Primary Source Analysis

At the outbreak of the Great War, men and women alike rushed to see how they could help their country, but only a small number of them were able to tell their story. The first company of men rushing to fight in the war was war-lovers such as the Grenfells, but many of them were killed in battle before they were able to share their experiences. The second assembly of men was the middle class workers, and this is where the majority of the written stories come from. The third group to go to war was the lowest class of men, the farmers, servants, and peasants, but many of these men were illiterate and therefore unable to write down their accounts. While there was certainly more than three core of soldiers, this is the most organized way of grouping men who went to war. While women offering aid were often safer than the men, females’ opinions and experiences in this age were not highly valued, so their memories often died with them. However, some of these stories grace books today, offering insight, painful and beautiful, into how life was during World War One.

One of these stories told was Miss Esmee Sartorius’, a nurse for the British Red Cross during the First World War. She wrote her memoir about her time from August to approximately October 1914 in order to tell her personal description about how emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically challenging it was to be a nurse amidst the danger of enemy lines. Her story was first published in 1930 in Everyman at War, a compilation of personal narratives of World War I. Throughout her time as a nurse, Esmee traveled to several different countries, taking care of injured soldiers and writing her experiences. Her story began in Brussels, Belgium, along with 39 other nurses who we...

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...ugh ruins which were towns at one point in time. Their traveling Belgian friends turned out to be helpful when one guard asked to see their papers but was satisfied when they said they were Belgians, going to visit their sick relatives.

Not only the soldiers wanted a romantic story; even nurses wanted to write their story to say that they personally helped in the war as well. Esmee Sartorius went through an enormous amount of chaos to aid England and the Allies. She faced Germans, sentries, sick and injured soldiers, low rations, and small sums of money, but she and her cousin pushed through in order help all needy soldiers and safely return home. Although each personal story is slightly different, Esmee’s story gives a glimpse of what life was like during World War I. Life was not easy for anyone involved in the war, and the demands of a nurse were no exception.