War-Torn Exchanges
The Lives and Letters of Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes
A captivating collection of Great War correspondence written by two Canadian nursing sisters.
Description
Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes, an inseparable duo, set off from Montreal in June 1915 to serve as nursing sisters in the Great War. Over the next four years, the two cared for each other through sickness and health, air raids and bombings, unrelenting work, and adventurous leaves. This thoughtfully curated collection of their letters home paints a vivid account of nursing through the battles of Gallipoli, Passchendaele, and beyond. Mildred and Laura were remarkably forthright, revealing how they relied on friendship, humour, and professional ethics to carry on in the face of mismanagement, discrimination, deprivation, and trauma.
Reviews
Laura’s letters to her mother and Mildred’s to her friend Cairine Wilson document a side of the war not found in more formal accounts … [and] close the artificial divide between battle front and home front … McKenzie’s narratives, annotations and deft editing … [make] War-Torn Exchanges an insightful contribution to understanding another aspect of the war.
- Great War 100 Reads
Andrea McKenzie provides as indispensable a service to contemporary readers as the women no doubt did for their friends and family during the war. As Mildred exclaimed, in the absence of such accounts, “the people at home have no idea what the soldiers [and nurses, we might now add] … went through for them.”
- C.M. Haney
Of this cadre of women most – but not all, for some were killed in action – returned from war. Some became our leaders in nursing, hospital management, and social services. Some left nursing and became our grandmothers or great grandmothers. We are in their debt, for their work and for their legacy. In their articulation of war, framed by diligent writers and researchers like Cynthia Toman [author of Sister Soldiers, UBC Press 2016] and McKenzie, we discover anew, from Canadian nursing sisters in the First World War, just what war is. From such articulation, we have much to learn.
- Margaret Horsfield
The letters [of Holland and Forbes] document close links between Canada's home and war fronts. Ties taught lessons about the atrocities of combat and, no doubt, helped inspire subsequent anti-war activity and support for refugees … In short, War-Torn Exchanges provides inspiration in plenty for both friendship and engagement.
- Herizons