Physical description

Spiral bound typed document with a clear front cover and black card backcover.

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

'Not finished as a new book' [Handwritten in black ink at the top of the first page]

Summary

'A cache of four diaries from a nurse in the Great war are revealed here for the very firsttime. hiiden in a suitcase for almost a century, these diaries give us a first-hand account of the war that was supposed to end all wars.
Anne Donnell's diaries explode three myths about the Great War: that the ANZACs were courageous to a fault; that women in war cannot achieve the camaraderie that men enjoy ; and that the Great war nurses did not have intimate relations with these men.
There is an added pleasure to these diaries - they are remarkable travelogues of their time. The Great War was the first chance many Australians had of seeing the world, and what a world it was! Anne Donnell takes us over the shining Arabian Gulf to exotic Egypt, and then through Imperial London and the Greek Island of Lemnos, before her tours England, Cornwall and Scotland. She is wide-eyed, curious and observant.
Anne Donnell's original diaries were bequeathed to Jan Leader and Graeme Mitchell. Versions have been made public before, but the original impressions of this nurse in the war-torn Middle East and Europe are published here for the first time.'
[Taken from cover page]