Vera Brittain, serving as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, tried to put into words what she was witnessing:

“I wash the blood from their faces and wonder how the world can bear so much pain.”

Her words remind us that war was fought and endured behind the lines too. With hands that cleaned wounds, words that comforted and people that bore witness to sights that we hope never to see.

Nurses carried the war in a different way, not into attack, but through endurance, compassion, and quiet strength.

This Advent, we are sharing voices from different people that teach us about all aspects of conflict.

Discover the wider human story of the Great War on a bespoke battlefield tour with Sophie’s Great War Tours.

*Project Team, First World War Poetry Digital Archive (2024). 51315: Vera Brittain in V. A. D. uniform. University of Oxford. Online resource. https://doi.org/10.25446/oxford.25732026.v1