With Them Through Hell: New Zealand Medical Services in the First World War [Hardcover]

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.

The skilled, compassionate and courageous New Zealand medical personnel of the Great War have not always received the attention they deserve. Anna Rogers tells their remarkable story.

New Zealands Great War medical battlefield, abroad and at home

Anna Rogers has an MA in English from Canterbury University and has spent most of her working life as a freelance fiction and non-fiction book editor. She has also been a bookseller and a sub-editor for theListener. Her eight books of non-fiction includeWhile Youre Away: New Zealand Nurses at War 18991948and illustrated histories of the West Coast and Canterbury. Anna co-editedAnnies War: A New Zealand Woman and Her Family in England 191619(2014) and contributed an essay toHow We Remember: New Zealanders and the First World War(2014). She has also edited an anthology of writing about Christchurch and adapted books for radio, and she is a regular book reviewer.