WAR(D) AND NO PEACE: VISIONS OF THE GREAT WAR BY THREE WOMEN WRITERS

Exactly one century after the battle of Waterloo took place, Europe was once again torn by political disaster, with nations engaged in a war far from being over. At the height of the first fully mechanized conflict, with poets like Siegfried Sassoon or Wi-lfred Owen already rebelling against the resilient patriotism of the Home Front, other protagonists, far removed from the pastoral comforts of Edwardian England, witnessed first-hand the suffering and trauma instilled by futile combat. In this paper, I will look at the work of women who enlisted in the armed services and performed their duty as close to the front as they could get - namely as Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses and ambulance drivers - or based their subsequent literary work in real accounts of other women involved in the war effort. Harrowing scenes like those one comes across in Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone (1929), Helen Zenna Smith's Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War (1930), and Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth (1933) constitute vivid depictions of the unfiltered landscapes of death they daily encountered and a poignant reflection upon the soldier's predicament, as well as their own. Retrospectively, their insight, commitment and contribution to the reshaping of the literary canon, whether through the more popular memoir form or avant-garde semi-fictional narrative, are paramount - and just as cogent as their male counterparts' - to a better understanding of what the war experience gave to, and took from, all who took part in it.