Canadian Nurses on the Western Front From Passchendaele to Peace

At 3:50 a.m. on 31 July 1917, the Allies attacked across an eleven mile front in the Ypres sector, the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres. On 1 August nurses and other medical staff at Canadian Casualty Clearing Station No. 2 battled to care for the more than 2,000 wounded soldiers who swamped the 300 available beds in a single 24-hour period. This was not the first crisis that Canadian nurses had coped with, nor would it be the last.

In Casualty Clearing Stations and hospitals, on ambulance trains and in operating theatres, Canadian nurses withstood shellfire and bombing raids, illness and emotional trauma to care for their patients across the Western front. Through the nurses’ own writings and some of their photographs, this talk by Andrea McKenzie illustrates their unique experiences as Canadians, as military officers, and as nurses on the Western Front during the last eighteen months of the war and beyond – from Passchendaele to peace.