Vendor
Thistle publishing
Original language
English
Themas
World War Two period (c 1939 to c 1945)Biography: general

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A Very Private Diary

A Nurse in Wartime

by Acton, Carol

The impulse for adventure that sent Mary Mulry (later Morris), a young Irish woman from County Galway, to train as a nurse in England in 1939 would see her landing in the heels of the Normandy invasion as a member of the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Service Reserve (QAs) in June 1944.

Mary's diary gives us vivid stories of nursing and romance from her first encounter with wounded soldiers from the evacuation of Dunkirk, to narrowly escaping with her life in the London Blitz, and contracting diphtheria while caring for dangerously ill children in a London hospital.

Keeping a diary on active service was forbidden, but by her own admission Mary never had much time for rules, and when she lands in Normandy in June 1944 we are immersed in her exhausting work at a tent hospital in Normandy. A few months later she unsparingly recounts her soldier-patients' horrific stories of the Battle of Arnhem, and in the aftermath of war documents both the desolation of a bombed out Europe and the physical and mental injury that remain even when the war is over.

Yet Mary does not succumb to despair -in spite of the suffering she has witnessed she retains a love of life allows her to imagine a future beyond war.

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Arabic	World	All	Thistle publishing Andrew Lownie	Available	View on Rightsdesk
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Belarusian	World	All	Thistle publishing Andrew Lownie	Available	View on Rightsdesk

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Comments

Mary is a talented writer and a humane observer of her remarkable experiences. Her diary is full of vivid, sometimes shocking vignettes.'

Reviews: Daily Mail

'Scrupulously edited by Acton, A Very Private Diary conveys a woman's role in wartime with integrity, humour and pity. As well as being magnificently absorbing, the diary serves as a tonic, so unlike outsized histories of war by academics and others who had not been there.'

Reviews: Irish Times

'It was flagrantly against the rules for a member of the Armed Forces to keep a diary -but then Mary never had much time for rules. However, it was not just a rebellious spirit that drove her to her secret writing but a deep sense of duty to the injured soldiers who shared their experiences with her.'

Reviews: Irish Mail on Sunday