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Book Review: The Roses of No Man's Land
Aug. 23rd, 2021 10:17 amI've finished Lyn Macdonald's The Roses of No Man's Land, which focuses on the English and American medical teams at work during World War I. The title comes from a song about the nurses, but the book itself also includes reminiscences from doctors, ambulance drivers, wounded soldiers, etc. Rather than simply quote from these reminiscences, the book interleaves them with the text: there will be a few paragraphs explaining about, say, the then-novel technology of blood transfusions, then a reminiscence by a doctor who pioneered the technique, and another reminiscence by a soldier who gave blood to save another soldier's life (at the time apparently they couldn't store the blood; you had to have a donor right there).
Sometimes actually I did want a little more analysis, but it is really effective to read about it in the words of the people who were there - sometimes reminiscences years later, sometimes excerpts from letters or diary entries they wrote at the time.
The technique is particularly devastating in the last chapter, which interleaves headlines and reminiscences about victory celebrations with recollections about nursing victims of the Spanish flu. (Like Covid, the Spanish flu was a global pandemic that was also strikingly local: there were hot pockets where people were dying in droves, and other places not even very far away almost untouched by flu.)
A couple of more specific notes:
Later in the war, forward medical officers were instructed to stop diagnosing shellshock at the front, but to send those men to hospital with the note Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous). In other sources I've seen this presented as more or less a conspiracy to screw over the shellshocked (as Macdonald notes, some medical officers at the time saw it this way, too), but Macdonald argues that the policy was a response to the fact that most frontline medical officers simply didn't have the training to tell shellshock and sheer exhaustion apart.
Actually, it might not be a lack of training, but simply that in the early stages you can't tell those things apart, at least not in battlefield conditions where there are so many casualties that there is literally no time to spend on anyone who is not actively in danger of dying right that minute.
Although the book focuses mainly on British & American experiences, it notes in passing that the French medical organization was so inadequate that more French soldiers died of wounds than illness. Not because the French were particularly good at treating illness, mind, but because they were SO bad at getting wounded soldiers off the battlefield in a timely fashion. The more I read, the more baffled I become by the French army's priorities. Both the English and the German armies were so concerned for the health and safety and amusement of their soldiers, and the French army just doesn't seem to have given a shit?
Also, in a fun moment of synchronicity with D. K. Broster's Flight of the Heron (I've just gotten to the part where Ewen takes a projectile to the chest because it MIGHT have hit Lochiel otherwise), this book contains a cameo appearance by another Lochiel, as described by his adoring subordinate: "His name was Robertson and he was in the Cameron Highlanders, and his main topic of conversation when he began to get better was his commanding officer, Cameron of Lochiel. No one ever had, or according to him ever could have, such a wonderful man to command them. Robertson simply worshipped him."
Apparently people are just Like That about the Camerons of Lochiel.
Sometimes actually I did want a little more analysis, but it is really effective to read about it in the words of the people who were there - sometimes reminiscences years later, sometimes excerpts from letters or diary entries they wrote at the time.
The technique is particularly devastating in the last chapter, which interleaves headlines and reminiscences about victory celebrations with recollections about nursing victims of the Spanish flu. (Like Covid, the Spanish flu was a global pandemic that was also strikingly local: there were hot pockets where people were dying in droves, and other places not even very far away almost untouched by flu.)
A couple of more specific notes:
Later in the war, forward medical officers were instructed to stop diagnosing shellshock at the front, but to send those men to hospital with the note Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous). In other sources I've seen this presented as more or less a conspiracy to screw over the shellshocked (as Macdonald notes, some medical officers at the time saw it this way, too), but Macdonald argues that the policy was a response to the fact that most frontline medical officers simply didn't have the training to tell shellshock and sheer exhaustion apart.
Actually, it might not be a lack of training, but simply that in the early stages you can't tell those things apart, at least not in battlefield conditions where there are so many casualties that there is literally no time to spend on anyone who is not actively in danger of dying right that minute.
Although the book focuses mainly on British & American experiences, it notes in passing that the French medical organization was so inadequate that more French soldiers died of wounds than illness. Not because the French were particularly good at treating illness, mind, but because they were SO bad at getting wounded soldiers off the battlefield in a timely fashion. The more I read, the more baffled I become by the French army's priorities. Both the English and the German armies were so concerned for the health and safety and amusement of their soldiers, and the French army just doesn't seem to have given a shit?
Also, in a fun moment of synchronicity with D. K. Broster's Flight of the Heron (I've just gotten to the part where Ewen takes a projectile to the chest because it MIGHT have hit Lochiel otherwise), this book contains a cameo appearance by another Lochiel, as described by his adoring subordinate: "His name was Robertson and he was in the Cameron Highlanders, and his main topic of conversation when he began to get better was his commanding officer, Cameron of Lochiel. No one ever had, or according to him ever could have, such a wonderful man to command them. Robertson simply worshipped him."
Apparently people are just Like That about the Camerons of Lochiel.
