For two or three decades now in Finland, the field known as "new military history" has pointed to the narrow scope of the historical research dealing with the Winter War, the Continuation War and the Lapland War. Much research is on record that examines the experiential reality of war and the return to peace with reference to marginalized themes and groups. The perspectives considered span those of the home front, women, children, soldiers traumatized at the front, evacuees, and geographically and ethnically marginalized groups. Other topics include various value hierarchies, gender relations and genderedness. These last three aspects of military history have featured prominently particularly in the research on women who served in the war in the Lotta Svärd organization. The tasks assigned to nurses and their experiences in carrying them out have been largely overlooked. In my article, I examine the experiential reality of a young nurse, Hilkka Kurttila, during the Winter War in Finland (1939-1940) and the Moscow Armistice that followed (1940-1941). In the Winter War, she served in the Red Cross on a hospital train that brought wounded soldiers from the front to medical facilities throughout the country. My primary source is Hilkka's "book of memories" Muistoja elmäni taipaleelta [Memories from my life], which spans the years of the war and the armistice. In it she provides a rich account of not only work on the hospital train and her personal experiences and feelings, but also observations and documentation of the course of the war and events taking place in the world. The book includes entries by Hilkka's friends and colleagues. One question I had to confront in my article is whether life writing - committing personal and shared experiences to writing - had a positive impact on the writer's sense of coherence in this case. A second question, the other side of the coin if you will, is, what right do I as a historian have to put forward interpretations about another person's life on the basis of such personal sources? The"new military history" has emphasized in many ways the genuinely polyphonic nature of people's experiences of war, experiences which were previously regarded as relatively uniform among those affected and which tended to be viewed very much in masculine terms. Hilkka's book of memories reveals, however, that even a single individual might express her experiences in multiple voices.%Yllä olevat sanat on kirjoitettu Punaisen Ristin sairaalajunassa talvisodan aikana palvelleen sairaanhoitajan Hilkka Kurttilan (myöhemmin Kurkela) "muistojen kirjaan", johon paneutuen tarkastelen nuoren naisen kokemustodellisuutta sodan ja välirauhan ajan poikkeusoloissa. Toinen tärkeä lähdeaineistoni ovat Hilkan vieraskirja vuosilta 1935-1940 ja hänen sairaanhoitajakoulun kurssi-ja kuva-albuminsa vuosilta 1936-1938 myöhemmin tehtyine lisäyksineen. Vieraskirjan lopussa on oma "osasto" sairaalajuna-ajalta.
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