The Backwash Of War: The Human Wreckage Of The Battlefield As Witnessed By An American Hospital Nurse: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Backwash Of War: The Human Wreckage Of The Battlefield As Witnessed By An American Hospital Nurse, credited to Ellen Newbold La Motte, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Backwash Of War: The Human Wreckage Of The Battlefield As Witnessed By An American Hospital Nurse by Ellen Newbold La Motte. Read in English by David Wales Ellen Newbold La Motte (1873–1961) was an American nurse, journalist and author. … and in 1915 volunteered as one of the first American war nurses to go to Europe and treat soldiers in World War I. In Belgium she served in a French field hospital, keeping a bitter diary detailing the horrors that she witnessed daily. “I am a professor of American studies and recently spent several years researching the life of Ellen N. La Motte, a long-forgotten nurse and public health crusader. In particular, I focused on her war writing. Soon after World War I began, she volunteered as a nurse in a French field hospital; later she published an explosive book of stories, “The Backwash of War,” about the experience. I spent endless hours immersed in those deeply unsettling and darkly humorous tales of wounded and sick hospitalized soldiers…. Cynthia Wachtell is a research associate professor of American studies at Yeshiva University…” (New York Times 22 May 2020)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Backwash Of War: The Human Wreckage Of The Battlefield As Witnessed By An American Hospital Nurse
• Author credits: Ellen Newbold La Motte
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 14
• Listed recording duration: 2:38:51

Catalogue topics

• World War I
• anecdotes
• nursing
• Great War
• military hospitals
• war wounds
• war deaths

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 2:39
2. 01 - Heroes — 11:36
3. 02 - La Patrei Reconnaissante — 16:32
4. 03 - The Hole In The Hedge — 11:31
5. 04 - Alone — 11:04
6. 05 - A Belgian Civilian — 11:00
7. 06 - The Interval — 16:49
8. 07 - Women And Wives — 17:11
9. 08 - Pour La Patrie — 11:40
10. 09 - Locomotor Ataxia — 11:58
11. 10 - A Surgical Triumph — 13:19
12. 11 - At The Telephone — 5:14
13. 12 - A Citation — 11:54
14. 13 - An Incident — 6:24

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.