Wounded

[Old Tom]

'Wounded' by Emily Mayhew.

 

I bought this paperback from the mail order firm Post Script which offers 'Quality Books at reduced prices'. It was published in 2013 and I do not recall seeing any review of it.  The author is a Research Associate at Imperial College and an Examiner at Imperial College Medical School. 

I think it is fair to say that this book has had a greater effect on my understanding of aspects of the Great War than the probably a hundred or so others that I  have read.  It is a sometimes detailed, sometimes harrowing, description of the evacuation and treatment of wounded soldiers. The author, who seems well qualified to write on this subject, presents this process via the personal experience of wounded soldiers, stretcher bearers, nurses and doctors.  A selection of each are given individual coverage with a brief account of their background and more detail of their part in the process.

Of particular note are the actions of individuals who encounter the results of a system that is not coping. For example a nurse who has to deal with a large number of casualties that have been left at a railway station to wait for a hospital train, or trains, that have not arrived. Another is the work of the London Ambulance Company, set up by a wealthy civilian, to carry casualties from mainline stations to the various hospitals and treatment centres in the capital.

 

 

Edited 15 March , 2017 by Old Tom
To include title and author which were lost from the template

[Guest]

 

 

 

 

 

Stock Image

Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty, 1914-1918

Mayhew, Emily

Published by Bodley Head (2013)

ISBN 10: 1847922619 ISBN 13: 9781847922618

New Hardcover

Quantity Available: > 20

From: Sandpiper Books Ltd(NEWTON ABBOT, DEVON, United Kingdom)

Bookseller Rating: 

Item Description: Bodley Head, 2013. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. New, mint condition

     Listing is taken from ABE. Postscript is the mail order en of Sandpiper Books. The former issue monthly catalogues,which always have a section of military books. As a semi-retired bookseller, I must state that I have no personal or commercial interest with Sandpiper/Postcript- but I first bought from them in 1983 and they have always been prompt and reliable in delivering books in mint conidition

      Please note also-that I have put up this listing as it is for th HARDBACK version of the book. When Sandpiper do not have sufficient copies to justify listing on a mail order catalogue, they list much shorter quantities on ABE (and Amazon)

 

[Kath]

Emily Mayhew:

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/e.mayhew/research.html

 

Kath.

[paulgranger]

There was quite a long thread on this book back in October 2013, started by Andrew Pugh. I'm afraid posting a look is beyond me, but search under 'emily mayhew' and you will find it. It didn't get high marks, IIRC.

[Kath]

I don't know what is happening here! 

Refers to previous messy post that's been deleted!

 

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/201275-new-book-called-wounded-from-the-battlefield-to-blighty/

 

Kath.

Edited 16 March , 2017 by Kath
info

[paulgranger]

Never mind! That's the thread I was referencing

 

[Old Tom]

Thanks for the reference. I thought that there would have been some comment at the time of publication but 'search', or my finger failed to find anything. Seems my appreciation is counter to previous opinion.' Tant pis' . 

[hazelclark]

Available on kindle too.

H.

[PMHart]

I reviewed it on Amazon as below. Probably the worst book I have ever read from a 'so-called' academic. If you look at the thread you will see Sue Light hated it as well.

 

"This is an awful book! Right from the start with its pretence that this will somehow be a record of a hitherto `silenced' group. The result is sentimental and mawkish, with the mood summed up in one trite sentence, "Their stories deserve to be heard and understood - just as we have learned to listen to the words of the war poets - for everything they can tell us about suffering and war." And more to the point suffering is a proven seller, one that can be profited from.

Yet many authors, one way or another seek to profit from the misfortunes of others. My issue with Mayhew is that she has deliberately misrepresented the historical facts, fictionalising the lives of real people to her own ends. This while pompously claiming, "Wounded is about the real men and women". Well it is not. Let me illustrate from her `work' on the Joe Pickard - an interview done for the Imperial War Museum back in 1986. Mayhew's version of his life taken from this interview is a fantasy; a travesty which is truly shocking. Almost everything she writes about him is a dubious in the extreme. His career is twisted out of all shape, events made-up entirely or taken out of context. As an illustration please, those of you who are unwise enough to have bought this book then please compare Mayhew's breathy emotional account (not quoted her because it is simply garbage) with this unvarnished version of the time Pickard was wounded taken from the interview:

"They started to 'harrow' the box, like harrowing a field, searching the box with shells. The first lot was all right and it was coming through the second time when I got hit. I remember seeing this big black cloud go up the side of the ditch. When I came to myself I was lying back up the road amongst a lot of dead Frenchmen. There was one Frenchmen hit about the head; he was just like a pepper pot! I jumped straight up and went straight down again and I thought, "Well the leg's away!" I found out where I was hit, tore the trousers down. I got me first aid packet out and there was a lot of gauze a little tube of stuff and a big safety pin - that was your first aid. I pulled the trousers down, I was hit underneath the joint of the leg and I tied it on there. The piece of shrapnel had cut the sciatic nerve, chipped both hip joints, smashed the left side of the pelvis and made three holes in the bladder. I knew there was something the matter with my face - I was bound to - I knew the blood was running. I never bothered about it. Well, I mean in a case like that you think whether you want to live and to hell with what you look like! I lost my nose - a right bloody mess. I thought, "Well if I stop here it's either a bullet or the bayonet!" The Germans wouldn't pick you up you know, couldn't afford it, they were trying to travel fast. I crawled down the road on my hands and knees. I saw a fellow I knew and I gave him a shout, a fellow called Craig from Darlington. He got two little fellows, two little Durhams, to come out. I was about head and shoulders above them. Somehow or other they got a stretcher and there was a Red Cross van pulled up near the bottom of the road. They carried us through the barrage a third time and I got into the wagon and the fellow said, "You'll be alright now, chum!" The ambulance took me to an old farmhouse, the roof was blown off and everything else. I wanted a drink. Well they wouldn't give us any water - abdominal wounds you see. They must have bandaged me there at this advanced clearing station. When I came round it was dark and I was lying on a stretcher. I didn't know what was the matter with us and it turned out there was a blanket over the top of us. I was left for dead! The old lady got the number of my grave and the King and Queen's sympathy! God! I got rid of this blanket and I saw a light, a storm lantern and I shouted out to an orderly. Two of them came down, picked the stretcher straight up and put us on a hospital train." Private Joseph Pickard, 1/5th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers, 149th Brigade, 50th Division

For me his unvarnished account is bad enough. But of course it is not emotional and `sad' enough for fiction! So it had to be `enhanced'! The rest of the book is equally bad.

File under fiction, but please feel free to listen to the whole interview and make your own your minds up!"

Edited 16 March , 2017 by PMHart