"A detail on the Burma front" by Winifred Beaumont

In 1943, during the Second World War, London nurse Winifred Beaumont, known as Beau, volunteered to join the Second Front. This book is a memoir of her training, her travel, and her time nursing in British-held Burma (now Myanmar).

It has some great moments, haggling and wheeler-dealing for essential supplies, travelling along jungle roads which have been washed away by heavy rain, dealing with tropical diseases, insects and reptiles, preventing soldiers from taking advantage, and, inevitably, putting on a concert. She writes well. It reminded me of that great sitcom MASH.

Selected quotes:

• "Loss of free will meant also a loss of my sense of responsibility. Decisions and tomorrow belonged to authority. Today was mine. My spirits rose. I was light-hearted and light-headed. If I'd known how to whistle, I'd have whistled." (p 10)
• "I stared at the dark, resentful sea. It rose in lascivious, spittle-flecked hillocks to seek out its prey" (p 15)
• "The rain sluiced down our head and shoulders but our feet and the roadway remained dry. The ground was so hot it turned the rain to steam as it fell and we moved in a knee-high mist." (p 55)
• "Disgrace, like smallpox, was an infection avoided by the wise." (p 61)
• "Tall slender trees flanked the road on either side. They swayed slightly backwards, as if each had a foot poised to stamp across the road and obliterate man and all his works." (p 144)

Well worth a read. September 2016; 160 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Books about war in this blog:

• Invasion 1940 by Peter Fleming
• Memoir of the Bobotes by Joyce Cary: A memoir of a Red Cross worker on the front in the Balkan Wars
• The End by Ian Kershaw: A history of the last few months of Nazi Germany
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque: an antiwar novel by a world war one soldier
• Bridge on the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle: a novel about a Japanese Prisoner of War camp
• The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
• A Detail on the Burma Front: a memoir of a nurse working in Burma during World War Two
• Berlin by Antony Beevoir: A history of the last few months of the Nazi regime
• Catch 22: A classic antiwar novel set during world war two

Other memoirs reviewed in this blog can be found here.