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Wounded

Wounded

From Battlefield to Blighty, 1914-1918

Summary

Wounded traces the journey made by a casualty from the battlefield to a hospital in Britain. It is a story told through the testimony of those who cared for him – stretcher bearers and medical officers, surgeons and chaplains, orderlies and nurses – from the aid post in the trenches to the casualty clearing station and the ambulance train back to Blighty.

We feel the calloused hands of the stretcher-bearers; we see the bloody dressings and bandages; we smell the nauseating gangrene and, at London’s stations, the gas clinging to the uniforms of the men arriving home. There are the unspeakable injuries: the officer with a hole in his torso so big the doctor can see the sky beyond him; a man with no legs holding a hymnbook for a man with no arms. Together, the experiences in Wounded encapsulate what it was to fight, live and die for four long years at the Western Front.

The first comprehensive account of medical care at the Western Front, Wounded is a homage to the courageous and determined men and women who saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Reviews

  • Powerful… Does justice to the experience of the wounded and the dedication of the doctors, nurses, orderlies, stretcher bearers and volunteers who cared for them, by weaving together the testimonies of individuals into a moving history
    A W Purdue, Times Higher Education

About the author

Emily Mayhew

Emily Mayhew is the author of Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty, 1914-1918. She is Research Associate at Imperial College and consultant and lecturer to various museums including the Wellcome Collection, the Imperial War Museum and the Royal College of Surgeons. Her first book, The Reconstruction of Warriors, was published in 2004.

Emily’s primary research interest is the history of the medical treatment of severe casualty in 20th and 21st century warfare. She is determined to ensure that, in particular, the work and courage of the stretcher bearers of the Great War is properly represented during the centenary commemorations.

During Autumn of 2014 she will be speaking at the Royal Institution, the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, the Liverpool History Society, the Florence Nightingale Museum, and the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution Great War Centenary Commemoration.
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