Finding Oneself : The Account of an Adventurer British Nurse on WWI

Abstract

After the outbreak of the First World War a large number of women medical personnel and also untrained female volunteers arrived in Serbia from the United Kingdom, but also from other Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Many of them left narrative accounts of their experiences during the period of four war years. Whilst many of these accounts have been published since, of them becoming renown, other remained either in manuscript or typescript. Nurse Dorothy Minnie Newhall’s Diary of a Trekker in Serbia had the latter destiny. Dorothy Newham’s Diary is an account of adventure and excitement, resilience of British women medical staff in the face of multiple crisis, of sense of humour and moving descriptions, of breaking social constrictions prescribed to one gender, full of sense of liberation that only these tragic and perilous events facilitated. It is above all an account of the adventures of a woman at war without the explicit mentions of any socio-political agenda.