A Very Private Diary: A Nurse in Wartime - Softcover

Morris, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780227388 ISBN 13: 9781780227382

Publisher: W&N, 2015

Synopsis

The newly discovered diary of a wartime nurse - a fascinating, dramatic and unique insight into the experiences of a young nurse in the Second World War.

'I always seem to be saying good-bye to men whom I might have loved had there been enough time...'

1939: 18-year-old trainee nurse Mary Mulry arrives in London from Ireland, hoping for adventure. Little did she know what the next seven years would bring.

In her extraordinary diary, published now for the first time, Mary records in intimate detail her life as a nurse, both on the Home Front and on the frontline. From nursing children during bombing raids in London to treating Allied soldiers in Normandy, Mary's experiences gave her vivid and unforgettable material for the private diary she was dedicated to keeping.

Filled with romance, glamour and inevitably sadness, too, these are the rich memories of an irrepressible personality, living through the turbulent years of the Second World War.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Morris (nee Mulry) was born in County Galway in 1921. After completing her nursing training in London from 1939, she joined the Queen Alexandra Imperial Nursing Service Reserve in 1944. She married Captain Malcolm Morris in London in 1946, and they settled in Britain after the war. Mary later returned to nursing and never stopped writing. She died in 1997, and is survived by four children and eight grandchildren. Carol Acton is Associate Professor of English, St Jerome's University at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, specialising in war writing, especially autobiographical works. She discovered Mary's diaries in the Imperial War Museum archives.

Review

A remarkable work ... [Mary] was a lucid observer of some of the most cataclysmic events in history -- Ronan McGreevy * IRISH TIMES * Throughout it all, Mary's sense of humour and her high spirits rarely failed ... Mary is a talented writer and a humane observer of her remarkable experiences. Her diary is full of vivid, sometimes shocking vignettes ... [A] fascinating and deeply moving book -- Jane Shilling * DAILY MAIL * Diaries transport us back to the events they describe with a vividness other sources cannot match. This diary, recently discovered in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, was kept by Irish nurse Mary Morris to record her experiences during and after the Second World War. Her strength of character and spirit shine through. ....day and night she faced the grim experience of nursing battle casualties. The constant hunger from insufficient rations, catching diphtheria, and being injured by shrapnel failed to daunt her. -- John Adams * NURSING STANDARD * Keeping a diary during active service was forbidden, so this book offers a rare insight into the important roles of nurses, both on the Home Front and the frontline during the Second World War from their own viewpoint. -- Verity Rogers * WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE * Mary Morris's absorbing diary is a tonic to so many outsized histories of the second World War by those who had not been there. ....In pithy, occasionally sardonic entries, Morris builds a picture of the pity of war and, above all, the moral and material ruins of post-Hitler Germany, where she danced the nights away in Allied officers clubs but also got to know the stench of diphtheria ("so foul and sickly") and gangrene. The scenes of horror and distress she recorded are leavened by childhood reminiscences of the Connemara coast and the glories of whiskey fruit cake. -- Ian Thomson * THE IRISH TIMES *

Edition details

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1780227388
• ISBN 13: 9781780227382
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320