on pages
47
,
52
, and
134
appear courtesy of Mike Bechthold. The top photo on page
131
appears courtesy of the Queens University Archives. The photo on page
137
appears courtesy of the
British Journal of Nursing
. All illustrative material is reproduced by permission.