I made commentaries of Chapter 3 up to words "IN THE HALF HOUR before lights-out, after cocoa, the girls would be in and out of each other’s rooms..." I hope it is enough.

La Coupole is a restaurant that was launched on December 20th, 1927 in the 14th district. Solvet and son made it one of the most beautiful venues at Montparnasse. The Art Deco style was represented by large ceilings with geometric shapes and beautiful floor mosaics. This brasserie used to be and remains the place to be in Paris for lovers of French artistic life as Sartres, Cendrars, Ava Garner, Beauvoir or Yves Klein. La Coupole which exudes Parisian culture is the symbol of 80 years of frenzied life in Paris.

… an abomination to the traditions of Nightingale nursing… - Florence Nightingale (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was known as "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night.

Also: The Nightingale Pledge, named in honour of Florence Nightingale, is a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath. Lystra Gretter and a Committee for the Farrand Training School for Nurses in Detroit, Michigan, created the pledge in 1893. Gretter, inspired by the work of Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, credited the pledge to the work of her committee, but was herself considered "the moving spirit behind the idea" for the pledge.

Original "Florence Nightingale Pledge"

I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly to pass my life in purity and to practise my profession faithfully.

I shall abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and shall not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.

I shall do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling.

I shall be loyal to my work and devoted towards the welfare of those committed to my care.

…army 3 ton lorries… - Bedford QL 3 ton GS lorry or Ford WOT6 3 ton Machinery Truck

“Bunyan Bags” had valves for irrigation of wounds and also covered it from infection and gently inflated to avoid contact. “Gunshot wounds were common and healing was inhibited by conventional dressings. The Bunyan bag with its valves for irrigation of the wound covered it from infection and gently inflated avoided contact. Our patients leaving with a limb in a clear balloon did look a little odd but as we so often said, there was a war on.”[1]

…as if they were new girls at Roedean… - Roedean School is an independent day and boarding school in Roedean Village on the outskirts of Brighton, East Sussex, England for girls aged 11 to 18. The school was founded in 1885 and considers to be one of the best and well-known schools for girls.

…Oxo cube… - Oxo is a brand of food products, including stock cubes, herbs and spices, dried gravy, and yeast extract. The original product was the beef stock cube.

…some had been VADs already… - The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary organisation providing field nursing services, mainly in hospitals, in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The organisation's most important periods of operation were during World War I and World War II. The organisation was founded in 1909 with the help of the Red Cross and Order of St. John. By the summer of 1914 there were over 2,500 Voluntary Aid Detachments in Britain. Each individual volunteer was called a detachment, or simply a VAD. Of the 74,000 VADs in 1914, two-thirds were women and girls.

…a ghostly parallel life in which she was at Girton, reading Milton… - a village near Cambridge which is the home of Cambridge University's Girton College, a pioneer in women's education, which was moved there from a previous site in Hertfordshire in 1872.

John Milton (1608 – 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse.

“from bedpan to Bovril” - Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick, salty meat extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston and sold in a distinctive, bulbous jar. It is made in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, owned and distributed by Unilever UK.

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[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/58/a3747558.shtml