Episode 3: 14th to 18th September, 1914

In this episode Nan provides us with more information about the people she is working with and specific details of the soldiers’ injuries and treatments. She writes about a conversation she had in French with a local driver, his attitude to “les allemands blesses”, the “German wounded” and how they will “finish them off”. 

After the entry for 14 September where she describes the work of the orderlies, she has handwritten: “These men all joined the fighting units soon after and several were killed on the Somme”. Nan Reay would have written this comment as a postscript. The Battle of the Somme did not take place until 1 July 1916.

Nan collected postcards of the places she visited and pasted these into the hardcopy of the diary: Le Havre; the Australian Voluntary Hospital, formerly the clinic of Dr. Dufreche at Boulevard de l’Ocean; Nazaire, and the beach at Nazaire.

World War 1 Time line for Episode 3

12 -15 September 1914. After the First Battle of the Marne, the Germans deployed its army along the north bank of the River Aisne. Aisne is in north-eastern France about 128 kms from Paris. The Germans really “dug in” here and this battlefield area was to mark the beginning of the entrenchments which would gradually spread all along an area known as the Western Front; a 400-plus mile stretch of land weaving through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea. The war moved from a mobile to a static war.

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For more information on Dispatches from the Frontline project, go to: www.dispatchesfromthefrontline.org

Dispatches from the Frontline is brought to you by:

Geraldine Cook-Dafner – Narrator

Naomi Edwards - Director

Alex Dafner – Voice recording and editing

Zoltan Fecso – Music composition, sound design and editing

Tristan Meecham – Creative Producer, All the Queen’s Men

Image – Sarah Corridon

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