Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925

Vera Mary Brittain (1893–1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse during World War I, as well as writer, feminist, socialist, and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir, Testament of Youth recounts her experiences during the First World War and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism. Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, Malta, and on the Western Front. By war's end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation.