A pretty powerful description of the experience of the WW1 female ambulance drivers in France.
In this division, drawn exclusively from the "better" classes, the narrator constantly contrasts her protected, genteel upbringing with the brutality of this world; she reads the proud letters from her mother, vaunting her daughter's noble self sacrifice (and virtue signalling to all her middle class friends) with the actual experience..which she can never tell her. And wonders how her cohorts will fit back into society, as they return no longer innocent and chaste but brutalized and all-knowing...
Bombs, inedible food, exhaustion, horrendous injuries, a leaving behind of Edwardian morals, a b**ch of a cxommander...and death, constantly.
Very evocative writing. ( )

A remarkable book that describes the horrors of war: it contains so much that is real and cruel and pointless. In the backdrop are those back at home flag-waving and promoting the war effort. Anyone reading this book will see the futility of war. ( )

The best anti-war novel I have read. It's not trying to be a masterpiece through poetic language and philosophy about war; instead, it's a story told through the eyes of a 21 year old ambulance driver who quickly learns about the realities of war. The writing is simple, but the story - and the emotions it brings out - is dark and haunting. ( )

After reading Helen Zenna Smith’s powerful answer to Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, I am sitting in stunned silence. This author, who is fairly obscure and unread, wrote with such passion about the conditions under which the Volunteer Aide Detachment (VAD) ambulance drivers worked, that it’s hard to believe she didn’t work in that capacity herself. Instead, she relied on the diaries of Winifred Young, who did serve in France.

Helen Smith, the novel’s protagonist, comes from an upper-class English family and is expected to do her part in the war. At her mother’s urging, she volunteers to be an ambulance driver and is assigned to live with five other like-minded women. The bulk of the book features the experiences of these young women. Their average age is twenty-one.

As the story unfolds, the horror of these experiences is brought to light in glaring detail. Their parents, who paid for their passage, their uniforms and a steady stream of supplies including carbolic body belts to keep the lice at bay, seem to be quite willing to sacrifice their daughters to this very dangerous job. As the story opens, it’s plain that the lice are no small obstacle. They are all covered with the little red bites and succumb to the endless scratching as they lay in their “flea bags” (sleeping bags) and try to sleep. I say try because they get very little chance to experience the luxury of the dreamless, uninterrupted sleep that we all hope for. They usually spend their nights responding to the blare of the Commandant’s whistle, notifying them that they need to race to their ambulances and drive to the front to pick up the maimed bodies of the latest victims of this bloody war. It’s a grueling life, highlighted by a vindictive leader, near-starvation rations, harrowing races through snow and darkness in ambulances they have to maintain themselves and a shocking realization of what these women tolerated to do their jobs.

There is one part of the story where, in her mind, Helen is inviting her mother and a co-worker who both recruit young women for the VAD and yet have no idea what is happening in France, to come along with her in her ambulance. It is the most emotionally draining passage I’ve ever read. Here’s a small part of it:

”See the stretcher bearers lifting the trays one by one, slotting them deftly into my ambulance. Out of the way quickly, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington---lift your silken skirts aside…a man is spewing blood, the moving has upset him, finished him…He will die on the way to the hospital if he doesn’t die before the ambulance is loaded. I know…All this is old history to me. Sorry this has happened. It isn’t pretty to see a hero spewing up his life’s blood in public, is it? Much more romantic to see him in the picture papers being awarded the V.C., even if he is minus a limb or two. A most unfortunate occurrence!” (Page 91)

The book was eye-opening in its bluntness, heart-breaking in its passionate espousal for the anti-war movement and brave in exposing the upper class society for their relentless recruiting of unsuspecting and naïve young people. Very highly recommended. ( )

I see in the years to come old men in their easy chairs fiercely reviling us for lacking the sweetness and softness of our mothers and their mothers before them; chiding us for language that is not the language of gentlewomen; accusing us of barnyard morals when we use love as a drug for forgetfulness because we have acquired the habit of taking what we can from life while we are alive to take ... clearly do I see all these things. But what I do not see is pity or understanding for the war-shocked woman who sacrificed her youth on the altar of the war that was not of her making, the war made by age and fought by youth while age looked on and applauded and encored.

Pretty strong stuff, eh? And that's just one of many powerful passages from Not So Quiet ..., a feminist take on World War I. Similar to the classic All Quiet on the Western Front, Not So Quiet follows a young person at the front and portrays the intense, shattering impact of the war experience. Helen is part of a corps of ambulance drivers, responsible for delivering injured soldiers to one of several hospital wards, and sometimes for transporting soldiers to their final resting place. They work long hours, with poor food and very little sleep. While they are not engaged in combat, they certainly see and experience it, and they are just as vulnerable to air strikes as the men in the trenches.

Those "back home" cannot comprehend the experience. Helen's mother is ridiculously proud of her two daughters for their war service, and is constantly trying to one-up her social rival through war committee work. Her letters are filled with vapid praise for Helen "doing her bit," and when Helen returns home on leave her mother cannot comprehend why Helen doesn't want to wear her uniform, or talk about war service with friends.

This is a short book, but so intense and unrelenting I had to read it in short segments. And yet, it is superbly written. If you weren't a pacifist before reading it, you're likely to become one. ( )