This is the story of how three brave American girls sacrificed the comforts and luxuries of home to go abroad and nurse the wounded soldiers of a foreign war. The novel opens on 7 September 1914; the continuing characters Patsy Doyle, Beth De Graf, and their uncle John Merrick are reading a newspaper account of the end of the Siege of Maubeuge and the German victory. Both of the girls are intensely concerned with the war news; Beth in particular is a partisan of the French cause.
