To be fair, this diary of World War I VAD nurse Dorothea Crewdson was not written for publication. The manuscript notebooks were found by her nephew, the editor, after the passing of his father. They were first published in 2013.

The diaries are well written and generally enjoyable to read. The text relates, mostly as simple narrative, Dorothea's days and nights at tent hospitals in northern France from 1915 to early 1919. She talks about her living arrangements with the other VADs, and the basic routine of her days. She faithfully records her more pleasant activities on days and half-days off, when she and other VADs would travel to local towns to shop or have tea. She relates some interesting events, such as the concerts the hospital staff would put on, sheltering in the woods when the hospital is bombed from the air, and taking a battlefield tour at the end of the war. The book illustrates what Dorothea's day-to-day life was like after she made the bold move to volunteer in France. She was obviously a pleasant, dedicated and hardworking nurse.

What she doesn't do, though, is give the reader an understanding of the nursing itself. She occasionally makes brief mention of patients by name and their particular injuries or illnesses, but doesn't much go into what she is called upon to do to help them. Her days and nights seem to consist mainly of sweeping and tidying the wards, making beds, giving meds and "blanket-baths" and serving meals--and perhaps that was true. I suspect, though, that she saw so much pain and suffering that she chose not to discuss nursing specifics in her notebooks.

I would have liked to know more of what she felt and thought about the people around her and about things that were going on. Patients are typically referred to throughout the book almost as generic "poor lads," with very little about their individual stories or personalities. While I don't for a moment question her compassion and interest in the soldiers, I would have liked to read more about interactions between Dorothea and her patients.

In more than 300 pages of densely packed text (it's one of those books with narrow margins), it got a bit tedious to slog through, over and over again, her life and activities with other VADs and with the nursing sisters. Throughout the book I felt frustrated that many things must have been happening that she wasn't telling us. But then, there is no reason why she should, since the diaries were for her personal use. I am sure that Dorothea would be very surprised to hear that a hundred years later, strangers would be reading her diary.