Voluntary Aid Detachment

World War I

At the outbreak of the First World War, VAD members eagerly offered their service to the war effort. The British Red Cross was reluctant to allow civilian women a role in overseas hospitals: most volunteers were of the middle and upper classes and unaccustomed to hardship and traditional hospital discipline. Military authorities would not accept VADs at the front line. Initially, the VADs were officially recorded as being assigned to the one hospital, but as time went on, they also worked - often unofficially and only for a few days at a time - at a number of hospitals in their local area, potentially providing a continuity of care to certain patients when hospital transfers occurred.

Katharine Furse took two VADs to France in October 1914, restricting them to serve as canteen workers and cooks. Caught under fire in a sudden battle the VADs were pressed into emergency hospital service and acquitted themselves well. The growing shortage of trained nurses opened the door for VADs in overseas military hospitals. Furse was appointed commander-in-chief of the detachments and restrictions were removed. Female volunteers over the age of twenty-three and with more than three months' hospital experience were accepted for overseas service.

By 1916 the military hospitals at home were employing about 8,000 trained nurses with about 126,000 beds, and there were 4,000 nurses abroad with 93,000 beds. By 1918 there were about 80,000 VAD members: 12,000 nurses working in the military hospitals and 60,000 unpaid volunteers working in auxiliary hospitals of various kinds. Some of the volunteers had a snobbish attitude towards the paid nurses.

VADs were an uneasy addition to military hospitals' rank and order. They lacked the advanced skill and discipline of trained professional nurses and were often critical of the nursing profession. Relations improved as the war stretched on: VAD members increased their skill and efficiency and trained nurses were more accepting of the VADs' contributions. During four years of war 38,000 VADs worked in hospitals and served as ambulance drivers and cooks. VADs served near the Western Front and in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. VAD hospitals were also opened in most large towns in Britain. Later, VADs were also sent to the Eastern Front. They provided an invaluable source of bedside aid in the war effort. Many were decorated for distinguished service.

At the end of the war, the leaders of the nursing profession agreed that untrained VADs should not be allowed onto the newly established register of nurses.

Notable VAD nurses

Memoirists

Some VADs left written records of their service:

• Lucilla Andrews, novelist whose autobiography No Time for Romance included vivid descriptions of her WWII nursing experiences
• Enid Bagnold, British author of the novel National Velvet, on which the 1944 film with Elizabeth Taylor was based. Her account of her experiences are related in her memoir A Diary Without Dates published in 1918
• Vera Brittain, British author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I
• Agatha Christie, British author who briefly details her VAD experiences in her posthumously published Autobiography
• Frances Cluett, from Newfoundland, whose letters describe the horrors of World War I
• Lady Ursula d'Abo, English author who details her VAD experiences in her memoir titled The Girl with the Widow's Peak: The Memoirs
• E. M. Delafield, British author of the autobiographical Diary of a Provincial Lady series and some 30 novels; her experiences working at the Exeter VAD Hospital provided her with material for one of her most popular novels, The War Workers, published in 1918
• Mollie Skinner (under the nom de plume R. E. Leake) wrote Letters of a V.A.D. (London: Andrew Melrose, 1918)
• Mary Cameron (pseud?) wrote an autobiography Merrily I Go To Hell (Allen and Unwin, 1932) including extensive experiences as V.A.D.

Medical personnel

People notable for their contributions to nursing, health, or science, or for their VAD service itself:

• Dame Anne Bryans , head of the Middle East Command of the Voluntary Aid Detachment during World War II, first director (and later chairman) of the St John and Red Cross Service Hospitals Welfare Department in 1945, vice-chairman of the British Red Cross Executive Committee in 1964
• Edith Cliff , commandant of Gledhow Hall Military Hospital, one of many such directors to be honoured for her nursing work
• Violet Jessop, British ocean liner stewardess trained as a VAD nurse after the outbreak of World War I. She had been a stewardess aboard the RMS Titanic when it sank in 1912 and was also aboard the hospital ship HMHS Britannic (the ''Titanic'''s sister ship) as a Red Cross nurse when it sank in 1916
• Aileen Preston, worked for the VAD's Watson Unit, was head of the first autonomous British women’s ambulance unit and was the first woman in history to qualify for the Automobile Association Certificate in Driving
• Marjory Stephenson , biochemist, bacteriologist and one of the first two women elected to the Royal Society in 1945

Other

Many VADs were prominent in fields outside their war work:

• Ida Nancy Ashburn, Australian headmistress
• Blanche Badcock, target rifle shooter who was the first woman to compete in the King's Prize
• Mary Borden, Anglo-American novelist
• The Cadiz sisters, Irish suffragettes
• May Wedderburn Cannan, British poet
• Dame Rachel Crowdy, English nurse who was Chief of the Department of Opium Traffic and Social Issues Section of the League of Nations from 1919 to 1931
• Lottie Dod, English sportswoman best known as a tennis player. She won the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Championship five times in the late 19th century
• Amelia Earhart, American aviation pioneer
• Hilda May Gordon, British painter
• A. M. Irvine, author, wrote 28 books, some on a medical themes, mostly stories for girls
• Hattie Jacques, English comedy actress
• Angela Manners, aristocrat and socialite
• Naomi Mitchison, Scottish writer
• Olivia Robertson, British author and co-founder of the Fellowship of Isis
• Sophia Duleep Singh, suffragette
• Venetia Stanley, aristocrat and socialite
• Freya Stark, explorer and travel writer
• Doreen Tovey, British writer on animals, President of RSPCA for North Somerset
• Jessie Traill, Australian painter
• Eleanor Vachell, Welsh botanist
• Anna Zinkeisen, Scottish painter and illustrator
• Doris Zinkeisen, Scottish painter, commercial artist and theatrical designer

References

Sources

• A VAD in France, Olive Dent, Diggory Press,

References

1. [http://www.micklebring.com/oakwood/ch01.htm History of the VAD]
2. {{usurped
3. "General overview of Joint War Committee activities during the First World War". British Red Cross.
4. (2015). "Neutral Caregivers or Military Support? The British Red Cross, the Friends' Ambulance Unit, and the Problems of Voluntary Medical Aid in Wartime". War & Society.
5. (31 May 2017). "Women in the Great War". Grub Street Publishers, 31 May 2017.
6. (1960). "A History of the Nursing Profession". Heinemann.
7. Bowser, Thekla. (1917). "Britain's civilian volunteers : authorized story of British Voluntary Aid Detachment work in the Great War".
8. "VADs & Nurses - Homefront Heroines". Qube.
9. The Life of a Provincial Lady by Violet Powell, p. 32
10. "Australian Dictionary of Biography". National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
11. "Paintings by Doris Zinkeisen (1898–1991)". [[British Red Cross]].