Notes

New Zealand's Great War medical battlefield abroad and at home.
The thousands of New Zealand men who fought in the First World War went through hell. And right beside them was another fighting force, armed with scalpels, bandages and drugs. Hundreds of doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers, orderlies and ambulance drivers, dentists, chiropodists, pharmacists, physiotherapists and chaplains cared for the sick and wounded, often at great personal risk. Veterinarians did the same for horses, camels and other animals.

The challenges were enormous — horrific injuries, gas and deadly diseases, especially the influenza of 1918. There were some astonishing successes — most famously by plastic surgery pioneers Harold Gillies and Henry Pickerill — but the price was high, for patients and carers.

Book donated by First World War Centenary History Programme Governance Group