Ellen N. La Motte (1873–1961)
Author of The Backwash of War: The Classic Account of a First World War Field-Hospital Nurse
About the Author
Works by Ellen N. La Motte
The Backwash of War: The Classic Account of a First World War Field-Hospital Nurse (1916) 108 copies, 13 reviews
Pekin Dust 1 copy
Associated Works
World War I and America: Told by the Americans Who Lived It (1918) — Contributor — 226 copies, 1 review
War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing (2016) — Contributor — 110 copies, 2 reviews
The Best Short Stories of 1919 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story (1919) — Contributor — 17 copies
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Summer 2019 (2019) — Author "Experience: 'This Is War'" — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- LaMotte, Ellen Newbold
- Birthdate
- 1873
- Date of death
- 1961
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Arlington Institute, Alexandria, Virginia
Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses - Occupations
- memoirist
nurse
journalist
author
public speaker
suffragist (show all 7)
diarist - Relationships
- Borden, Mary (colleague)
Stein, Gertrude (friend) - Short biography
- Ellen La Motte was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of a businessman. In her late teens, after her father's business failed, she moved to Wilmington, Delaware, to live with her cousin, the wealthy industrialist Alfred I. du Pont. She was educated by governesses and attended the Arlington Institute, a private school for girls in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1898, she entered nursing school at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduation, she worked at Johns Hopkins, in Italy, and at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. She returned to Baltimore in 1905 to work as a tuberculosis nurse, which became her specialty. She published articles and gave talks to local, regional, and national audiences. She became the supervisor of the tuberculosis division of the Baltimore Health Department in 1910, the first woman to hold an executive position in that agency. She also campaigned for women's suffrage and in 1913 took a leave of absence from her job to report for The Baltimore Sun on the activities of militant British suffragists in London. She then went to Paris, where she wrote her first book, The Tuberculosis Nurse: Her Function and Her Qualifications. In 1915, she was engaged by Mary Borden to help establish a field hospital in World War I, making her one of the first American nurses to treat soldiers at the Front. She kept a diary describing the horrors she witnessed. On her return to the USA, she turned the diary into a book, The Backwash of War (1916), which was suppressed by the U.S. government as demoralizing and not published until 1934. After the war, she travelled in Asia with fellow nurse Emily Chadbourne, and accumulated material for six books, three of them on the problem of opium addiction, including Peking Dust (1919), Opium Monopoly (1920), and Ethics of Opium (1922). During the 1920s, she lived in England and traveled frequently to Switzerland to attend hearings at the League of Nations. She settled in Washington, D.C., in the 1930s.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Louisville, Kentucky, USA
- Places of residence
- Wilmington, Delaware, USA
- Place of death
- Washington, D.C., USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
THE BACKWASH OF WAR (original subtitle, THE HUMAN WRECKAGE OF THE BATTLEFIELD AS WITNESSED BY AN AMERICAN HOSPITAL NURSE), Ellen La Motte's little book of stories from the Belgian front of WWI was successful enough to go through multiple printings in the U.S. in 1916-17, although it was banned in France and England, where its dark tone was considered detrimental to morale and to the war effort itself. And, once the U.S. entered the war, the book was suppressed there too.
I had never heard of show more BACKWASH until very recently, when I ran across a mention of this new edition in a WWI Centennial Newsletter. As a "war lit" buff (in fact I'd just finished reading another obscure WWI memoir by an English private, A.M. Burrage's WAR IS WAR, about his time in the trenches of Belgium), I was immediately intrigued and decided to read it. And I was not disappointed. Cynthia Wachtell, an American Studies prof at Yeshiva University, has rescued the book from decades of obscurity, adding an erudite and scholarly Introduction and a perhaps first-ever biography of La Motte, to a well-annotated text of the original volume. She also added three other published wartime essays by LaMotte, along with an extensive list of other LaMotte writings, followed by her own extensive research notes and a useful index. In other words, the Wachtell edition - a fascinating mix of history, literature and women's studies - is a very important piece of scholarship, deserving of a wide audience.
Ellen La Motte's life was one of great accomplishment. Trained at Johns Hopkins as a nurse, she became a recognized expert on tuberculosis, publishing numerous articles about the disease and its treatment, and also held important administrative positions with the Health Department of Baltimore. Though not wealthy herself, she enjoyed the patronage of a very wealthy cousin, which gave her the opportunity to volunteer as a nurse overseas during the Great War. La Motte was already over forty when she traveled to France to try to "do her bit" for the war. Her experiences in a large Paris military hospital and then in a French field hospital near the Belgian front formed the basis for her BACKWASH stories, all of them dark and filled with starkly grim descriptions of the wounded and dying men she treated there.
While the stories are compelling enough in themselves - and I can see why they enjoyed such success in those early years of the war - what I found even more interesting here in the Wachtell edition was La Motte's own life story, brought out so well in the added biography and historical timeline. After she got to France, La Motte met Emily Crane Chadbourne, a wealthy divorcee from Chicago, heiress of the Crane Company (known primarily today for its bathroom fixtures). They began a relationship which would endure until La Motte's death in 1961. In Paris they would become close friends with another unorthodox couple, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas - a friendship which endured for nearly forty years. One is compelled to wonder if Ernest Hemingway, a frequent guest at Stein's salon in the postwar years, read BACKWASH (maybe even got a copy from Stein?), and developed his own terse, declarative style of writing in imitation of La Motte. Because the stylistic similarities are striking. But, having read another fascinating book, STEIN AND HEMINGWAY: THE STORY OF A TURBULENT FRIENDSHIP, by Lyle Larsen, I know that Ernie & Gert's friendship had its ups and downs, and that the macho Hemingway would have been loathe to admit being influenced by any woman, whether it be Stein or La Motte.
I was intrigued to learn that, despite her many accomplishments in the field of health and medicine, La Motte's real ambition was to be a writer, a dream she could follow freely, having become independently wealthy, first through her cousin, and then through her life-partner, Chadbourne. Following the success of BACKWASH, she became interested in the scourge of opium addiction, and traveled to China and other parts of the Far East to research it, later publishing numerous articles and several books on the opium trade. I wonder if any of those pieces would be relevant again today in light of the current opioid addiction crisis here in America.
When one thinks of literary classics of WWI, Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS, Remarque's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and perhaps e.e. cummings' THE ENORMOUS ROOM usually come to mind. To those I've previously added another favorite of my own, Frederic Manning's HER PRIVATES WE. And now there's this one, THE BACKWASH OF WAR: AN EXTRAORDINARY AMERICAN NURSE IN WORLD WAR I, which came before any of those others. There are several editions of La Motte's book available now, since it is in the public domain, but I will strongly recommend this one from Johns Hopkins University Press, with all of its important and illuminating addendums from editor Cynthia Wachtell. History, Literature and Women's Studies professors and teachers should take note, because this is a very important contribution to all of those fields. My congratulations to Dr Wachtell. My highest recommendation.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA show less
I had never heard of show more BACKWASH until very recently, when I ran across a mention of this new edition in a WWI Centennial Newsletter. As a "war lit" buff (in fact I'd just finished reading another obscure WWI memoir by an English private, A.M. Burrage's WAR IS WAR, about his time in the trenches of Belgium), I was immediately intrigued and decided to read it. And I was not disappointed. Cynthia Wachtell, an American Studies prof at Yeshiva University, has rescued the book from decades of obscurity, adding an erudite and scholarly Introduction and a perhaps first-ever biography of La Motte, to a well-annotated text of the original volume. She also added three other published wartime essays by LaMotte, along with an extensive list of other LaMotte writings, followed by her own extensive research notes and a useful index. In other words, the Wachtell edition - a fascinating mix of history, literature and women's studies - is a very important piece of scholarship, deserving of a wide audience.
Ellen La Motte's life was one of great accomplishment. Trained at Johns Hopkins as a nurse, she became a recognized expert on tuberculosis, publishing numerous articles about the disease and its treatment, and also held important administrative positions with the Health Department of Baltimore. Though not wealthy herself, she enjoyed the patronage of a very wealthy cousin, which gave her the opportunity to volunteer as a nurse overseas during the Great War. La Motte was already over forty when she traveled to France to try to "do her bit" for the war. Her experiences in a large Paris military hospital and then in a French field hospital near the Belgian front formed the basis for her BACKWASH stories, all of them dark and filled with starkly grim descriptions of the wounded and dying men she treated there.
While the stories are compelling enough in themselves - and I can see why they enjoyed such success in those early years of the war - what I found even more interesting here in the Wachtell edition was La Motte's own life story, brought out so well in the added biography and historical timeline. After she got to France, La Motte met Emily Crane Chadbourne, a wealthy divorcee from Chicago, heiress of the Crane Company (known primarily today for its bathroom fixtures). They began a relationship which would endure until La Motte's death in 1961. In Paris they would become close friends with another unorthodox couple, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas - a friendship which endured for nearly forty years. One is compelled to wonder if Ernest Hemingway, a frequent guest at Stein's salon in the postwar years, read BACKWASH (maybe even got a copy from Stein?), and developed his own terse, declarative style of writing in imitation of La Motte. Because the stylistic similarities are striking. But, having read another fascinating book, STEIN AND HEMINGWAY: THE STORY OF A TURBULENT FRIENDSHIP, by Lyle Larsen, I know that Ernie & Gert's friendship had its ups and downs, and that the macho Hemingway would have been loathe to admit being influenced by any woman, whether it be Stein or La Motte.
I was intrigued to learn that, despite her many accomplishments in the field of health and medicine, La Motte's real ambition was to be a writer, a dream she could follow freely, having become independently wealthy, first through her cousin, and then through her life-partner, Chadbourne. Following the success of BACKWASH, she became interested in the scourge of opium addiction, and traveled to China and other parts of the Far East to research it, later publishing numerous articles and several books on the opium trade. I wonder if any of those pieces would be relevant again today in light of the current opioid addiction crisis here in America.
When one thinks of literary classics of WWI, Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS, Remarque's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and perhaps e.e. cummings' THE ENORMOUS ROOM usually come to mind. To those I've previously added another favorite of my own, Frederic Manning's HER PRIVATES WE. And now there's this one, THE BACKWASH OF WAR: AN EXTRAORDINARY AMERICAN NURSE IN WORLD WAR I, which came before any of those others. There are several editions of La Motte's book available now, since it is in the public domain, but I will strongly recommend this one from Johns Hopkins University Press, with all of its important and illuminating addendums from editor Cynthia Wachtell. History, Literature and Women's Studies professors and teachers should take note, because this is a very important contribution to all of those fields. My congratulations to Dr Wachtell. My highest recommendation.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA show less
The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse by Ellen N. La Motte is the account of an American battlefield in nurse in French hospital in Belgium. The stories of her experiences were so horrifying and bad for moral the book was banned in the United States until 1934
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere show more under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital.
These are the opening two sentences of the first of fourteen stories. The story goes on to explain that since he failed in his attempt he was to be nursed back to health, using valuable medical supplies, and when he was well enough, put up against a wall and shot.
What La Motte witnessed scenes like this and others that make Johnny Got His Gun seem like a child’s book. La Motte does not seem to have an agenda like many anti-war writers, but wants to bring to light the realities of a romanticized war. Medals were handed out much like candy. It was for the benefit of the morale of the civilian population, that when they saw a soldier walking the streets of Paris missing limbs they would notice the Coss de Guerre pinned on his chest.
Other stories tell of the stench of the hospitals where gangrene and meningitis were winning many of the battles. “A Surgical Triumph” is a very disturbing story on a wounded son of a hairdresser. Modern advances in medical science saved this soldier's life and it is a triumph for the medical community, but is it a triumph on a personal level.
La Motte removes all romantic notions of war as seen from the eyes of a nurse. She tells of the soldiers, medical staff, and the generals who make frequent rounds handing out medals in extremis. Despite motorized ambulances and a serious attempt to take care of the wounded, WWI was a miserable for anyone wounded as it was for anyone in the trenches. History tends to soften our views of the past. In this year, the one hundredth anniversary of World War I, the re-release of La Motte’s book will remind readers that no matter how glorious war is made out to be, there is a very dark and tragic side to every war. show less
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere show more under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital.
These are the opening two sentences of the first of fourteen stories. The story goes on to explain that since he failed in his attempt he was to be nursed back to health, using valuable medical supplies, and when he was well enough, put up against a wall and shot.
What La Motte witnessed scenes like this and others that make Johnny Got His Gun seem like a child’s book. La Motte does not seem to have an agenda like many anti-war writers, but wants to bring to light the realities of a romanticized war. Medals were handed out much like candy. It was for the benefit of the morale of the civilian population, that when they saw a soldier walking the streets of Paris missing limbs they would notice the Coss de Guerre pinned on his chest.
Other stories tell of the stench of the hospitals where gangrene and meningitis were winning many of the battles. “A Surgical Triumph” is a very disturbing story on a wounded son of a hairdresser. Modern advances in medical science saved this soldier's life and it is a triumph for the medical community, but is it a triumph on a personal level.
La Motte removes all romantic notions of war as seen from the eyes of a nurse. She tells of the soldiers, medical staff, and the generals who make frequent rounds handing out medals in extremis. Despite motorized ambulances and a serious attempt to take care of the wounded, WWI was a miserable for anyone wounded as it was for anyone in the trenches. History tends to soften our views of the past. In this year, the one hundredth anniversary of World War I, the re-release of La Motte’s book will remind readers that no matter how glorious war is made out to be, there is a very dark and tragic side to every war. show less
The Backwash of War: Inspired the BBC Drama The Crimson Field. The Classic Account of a First World War Field-Hospital by Ellen N. La Motte
I was provided a gratis ebook copy of this book through NetGalley.
This 200-page book packs a powerful punch. It's said that any book that's truly about war is anti-war, and that's the case here. La Motte never judges the politics behind the Great War (the greatest open criticism she offers is in one section where she scoffs at the men who show off pictures of their wives and sniffle at how they miss her, then use convenient Belgian prostitutes), but she paints a visceral image of the show more consequences. The forward of the book says that the original publication sold well in America in 1916, but after the country entered the war, the government quietly banned its publication. That doesn't come as a huge surprise to me. The book is extremely graphic even by modern standards.
These are the two opening sentences in the first story:
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital.
In particular, La Motte isn't shy about describing the conflicting stenches in the ward. I had to Google the term "anal fistula"--good times, there. As a writer who loves researching medical subjects, this book is gold. I will likely buy a print copy so I can easily bookmark sections. I can compare it to A Surgeon in Khaki by Arthur Anderson Martin, a WWI memoir of a doctor who died in duty soon after his book's publication; Martin is far more gentlemanly in his ward descriptions, instead going into detail about the different damage offered by varying types of bullets, and a constant frustration at Britain's lack of preparedness for the war. La Motte as a female and American nurse is much deeper into the psychology of the ward--she offered true vignettes, rather than stories. Both are excellent books, and the writers bring very different viewpoints to the same horrible place.
There are many books and reprints on World War I being released right now at this centennial of the war's begin. These chronicles are invaluable. They offer an important look at the past, but also show how little has changed. show less
This 200-page book packs a powerful punch. It's said that any book that's truly about war is anti-war, and that's the case here. La Motte never judges the politics behind the Great War (the greatest open criticism she offers is in one section where she scoffs at the men who show off pictures of their wives and sniffle at how they miss her, then use convenient Belgian prostitutes), but she paints a visceral image of the show more consequences. The forward of the book says that the original publication sold well in America in 1916, but after the country entered the war, the government quietly banned its publication. That doesn't come as a huge surprise to me. The book is extremely graphic even by modern standards.
These are the two opening sentences in the first story:
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital.
In particular, La Motte isn't shy about describing the conflicting stenches in the ward. I had to Google the term "anal fistula"--good times, there. As a writer who loves researching medical subjects, this book is gold. I will likely buy a print copy so I can easily bookmark sections. I can compare it to A Surgeon in Khaki by Arthur Anderson Martin, a WWI memoir of a doctor who died in duty soon after his book's publication; Martin is far more gentlemanly in his ward descriptions, instead going into detail about the different damage offered by varying types of bullets, and a constant frustration at Britain's lack of preparedness for the war. La Motte as a female and American nurse is much deeper into the psychology of the ward--she offered true vignettes, rather than stories. Both are excellent books, and the writers bring very different viewpoints to the same horrible place.
There are many books and reprints on World War I being released right now at this centennial of the war's begin. These chronicles are invaluable. They offer an important look at the past, but also show how little has changed. show less
I stumbled across The Backwash of War while looking for accounts and diaries from medical personnel.
Already then I had been aware of something curious in some of the (nurses') diaries I had been reading. You get to think, and it's maintained then as now, that all these nurses, whether professionals or VADs, were "angels in white", relieving the pain, sadnesses and stress of the freshly wounded soldiers, or holding their hands as they died. That sort of thing, the propaganda.
However, while show more there were a very few accounts which clearly showed very compassionate nurses, the vast majority were anything but. Some of these diaries came over as downright cold, distracted even, as if the patients were a nuisance, some disturbence to whatever else for they actually had undertaken this work.
It was quite awful considering all those broken men, shuttled through the medical system like so much barely alive meat and treated without much compassion at all. I was puzzled. I mean, why would anyone risk their life and well-being, ostensibly to help, only to treat the wounded patients worse than one would treat cattle on the way to the slaughterbank?
So, I came upon La Motte's small booklet, started reading and my jaw dropped so far under the table, I had to go hunt for it. This book is dripping with the most vicious kind of sarcasm and cynicism you can imagine. It is red-hot aflame, aggressive, so brutal that you back off a bit for fear it bites you, and badly at that!
Ellen La Motte is clearly very very angry about a lot of what happened during her time at the front. She tells it in short vignettes, the length of a letter, and she doesn't spare anyone. Not the cold fellow nurses, either too religious to dress a naked man, or too intent on meeting an officer for marriage, or simply out at the front to be away from a stifling home. Not the many callous surgeons, often experimenting on the fresh meat cycled through their OP theatres and wards, or testing how much the human body could deal with before dying. The army, which on one hand forces nurses and doctors to put together the deserters, so they can be shot, or pinning medals on the chests of those about to die. The soldiers and the veterans themselves, and those gullible people at home. She gave them all her anger and rage.
Acid will drip hotly from your brains after reading, but I finally grasped why so many accounts of medical people read so very curiously. It took another book, [b:Not So Quiet...: Stepdaughters of War|1303921|Not So Quiet... Stepdaughters of War|Helen Zenna Smith|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1326531143s/1303921.jpg|1293151], also written by a woman, an ambulance driver, to set matters really into perspective for me. Because--I have to confess--I initially thought La Motte had to be way over the top.
Smith settles the score with her book, however. La Motte quite clearly was even comparatively mild in her accusations and descriptions. She also was absolutely truthful, as Smith's book bears out by referring to many exact same things, just from another perspective.
These two women have helped me to a deeper insight into what really was taking place at the front and directly behind it during the Great War than practically everyone else put together, maybe with the exception of several of the war artists.
It is by the way absolutely not astonishing that both books, La Motte's and later Smith's were forbidden rsp. taken out of print. They both do what George Scott Atkinson demands in his [b:A Soldier's Diary|14739332|A Soldier's Diary|George Scott Atkinson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1338294231s/14739332.jpg|20385047]: that the truth be told to the public without belittling it. show less
Already then I had been aware of something curious in some of the (nurses') diaries I had been reading. You get to think, and it's maintained then as now, that all these nurses, whether professionals or VADs, were "angels in white", relieving the pain, sadnesses and stress of the freshly wounded soldiers, or holding their hands as they died. That sort of thing, the propaganda.
However, while show more there were a very few accounts which clearly showed very compassionate nurses, the vast majority were anything but. Some of these diaries came over as downright cold, distracted even, as if the patients were a nuisance, some disturbence to whatever else for they actually had undertaken this work.
It was quite awful considering all those broken men, shuttled through the medical system like so much barely alive meat and treated without much compassion at all. I was puzzled. I mean, why would anyone risk their life and well-being, ostensibly to help, only to treat the wounded patients worse than one would treat cattle on the way to the slaughterbank?
So, I came upon La Motte's small booklet, started reading and my jaw dropped so far under the table, I had to go hunt for it. This book is dripping with the most vicious kind of sarcasm and cynicism you can imagine. It is red-hot aflame, aggressive, so brutal that you back off a bit for fear it bites you, and badly at that!
Ellen La Motte is clearly very very angry about a lot of what happened during her time at the front. She tells it in short vignettes, the length of a letter, and she doesn't spare anyone. Not the cold fellow nurses, either too religious to dress a naked man, or too intent on meeting an officer for marriage, or simply out at the front to be away from a stifling home. Not the many callous surgeons, often experimenting on the fresh meat cycled through their OP theatres and wards, or testing how much the human body could deal with before dying. The army, which on one hand forces nurses and doctors to put together the deserters, so they can be shot, or pinning medals on the chests of those about to die. The soldiers and the veterans themselves, and those gullible people at home. She gave them all her anger and rage.
Acid will drip hotly from your brains after reading, but I finally grasped why so many accounts of medical people read so very curiously. It took another book, [b:Not So Quiet...: Stepdaughters of War|1303921|Not So Quiet... Stepdaughters of War|Helen Zenna Smith|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1326531143s/1303921.jpg|1293151], also written by a woman, an ambulance driver, to set matters really into perspective for me. Because--I have to confess--I initially thought La Motte had to be way over the top.
Smith settles the score with her book, however. La Motte quite clearly was even comparatively mild in her accusations and descriptions. She also was absolutely truthful, as Smith's book bears out by referring to many exact same things, just from another perspective.
These two women have helped me to a deeper insight into what really was taking place at the front and directly behind it during the Great War than practically everyone else put together, maybe with the exception of several of the war artists.
It is by the way absolutely not astonishing that both books, La Motte's and later Smith's were forbidden rsp. taken out of print. They both do what George Scott Atkinson demands in his [b:A Soldier's Diary|14739332|A Soldier's Diary|George Scott Atkinson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1338294231s/14739332.jpg|20385047]: that the truth be told to the public without belittling it. show less
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