Ellen La Motte

Ellen Newbold La Motte (1873–1961) was an American nurse, journalist and author. She began her nursing career as a tuberculosis nurse in Baltimore, Maryland, and in 1915 volunteered as one of the first American war nurses to go to Europe and treat soldiers in World War I. In Belgium she served in a French field hospital, keeping a bitter diary detailing the horrors that she witnessed daily. Back in America, she turned her diary into a book, The Backwash of War (1916), containing fourteen vignettes of typical scenes. Despite early success, the brutal imagery was unpalatable and the book was suppressed and not republished until 1934. During her time in Paris during the war La Motte formed a close friendship with the American expat writer Gertrude Stein. Researchers have speculated that Ernest Hemingway's influential unadorned style may have been influenced by La Motte's own writing, through Stein's mentoring.