Book review: In the company of nurses

Alison Wall reviews In the company of nurses: The history of the British Army Nursing Service during the Great War by Yvonne McEwen.

The book is an exploration of the contributions provided by nurses serving in the First World War. Ms McEwen explained that, despite there being a wealth of literature on the First World War, there is a real dearth of published literature on the work women undertook in the military nursing service over this time. At the beginning of the conflict, there were less than 400 trained nurses in the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), but by the end there were 23,931 trained and untrained nurses who had served in the Imperial Nursing Service.