For over half a century, Edinburgh babies were born in the Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital and the Elsie Inglis maternity ward at the Western General. But surgeon Inglis' contribution to the capital's maternity services ranks second to the 'truly glorious woman's' (Bishop of Oxford) international achievements as founder of Scottish Women's Hospitals for the Foreign Service. Leah Leneman vividly describes Elsie's creation of a visionary organisation that sent over 1000 women to the Front as doctors, nurses, orderlies and drivers. We sense the incredible courage of a hands-on leader who herself ran the medical services in Serbia, cared for patients under German occupation, evaded enemy capture in Romania and held her unit together in the Russian Revolution.