Women at War: The Battlefront

Women on the Battlefront: "No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital at Doullens" by Gerald E. Moira

Although this painting was not created by a female artist, the piece depicts the critical work women did on the front lines. Over the course of WWI, nearly 3000 Canadian women served as nurses [1]. Wartime nurses were greatly respected by the soldiers they tended to and were often called “bluebirds” in reference to the blue dresses and white veils they wore as seen in Moira’s painting [2]. The general public, as well as soldiers, often considered wartime nurses to be equivalent to angels or divine figures because of the selfless work they did. For this reason, it is no mistake that Moira placed one nurse at the centre of the painting standing directly below a mounted statue of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.  

The history of the No. 3 Stationary Hospital at Doullens serves to represent one of the many dangerous locations wartime nurses worked in on the Western front. In May 1918, the hospital was bombed by German forces. The bombardment killed 3 nurses at the hospital and injured several others. Death records at the Canadian Virtual War Memorial show that one Canadian nurse was killed in the attack. According to the records, Nurse Eden Pringle was born in Scotland but moved to British Columbia, Canada. Pringle had joined the Canadian overseas expeditionary force and served in the Medical Corps beginning in 1917. Pringle was killed on May 30, 1918, following the German raid [3].  

Eden Pringle’s story brings Moira’s painting to life. Although it is unclear whether any of the nurses in the painting are intended to depict Nurse Pringle, there is no doubt that her story is embedded in this wartime piece.