Train to Nowhere

April 23, 2018
In this remarkable memoir, originally published in the U.K. in 1948 and appearing in the U.S. for the first time, Leslie (1914–1985) writes with wit and candor of fulfilling her patriotic duty as a female ambulance driver. Born into a wealthy family—she was the daughter of a baronet and a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill—Leslie nevertheless signed up for war duty with the Mechanised Transport Corps, with which she trained as a mechanic and drove an ambulance. She served in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France, and Germany, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1945 by Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Her account is full of telling, ground-level details about her various deployments: “Before I had been in France a week a chill descended on my spirit,” she writes. “The boisterous gaiety of military life in the Middle East and Italy seemed to belong to another life.” Leslie earnestly details navigating her ambulance through bloody battlefields and delivering supplies to far-flung field hospitals; she also indulged in unexpected joys and pleasures, such as taking a warm bath. “Our friends offered us bowls of hot milk while we floundered in the mud,” Leslie wrote, experiencing simultaneously the joys and hardships of war; “all knew we were going to join the French attack in Alsace.” Leslie’s straightforward writing style and eye for detail result in a wonderful saga of one brave young woman’s war experiences.