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Abstract
World War I gave place to an unprecedented slaughter that required the deployment of an extremely efficient medical system. Although war was at the time a man's world, the urgent need for qualified medical personnel near the battlefields brought the mobilization of a large number of nurses, who were integrated within the medical corps.
As early as August 1914, several thousand Canadian nurses had already applied to serve within the Canadian Army Medical Corps. More than 2000 civilian nurses were selected and sailed overseas between 1914 and 1918, serving in military hospitals established in France, Great Britain, Greece and Russia. Being the only women possessing an officer's rank, the Canadian military nurses' contribution to the war effort has been underlined and recognized after the war. It was acknowledged that Canadian military nurses participated in a significant historical event. Nevertheless, little is known about most of their wartime experience.
As part of the historiographical revival marking the social and cultural history of the war, this research aims to relive Canadian nurses' work in military hospitals during World War I and to focus on the part played by self-representations in the construction of their accounts. By exploring nine diaries and two memoirs created by military nurses during and after the war, this research concentrates upon the nurses view of the war, a view that differs from the images portrayed by the official army accounts left behind by soldiers or by politicians.
