Sister

Sister: The War Diary of a Nurse, first published in 1927, is Helen Boylston's (1895-1984) moving account of her service as a front-line nurse in France in World War I. She vividly recounts the long, grueling hours in surgery, the devastating German air-raids, the determination of the soldiers. She also injects a good deal of humor, wit, and insight, with stories of her fellow nurses and the officers, her pleasant interludes in the French countryside, and her leaves to Paris and London. The book also serves as a testament to young Boylston's spirit of adventure: after returning to the United States, she cannot bear the thought of 40 years "in a place where nothing ever happens and every day is like every other day." The book closes with the author boarding the steamship New Amsterdam, bound for Europe where she would again work as a nurse. Boylston would later go on to write the popular "Sue Barton" series of nurse-related novels.