Pick Up The Backwash Of WarThe Human Wreckage Of The Battlefield As Witnessed By An American Hospital Nurse (WWI Centenary Series) Imagined By Ellen N. La Motte Available As Online Book

English, please see below:
Ellen N, La Motte beschreef als verpleegster in WOI het leven in een veldhospitaal vlakbij de loopgraven, Haar boek werd inverboden omdat het een kant van de oorlog schetste die de overheden liever niet gepubliceerd zagen, Mede door haar laconieke schrijfstijl zijn de verhalen erg confronterend: over kapotgeschoten mannen die gruwelijk verminkt naar huis terugkeren of voldoende opgelapt worden om opnieuw als kanonnenvoer te kunnen dienen.
Erwin Mortier geeft in zijn inleiding heldere achtergrondinformatie, maar ik miste toch nog hier en daar een voetnoot met wat extra uitleg voor iemand die niet zoveel afweet van de situatie in de Eerste Wereldoorlog.


English:
This is the true story of a American nurse in a field hospital very near to the infamous trenches of World War I, I put "true" between brackets above, because it is clear that she intended this for publication and hence it is not like a real diary or journal, Her book was published during the war, but quickly got banned on both sides of the ocean because the governments didn't like her vivid and accurate description of the situation.
She writes about men who return home totally mutilated, or who get patched up just so that they can get blown up again, Her laconic writing style makes it even more upsetting,
In this new Dutch edition, Erwin Mortier added an illuminating introduction, He also included two other pieces by La Motte that are less literary and more personal in style, The only drawback I noticed was that there were still some things unclear to me while reading her text, so I would have appreciated some footnotes here and there with specific explanations.
Otherwise, this is a book which taught me lot about this war that's always a bit overshadowed by that other big war, War is hell, and certainly nobody knows this more than the doctors and nurses serving in the field hospitals near the battlefields, Especially those serving the wounded during World War I in Belgium and France, 'The Backwash of War' is a firsthand series of vignettes by Ellen N, La Motte who was an American nurse serving as an army nurse in Europe during the Great War, The release of this version of the book coincides with theth anniversary of World War I,

The first thing that struck me was how cynical the book is, I'm more familiar with that tone in books from later wars, Certainly the futility must have been felt, but it comes through clearly here, From a patient with a botched suicide that must be tended to just so he can die to the little Belgian boy who is wounded and his mother is too busy to come visit him because of her business making money off of soldiers.
A patient getting a medal means a pension, but also means the patient will die, Patching and healing and returning soldiers to the front only to have them come back to repeat the cycle, Also, the soldiers got older as the war went on as the younger soldiers were all used up,

It's a quick, brutal read and I found it completely engaging, The title is completely perfect, There is apparently a BBC drama called the Crimson Field that is based on this book and I'll have to go looking for that next, If this sounds at all appealing, I can't recommend it enough,

I was given a review copy of this ebook by Pavilion Books, Conway and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, Thank you for allowing me to read this great book, Probably taking the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, this small but dense collection of stories written by a great character like Ellen La Motte is republished.
Nurse and journalist, La Motte served as a nurse in field hospitals, and witnessed the utter absurdity of war and the moral depravity caused by the war itself of all the people involved, whether they were soldiers, officers, doctors or civilians.
His stories are so raw and merciless as they were at the time banned because detrimental to the morale of the belligerents, From a purely literary point of view, sometimes the writing is a bit repetitive, but the images evoked are so strong and disturbing to make not very evident this issue of style.

Thank Pavillon Books and Netgalley for giving me this book in exchange for an honest review,

Probabilmente cogliendo l'occasione del centesimo anniversario dello scoppio della prima guerra mondiale, viene ripubblicata questa piccola ma densa raccolta di racconti scritti da un personaggio eccezionale come Ellen La Motte.
Infermiera e giornalista, la La Motte servì come infermiera negli ospedali da campo, e testimoniò la totale assurdità della guerra e la depravazione morale causata dalla guerra stessa su tutte le persone coinvolte, che fossero soldati, ufficiali, medici o civili.
I suoi racconti sono così crudi e impietosi da essere stati a suo tempo banditi perché dannosi per il morale dei belligeranti, Dal punto di vista puramente letterario, a volte la scrittura è un po' ripetitiva, ma le immagini evocate sono talmente forti e inquietanti da rendere scarsamente evidente questo problema di stile.

Ringrazio Pavillon Books e Netgalley per avermi concesso questo libro in cambio di una recensione onesta, I really don't know how to describe how I feel about The Backwash of War, This book is an arresting and vicious critique of war, La Motte's writing is steeped in meticulously constructed sarcasm and irony that thoroughly scours the war machine in a visceral way, And as deeply uncomfortable as certain passages are to read I couldn't help but sit in awe at La Motte's mastery of craft and argumentation,

But there are moments in this book that didn't feel like social critique but a genuine reflection of Ellen La Motte's worldview, Her writings on disabled war veterans especially turned my stomach, Some people may argue that she simply reflects the beliefs of others at the time and therefore her horrific cruelty toward disabled people is in itself a critique, But the way she describes disabled bodies as subhuman and monstrous and disabled people as less worthy of life was so consistent throughout it felt less like a dark mirror reflecting society and more like a plain window into La Motte's sincere beliefs.


I really don't know how to describe The Backwash of War, The feeling of violent immersion in a sickening perspective was never pleasurable but it was cathartic on a level beyond enjoyment, I rated this bookbut never has a rating felt more arbitrary and meaningless in capturing my thoughts, I haven't felt this way about a piece of media since I watched American Psycho and that movie still lives under the surface of my skin, So if that's any indication I think The Backwash of War is going to stick with me for a good long while, A set of brutal, beautiful, damning vignettes that exposes the profound suffering not only of soldiers, but the lives of everyone and everything that fell beneath the guise of WW.
Ellen N. La Motte's accounts are richly varied and unpolished, speaking for themselves, It's no surprise her work was banned,
I was provided a gratis ebook copy of this book through NetGalley,

Thispage book packs a powerful punch, It's said that any book that's truly about war is antiwar, and that's the case here, La Motte never judges the politics behind the Great War the greatest open criticism she offers is in one section where she scoffs at the men who show off pictures of their wives and sniffle at how they miss her, then use convenient Belgian prostitutes, but she paints a visceral image of the consequences.
The forward of the book says that the original publication sold well in America in, but after the country entered the war, the government quietly banned its publication, That doesn't come as a huge surprise to me, The book is extremely graphic even by modern standards,

These are the two opening sentences in the first story:
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it.
The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital.


In particular, La Motte isn't shy about describing the conflicting stenches in the ward, I had to Google the term "anal fistula"good times, there, As a writer who loves researching medical subjects, this book is gold, I will likely buy a print copy so I can easily bookmark sections, I can compare it to A Surgeon in Khaki by Arthur Anderson Martin, a WWI memoir of a doctor who died in duty soon after his The Backwash of WarThe Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse's publication Martin is far more gentlemanly in his ward descriptions, instead going into detail about the different damage offered by varying types of bullets, and a constant frustration at Britain's lack of preparedness for the war.
La Motte as a female and American nurse is much deeper into the psychology of the wardshe offered true vignettes, rather than stories, Both are excellent books, and the writers bring very different viewpoints to the same horrible place,

There are many books and reprints on World War I being released right now at this centennial of the war's begin, These chronicles are invaluable. They offer an important look at the past, but also show how little has changed, I stumbled across The Backwash of War while looking for accounts and diaries from medical personnel,

Already then I had been aware of something curious in some of the nurses' diaries I had been reading, You get to think, and it's maintained then as now, that all these nurses, whether professionals or VADs, were "angels in white", relieving the pain, sadnesses and stress of the freshly wounded soldiers, or holding their hands as they died.
That sort of thing, the propaganda,

However, while there were a very few accounts which clearly showed very compassionate nurses, the vast majority were anything but, Some of these diaries came over as downright cold, distracted even, as if the patients were a nuisance, some disturbence to whatever else for they actually had undertaken this work.


It was quite awful considering all those broken men, shuttled through the medical system like so much barely alive meat and treated without much compassion at all, I was puzzled. I mean, why would anyone risk their life and wellbeing, ostensibly to help, only to treat the wounded patients worse than one would treat cattle on the way to the slaughterbank

So, I came upon La Motte's small booklet, started reading and my jaw dropped so far under the table, I had to go hunt for it.
This book is dripping with the most vicious kind of sarcasm and cynicism you can imagine, It is redhot aflame, aggressive, so brutal that you back off a bit for fear it bites you, and badly at that!

Ellen La Motte is clearly very very angry about a lot of what happened during her time at the front.
She tells it in short vignettes, the length of a letter, and she doesn't spare anyone, Not the cold fellow nurses, either too religious to dress a naked man, or too intent on meeting an officer for marriage, or simply out at the front to be away from a stifling home.
Not the many callous surgeons, often experimenting on the fresh meat cycled through their OP theatres and wards, or testing how much the human body could deal with before dying.
The army, which on one hand forces nurses and doctors to put together the deserters, so they can be shot, or pinning medals on the chests of those about to die.
The soldiers and the veterans themselves, and those gullible people at home, She gave them all her anger and rage,

Acid will drip hotly from your brains after reading, but I finally grasped why so many accounts of medical people read so very curiously, It took another book, sitelinkNot So Quiet, . . :

Stepdaughters of War, also written by a woman, an ambulance driver, to set matters really into perspective for me, BecauseI have to confessI initially thought La Motte had to be way over the top,

Smith settles the score with her book, however, La Motte quite clearly was even comparatively mild in her accusations and descriptions, She also was absolutely truthful, as Smith's book bears out by referring to many exact same things, just from another perspective,

These two women have helped me to a deeper insight into what really was taking place at the front and directly behind it during the Great War than practically everyone else put together, maybe with the exception of several of the war artists.


It is by the way absolutely not astonishing that both books, La Motte's and later Smith's were forbidden rsp, taken out of print. They both do what George Scott Atkinson demands in his sitelinkA Soldier's Diary: that the truth be told to the public without belittling it, .