This experience brings Smithy to have a true disbelief in the popular slogan at the time of the war that says, World War I would be the war to end all wars. She holds accountable not only the men who made the decisions, but also the women who supported these decisions. Smithy believed this helped hype what she would consider a travesty of epic proportions. Even though Smith holds women accountable, in her writing, for a hugely devastating event, through this she gives women power because she uses the character Smithy to show that women had a quiet strength at this time. This strength is an important idea because it reinforces the idea of breaking from what one might consider a female role.
A woman's role at the time this book took place is one defined by femininity. It is hugely important to our main character in the beginning. It continues to be important for others throughout the book. The view of women at this time is also that they are frail, incapable, and much less able to navigate any situation that a man may get into physically, emotionally, and mentally. We see Smithy's main transformation in the fact that she admired Tosh for cutting her hair off. Though after she cuts her hair off she says "Women will never adopt a mode that isn't essentially feminine ". (Smith 148). Her job within the war also pushes her out of the common womanly work. Even though she is technically a nurse, she also is the person seeing the dead and horribly maimed up close. She is trying to help move disgustingly mutilated soldiers off the battlefield as well as dodging enemy fire. All the ambulances had women on them, doing one of the truly toughest jobs of the war. In the beginning Smithy is quoted as saying, "Who can wonder the sitters are alive with vermin? " (Smith 15). Another piece of the femininity that Smith plays at in the book is Smithy's mother-daughter connection that is so strong in the beginning.
