Britain
Vera Brittain
1893–1970 Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, 1915–1919; author of Testament of Youth
Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, the daughter of a paper manufacturer, Vera Brittain won a place at Somerville College, Oxford, but left after one year, in 1915, to become a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. She served in Buxton, London, Malta and, from 1917, at No. 24 General Hospital at Étaples, France, where she nursed German prisoners of war. Her fiancé Roland Leighton, two close friends and her brother Edward, killed in action on the Austro-Italian front on 15 June 1918, were all lost in the war. Her 1933 memoir Testament of Youth became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. She became a sponsor of the Peace Pledge Union in 1937 and later protested against the saturation bombing of German cities. She died in Wimbledon on 29 March 1970.
In the chronicle
Sources
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain
- war.web.ox.ac.uk/vera-brittain
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Brittain
- verabrittain.org/the-first-world-war
- westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/vera-brittain-the-militant-pacifist-misconceptions-of-her-importance-in-military-history
- simonjoneshistorian.com/2015/01/08/where-did-vera-brittain-serve-in-france-during-the-first-world-war