Description

The remarkable wartime diary of nurse Kathleen Johnstone

Warm chatty and endlessly absorbing this delightful diary brims with intelligence and humour Wendy Moore author of Endell Street The Women Who Ran Britains Trailblazing Military Hospital

The second world war could not have been won without the bravery and selflessness of women on the Home Front Women like Kathleen Johnstone
This firsthand story of one extraordinary but unheralded member of Britains Greatest Generation brings home with extraordinary lucidity and compassion the realities of wartime Lancashire
In 1943 Kathleen then thirty was a nurseintraining at the Blackburn Royal Infirmary For the next three years she kept a meticulous diary of her daytoday existence leaving behind a vivid record of the realtime concerns of a busy thoughtful woman on the frontline of the war at home
Kathleens days were never the same She writes in clear and lively prose about life in the hospital of her fellow nurses her patients about death and dying and the progress of the war as wounded soldiers returned from Normandy in the summer of 1944 She muses on being working class wartime austerity and her anxiety about examinations Here too are dances Americans and a POW boyfriend in Germany Kathleens observations are witty wry and astute but above all relatable even today
Poignant and engrossing Kathleen Johnstones tale of trauma romance and friendship will leave a lasting impression