Florence Nightingale was known as the "Lady with the Lamp," but during the Crimean War, the soldiers did not call her that. They called her the "Lady with the Hammer," because she had ignored the officers' objections, taken a hammer herself, smashed open the warehouse doors, and taken out the supplies the hospital desperately needed.
The war correspondent Russell worried that readers would find a woman wielding a hammer insufficiently ladylike, so he changed it to her making rounds every day with a lamp. Thus, her gentle and kind image became deeply ingrained in people's hearts.
Field hospitals were usually relatively far from the battlefield, but not so far that they could not hear the artillery. And comparatively speaking, the battlefield might even have been better than a field hospital.
While England celebrated its victory in the war, the field hospitals were filled with people who had been abandoned. Logistics during the Crimean War were abysmal; even healthy people struggled to get food.
From top to bottom, all British officers had worked together to conceal the truth. The reports sent back home said only, "Everything is fine." Florence Nightingale could originally have brought supplies with her before setting out, but those words made her truly believe it, and so she went with only thirty-eight medical staff.
Florence Nightingale was not a "gentle lady," despite having been born into high society and raised from childhood to become a proper society lady.
Whether working as a nurse or facing war, one needed a resilient, powerful will and the ability to act. To improve the hospital's dreadful sanitary conditions, she forcefully pushed through her own plans. Although there was no rule at the time requiring people to wash their hands before surgery, Florence Nightingale reduced the death rate through compulsory handwashing, improved nutrition,