Warner Agnes - Agnes Warner and the Nursing Sisters of the Great War

Endnotes

Chapter 4

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 Warners 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 Warners 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 provinces 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. Im grateful to Mike Bechthold for creating the maps that follow Nurse Warners 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. Putnams 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-Queens University Press, 2005.

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

. Where Have All the Bluebirds Gone? On the Trails of Canadas Military Nurses, 1914-1918, Atlantis 26 (1, 2001): 35-43.

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

Nicholson, G.W.L. Canadas 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 Womens Professional Work , edited by Elizabeth Smyth, Sandra Acker, Paula Bourne, and Alison Prentice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

Veterans Affairs Canada. Canadas 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 Sisters 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: Canadas 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

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The photos on the appears courtesy of the British Journal of Nursing . All illustrative material is reproduced by permission.

Chapter One

"I Have Been There, Too"

Former Canadian army nursing sister Katherine Wilson-Simmie was nearly eighty years old when she finally undertook to publish an account of her wartime nursing experience for a wider readership beyond her immediate family. She began by referring to stories of danger and soldiers bravery, knowing that these accounts, told by the men who lived them, had continued to capture the imagination of Canadians like her children and grandchildren throughout the six decades since the Great War. But she also felt that the soldiers accounts tended to romanticize things, and wondered aloud why no books had been written by Canadian army nursing sisters. There were many male authors writing about important First World War campaigns. She said, Well, I have been there, too.