A Young Lady's Experience of War

Not So Quiet
by Helen Zenna Smith

I am told, by a possibly unreliable source, that the author set out to write a parody of All's Quiet on the Western Front but instead wrote a serious work based on the war diaries of a female ambulance driver. I could believe that if a writer were confronted with source material like that that portrayed here, he would feel compelled to tell the story--straight up.  This is some grueling (and gruesome) stuff.

I don't doubt it's 99% true, simply because I don't think anyone could make this up. I'd forgotten the cruelty of this first big war--poison gas, bombs, tanks and trench warfare. She describes dropping off stretchers of men with the most inoperable of injuries, and thankfully, doesn't have the knowledge of just how badly they would end up being treated at the makeshift hospitals of her time.  But I do--or at least can imagine it.

Every time you hear a person attempt to glorify war, you should slap them across the face with this book. Or if it's a politician, with a tire iron.