Nurses on the frontline

In honor of Florence Nightingale, who paved the way for army nurses, a look back at the brave women who tended to soldiers in the trenches

A Soviet nurse helps a wounded soldier at the front.
Lauren Hansen
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(Image credit: Florence Nightingale makes her rounds in the hospital in Scutari, Turkey, during the Crimean War.)

(Image credit: A Soviet nurse helps a wounded soldier at the front.)

(Image credit: A nurse continues to work in her bombed-out hospital in London, England.)

(Image credit: Mile Mereau — former POW and a nurse of the Belgian White Army — bandages a wounded British soldier in Antwerp, Belgium.)

(Image credit: U.S. Army nurses crowd the deck of a transport as they prepare to debark at a British port.)

(Image credit: A British nursing officer washes her clothing outside of her tent in Kenya.)

(Image credit: A U.S. Army nurse, with shoes slung around her neck, wades ashore from a landing craft in Naples harbor, Italy.)

(Image credit: A nurse aids a wounded soldier in a field in the former Soviet Union during World War II.)

(Image credit: German nurses wearing gas masks administer first aid to soldiers who were gassed on the Italian front.)

(Image credit: American nurses walk through a trench in France.)

(Image credit: A nurse aids a wounded soldier in the former Soviet Union during World War II.)

(Image credit: U.S. Army nurses rest on sandbags while waiting for transportation to another field hospital in Vietnam.)

(Image credit: English Nurses decorate the grave of a fallen soldier.)

Lauren Hansen
Lauren Hansen

Lauren Hansen produces The Week’s podcasts and videos and edits the photo blog, Captured. She also manages the production of the magazine's iPad app. A graduate of Kenyon College and Northwestern University, she previously worked at the BBC and Frontline. She knows a thing or two about pretty pictures and cute puppies, both of which she tweets about @mylaurenhansen.

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