Military Medals

In June 1916 the Royal Warrant for the Military Medal was amended so that women could also be eligible for the award. Since 1883 the Royal Red Cross had been awarded to nurses for outstanding acts of bravery and devotion to duty during the course of their work, and was much revered by the profession as a reward for services above the normal call of duty. However, during the Great War the RRC was separated into two classes, 1st class (RRC) and 2nd class (Associate or ARRC) and was issued by the thousand to women who although engaged in some way in the nursing of sick and wounded soldiers, were not necessarily trained nurses. It became an anomaly that due to a 'quota' system, the untrained Commandant of a forty-bedded Red Cross Hospital could receive the RRC for running her small unit efficiently, while the Matron of a 2000-bedded British General Hospital who was working sixteen-hour days on the Western Front went without. When nursing sisters and other women workers in France and Flanders became increasingly subject to the dangers of German air-raids and shelling, many of them showed the most outstanding bravery and disregard for their own safety in order to protect and care for the patients in their charge. The amendment of the Royal Warrant extending the award of the Military Medal to women provided a prestigious alternative to the Royal Red Cross, and one which would recognise a small group of women who had acted with great courage under fire.

During the Great War 135 Military Medals were awarded to women, both civilians and those working in military hospitals. Fifty-five of those awards were to members of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service and the Territorial Force Nursing Service, and I've recently put details of these women, with citations for their awards, on the Scarletfinders website. The citations are those written by the officer responsible for submitting the names for consideration, and vary in their content and descriptive quality, but give an excellent picture of the magnificent work and outstanding actions of nurses during the normal course of their work during the Great War.

The pages can be found by following this link:

Scarletfinders - Military Medals awarded to members of QAIMNS and TFNS

Training Hospitals 1902

As I've got an enforced period of sitting at home at present, I've had some time to go through documents I've found, and re-read some of those I'd forgotten about. When QAIMNS was formed in 1902, it was planned to improve its exclusivity by only accepting applications from women who had been trained at the best hospitals in the country. In the event it soon became obvious that this method would never provide enough applicants, and the rules were rapidly relaxed, but this extract from the minutes of the QAIMNS Nursing Board that year gives the list of preferred institutions - I wonder what a similar list would look like today?

The National Archives WO243/20
Minutes of Nursing Board, Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service 1902

List of approved hospitals and training schools
The Board has at its disposal information concerning hospitals with accommodation for about 100 patients and upwards in the UK and British Dominions, in which training for nurses is provided. It has come to the conclusion that the training in these institutions varies greatly, and also varies from time to time in individual institutions. In many of these institutions it is clear that the training provided for nurses is not of the standard which should be recognised for the purposes of the QAIMNS.
The Board concludes that it will not be advisable at present to draw up a definite list of hospitals and nurse training schools, but for convenience of the Board it recommends that the Nurse Training Schools attached to Schools of Medicine in the UK should for the present be recognised for the purposes of QAIMNS. In the case of nurses applying for admission from other training schools, the application of each nurse should be specially considered by the Nursing Board and recorded in its minutes.
List of approved institutions:

England
Metropolitan
Charing Cross Hospital
Guy's Hospital
King's College Hospital
The London Hospital
Middlesex Hospital
Royal Free Hospital
St. Bartholomew's Hospital
St. George's Hospital
St. Mary's Hospital
St. Thomas' Hospital
University College Hospital
Westminster Hospital

Provincial
Birmingham General Hospital
Birmingham, The Queen's Hospital
Bristol General Hospital
Bristol Royal Infirmary
Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge
Cardiff Infirmary
Leeds General Infirmary
Liverpool General Infirmary
Manchester Royal Infirmary
Newcastle-on-Tyne Royal Infirmary
Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford

Scotland
Aberdeen Royal Infirmary
Dundee Royal Infirmary
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
Glasgow Royal Infirmary
Glasgow Western Infirmary

Ireland
Belfast, Royal Victoria Infirmary
Dublin, Adelaide Hospital
Dublin, Mater Misericordiae
Dublin, St. Vincent's Hospital
Dublin, Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital
Dublin, The Richmond Hospital

Dear Father revisited

I've written previously about the social status of members of the 'Regular' QAIMNS service, and in June I commented this extract from a book by Penny Starns:

'Military nurses were recruited primarily from the ranks of officers' wives, widows and daughters, and this elitist recruitment practice, combined with royal patronage, ensured that the military nursing services occupied a prestigious position within the profession overall'

Doubting that most of these women were the daughters of army officers (there were definitely no wives or widows after 1902) I've now done a little more work on the profession of the fathers of those women who joined the service between its inauguration in March 1902 and the outbreak of the Great War (August 4th 1914).
There were 495 women who were appointed to Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service during this period, and I've fitted them in to one of fifty-eight occupational categories. As I have worked from the applicant's own description of her father's profession, there are varied descriptions of what is likely to be a similar job. For instance, I've used 'Minister of the Church' to include 'clergyman', 'clerk in holy orders', 'Weslyan minister' etc., and similarly 'Merchant' encompasses a multitude of trading - yarn, silk, gold and silver, corn, iron, wine, granite etc; the list is very long, but does not include shopkeepers, who were not very numerous in the list.
I found that of those fifty-eight categories, the top five accounted for half of the 495 women, and the top ten covered 350 in total - here are the top five:

Minister of the Church - 60
Farmer - 57
Merchant - 49
Army Officer - 46
Doctor/Surgeon - 35

There is no bottom five as such; twenty-three fathers have a profession unique to the list, and they include a museum curator, lithographer, a public analyst, the manager of a salmon fishery and a Writer to the Signet (I'll leave that to Google!).
This is a rough and ready appraisal, but certainly shows that there was considerable diversity in the background of QAIMNS nurses which probably veered rather more to peace and love than to war.

Researching a Nurse

For some time I've had a page on the Scarletfinders website which offers some ideas for people who are trying to trace nurses who served during the Great War, and I thought it might be useful to repeat it here. It outlines some of the main sources of records, most of which are not available online, and could lead on to some travelling and footwork, but hopefully a worthwhile cause.

TRACING GREAT WAR NURSES

It's often the case that the only thing you know about a family member is that she was 'a nurse in the Great War', but have no inkling of where to look for more information. Hopefully this page will give you some idea of where to start. The term 'nurse' is used frequently and rather loosely in connection with the Great War. Women who worked as nurses could have been trained, partly trained or untrained. They could have been employed by the War Office; the Joint War Committee (British Red Cross Society and St. John Ambulance Association); the French Red Cross (Croix Rouge); any number of independent organizations such as the Scottish Women's Hospital, or in ordinary civil hospitals in the United Kingdom. They might also have worked with the military nursing services of Canada, South Africa, New Zealand or the USA. If you're looking for a trained nurse, the first thing to do is check the Catalogue of The National Archives to see if she is included in class WO399, which contains all surviving files of women who served with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service and the Territorial Force Nursing Service:

The National Archives Catalogue

Put the surname in the 'Word or Phrase' box, and in the 'Department or Series Code' box put WO399. If you're searching for a common surname, remember to scroll through the complete results, as although they will be displayed as one continuous list, there are two separate alphabetical runs combined. If you find the right person, you will find her service file number, but the records themselves are not online. Not all files have survived, some being destroyed during the 1930s. If your nurse served overseas with the Army medical services, the British Red Cross or one of the recognised independent organizations, she would have been entitled to service medals, and should have a medal index card at The National Archives. These cards, in themselves, do not give a lot of information, but if you're working in the dark they are particularly useful for finding which organization a woman was attached to, and her position or rank. Start with this page on TNA website:

TNA Documents Online

Follow the 'Search' link and on the next page choose 'WW1 Campaign Medals' to access the search page. For trained nurses it's always worth searching the archives of the British Journal of Nursing, which are complete and online for the period from 1888-1956. This is a wonderful resource both for tracing nurses, and for general information on the history of nursing:

British Journal of Nursing

Use the 'Search Journals' link, and try to keep it as simple as possible - just surname if it's unusual to stand alone, and remembering to insert a full stop after initials if you're using them. Not all trained nurses get a mention, but it's often possible to trace a woman's career for many years. Fully trained nurses who continued to work after 1922 are likely to have registered with the General Nursing Council following the Nurses Registration Act of 1919, and their details might be found in the Registers of the GNC. A run of these are held at The National Archives in class DT10, and also by the Royal College of Nursing. These volumes contain details of name, number on the Register, training school with dates, and permanent address at time of publication. Registers for women trained in Scotland are held by the National Archives of Scotland, and also by the Royal College of Nursing in Edinburgh.

Untrained nurses (VADs) and trained nurses who worked for the Joint War Committee often have service records held by the British Red Cross Society in London, and it's always worth an enquiry. Information and contact details are here:

British Red Cross Society personnel records

Going back a bit further, there are limited service records available for women who joined the Army Nursing Service between 1870 and 1891, and which are held at The National Archives in class WO25/3955. Unfortunately there are none for those who joined between 1891 and 1914 unless they went on to serve during the Great War and have a file in WO399 (see above). However, their postings to different hospitals can be found by tracing them through copies of the Army List, available at The National Archives and many other large libraries and archives. Many nurses who served during the Boer War, either in the Army Nursing Service or Princess Christian's Army Nursing Service Reserve, can be found in the database on this website - it's been updated recently and seems a little more difficult to navigate, but persevere:

Boer War Nurses

If you know where your nurse trained, there might still be records held of her time there. The location of all surviving hospital records are held on a national database jointly held by The National Archives and the Wellcome Library:

Hospital Records Database

Note that none of these records are acutally held at TNA - the details of each hospital will give you the current location with scope and dates. For more advice about tracing nurses in civil hospitals see this page on the Royal College of Nursing website, which contains much useful information, addresses and links:

Tracing Nurses

I get asked increasingly about tracing members of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service and the Territorial Force Nursing Service who served in the Second World War. All service records for these women are still retained by the Ministry of Defence, and are only available to the nurse herself, her next of kin or their representatives. Full details and the address for all enquiries is here:

Ministry of Defence personnel records

Happy hunting!

Gallipoli 1915 - Part Two

Suvla, August 1915.

Every day that passes shows more plainly that the great attack has failed. The Australians, I gather, had a success on the 2^nd, at Tasmania Post, but their losses were very heavy. Those on the spot appear to know rather less than more of the real issues. Everything seems in a terrible muddle, but the scattered utterances I hear are very dispiriting.

“We got there,” Colonel ‘A’ told me; and his voice was unutterably weary when he added: “and then we had to come back.”

It seems that the Gurkhas and some of the Irish struggled up to the heights of Sari Bair under murderous fire, and there waited for the rest of the detachment, greatly exulting if suffering severely; the others lost themselves and never reached their comrades in front, who had to retire exposed to fire from the same guns. I never listened to a sadder story.
We rise at 6 a.m., and are seldom in bed before midnight. Upon the arrival of the “Gloucester Castle,” surgical operations commenced and were continued for thirty-six hours without a pause, and it is fortunate that the weather kept fine. The poor maimed suffering boys – for the majority of the wounded are nothing more than boys in years – like in rows on the deck outside the operating theatre, just as they are taken from the lighter, awaiting their turn. After being operated upon they are carried to the wards, thus saving them unnecessary moving and handling. How wonderfully brave and uncomplaining they are.

“Just let me have a look at that,” said one lad. “It’s only my mother,” he added, with a shy little smile. Poor boys! Poor mothers! So far apart. They are worse off than those in France.

The mental strain weighing on the officers runs through their delirious mutterings. One Captain must have been hit just after he had sent an important despatch, for he is continually muttering, “That fellow ought to be back.” “He got through all right.” “I watched him all the way down, it is time he was back.” “I cannot think why he does not come.” Only death ends his anxiety. Another shot through both lungs, keeps starting up and saying he must get back, he is wanted. “I’d be fit enough if you would only give me something strong to pull me together. Can’t you give me anything?” On trying to drink he falls back gasping, only to start all over again until unconsciousness comes to his relief. Another patients is suffering from almost complete paralysis; he was knocked down and covered by rock and debris; he is quite award of the gravity of his case, but very rarely does he give way. (I am glad to say that reports show he was making a good recovery in England.)

The transport of the seriously wounded down the rough mountain tracks was both painful and slow. A major of the Royal Irish, who had been shot through the lung, said how dreadfully he had suffered from the jolting of the stretcher; he was almost unconscious at the time but can just remember someone leaning over him and saying, “He’s done for, poor chap.” The less seriously wounded were full of fun; one staff officer, from whose leg a bullet has been extracted at his own request without chloroform, insists on hopping round on his good leg to talk to the others. He does his comrades so much good that the nurses pretend not to see him disobeying orders right under their eyes. He knows Captain “D” who is dying unconscious with a fractured base, and promises to write to Captain “D’s” people. There are a large number of medical officers and chaplains among the patients; one Roman Catholic padre being seriously wounded.

There is no cover of any sort on shore, and at the dressing station fragments of bursting shell splash into the basins, so that the staff have to seize their patients and scamper with them along the beach.. On the ship, accommodation has been provided for an extra four hundred patients by putting mattresses and hammocks along the decks. As they lie there huddled together as close as possible, they have to be sorted out and dressed; then entered on the nominal roll. Oh, that nominal roll! The Commanding Officer is heard to talk of it every night in his sleep. One unregistered officer was discovered on deck, raving and delirious; another, lying among some lightly wounded, was so faint that he could not call; his face was disfigured with ugly sores, his uniform in rags, and his badges missing. Whenever an orderly cannot be found near his duties, he is generally found talking to a young Australian who is lying in a hammock, and who has lost both of his legs and his eyesight, while one arm is fractured; yet he lives and jokes and sings. He is known as “Tipperary.” (He reached Alexandria, but after that I lost sight of him.)

Three miles out from Suvla the ship slackens speed and the dead are committed to the deep. Ships carrying sick proceed to Lemnos, where orders are received either to transfer th epatients to a home-bound ship, or take them to one of the Mediterranean bases. In spite of the rush and scramble, anti-tetanic serum is being given with great regularity and with good results. There are some very bad cases of gas-gangrene; one young New Zealander, who was lying out for twenty-four hours with a compound fracture, lost first his leg and then his life from this condition. Even slight shell and shrapnel wounds are complicated by much bruising of the surrounding tissues and need to be treated with great judgement. Cases of dysentery, gastro-enteritis and colitis are very numerous; there is also a good deal of paratyphoid, but inoculation has done much to diminish cases of enteric. The “Gloucester Castle” has twice the number of patients it is supposed to accommodate, and on an average a fresh lot are received every week, consequently the supply of hospital suits on board is not sufficient to meet this demand, and as the patients come on board covered with dirt and blood, and it being impossible to deal with the patients’ own clothing, the Red Cross clothing is found invaluable.
August 1915 will not soon be forgotten by any who spent it in the Dardanelles.

Malta, December 1915

It is always pleasant to get to Malta, the patients feel that they are half-way home. Lemnos now is terribly bleak, and although Mudros harbour appears sheltered, it can blow furiously there and show as cold and dreary an aspect as any spot on earth.
December has been the saddest month of the saddest year! At the end of November (27) one of the most furious storms broke over the much tried troops at Suvla and Anzac. Those who lived through it say it seemed as if the Powers of Darkness had broken loose. The wind howled and shrieked, wrecking buildings and tearing up every shelter. Provisions and clothing were carried away and destroyed by flooded torrents that burst from the hills. To sleep or prepare any food was impossible.
One officer came across some men reeling drunk with spirits they had taken from a wrecked store; they were staggering unsteadily along, bearing a stretcher with a wounded man, yet the officer said that at the time it did not surprise him, it just seemed part of the pandemonium that reigned everywhere. The storm and floods lasted three whole days and were followed by a severe frost. This cold weather had not been expected so soon and very few possessed any warm footgear, consequently hundreds of frostbitten cases were received on board. The Gurkhas suffered badly and I am afraid some of them will lose their feet. After this it was a relief to hear that Suvla and Anzac were to be evacuated, and although the evacuation was a severe blow to one’s pride, there was considerable satisfaction when, a few days before Christmas, the evacuation order was successfully carried out.
The Australian troops felt the leaving very bitterly; they had struck deep roots at Anzac, but they entered into it with zest and even got some fun out of it. Groups of half a dozen remained behind to run up and down the gullies showing lights so as to give the impression that the usual number were there. Already their hearts are set on France: it is there that they wished to go. A very interesting picture of a group who had been in the first landing, eight months previous, was taken on the last hospital ship from Anzac. A staff group, photographed on the deck of the “Aragon,” had a narrow escape. A Taube dropped a bomb on the spot where the group had been standing, a few minutes after they had dispersed.

One of the hardships of the Gallipoli campaign was its remoteness for sick and wounded. Those invalided home from France could see their people almost immediately, but what patient cared about getting to Malta or Alexandria? And how deeply they loathed Lemnos; mails, too, were scanty and irregular. A particular case I have in mind is of an officer who was suffering from a very serious head wound, and how, on his partially regaining consciousness, his eyes would rove about so wistfully, seeking for some familiar face. I used to think that his groping senses might have cleared could they but have settled on someone he knew. It was pathetic to hear this officer ask over and over again, “Where? Where?” Colonel Balance spent considerable time on board in consultation over this particular case; his sympathy and kindness to the patient made a great impression on me. (I had the pleasure of being shown round the beautifully equipped hospital at Ligne by Colonel Balance. My patient eventually died in that hospital.)
What should we do in these times without some of the lighter interludes? A major who was suffering from a contused wound of the head caused roars of laughter by his account of how he was hit by a tin of biscuits. His dug-out was protected by a barricade of stores consisting chiefly of tins of biscuits; a shell went right through them, alighting in the last case but one, but without exploding, the last tin being thrown with some violence on to his head. It was a wonderful escape and the major boasts that he is the only man in the British Army who knows exactly through how many tins of biscuits that particular kind of shell will penetrate.

Gallipoli 1915

Here is a further account taken from 'Reminiscent Sketches 1914 to 1919' written by members of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Service and the Reserve. This one is taken from diary entries written by Mary E. Webster while she was working on board the hospital ship 'Gloucester Castle.' Split into two parts, it gives a flavour both of the landscape, and of life on a hospital ship over several weeks.

NOTES ON THE GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN
By M. E. Webster

H.M.H.S. “Gloucester Castle,” Lemnos, July 1915.

If it were not for the dark war-clouds, nothing could have been more delightful than this trip through the summer seas, with the blue, sunlit waters and purple islands whose names are poems in themselves. Milo! Paros! Naxos! Samos! Chios! How these conjure up visions of gleaming marbles, rose-wreathed cups, gods and goddesses! Surely no youthful Greek hero ever displayed a finer shape, or more noble poise, than the Australian soldiers who could be seen bating from a transport moored near the “Gloucester Castle” in Mudros harbour. The physical beauty of the Australian soldier was startling, their vitality wonderful. They are at Gallipoli, not driven by fear of invasion (the remoteness of their country saves them from that), but they are here from sheer love of adventure and loyalty to the mother country. Willing even to die if need be.

Lemnos is about sixty miles from the fighting – roughly six hours’ steaming. It is an island of green hills, with bare, stony summits and quaint windmills. In the spring the country is deliciously green, and the grass starred with asphodel lilies and every kind of wild flower. Even now there is just one lovely hour before sunset, when purple shadows lie on the slopes and hollows, and the dull hues of sand and dry grass turn to orange and gold. The glories of the sky and fascinating outlines of mast and hull are reflected in the quiet water; but the midday heat is brazen, for there are no trees. I have heard that this is due to the reckless destruction of timber by the Turks. In the old Greek days the island was well wooded and watered, and a favourite country resort for visitors from the mainland. Now it is a wilderness of drought and flies. Clouds of dust hang over the camps and hospital tents, entirely enveloping any moving van or car. Existence on shores is poisoned by dust and flies, making sleep impossible, contaminating food and drink, and infecting wounds.

Over a hundred vessels lie in this crescent-shaped harbour; battle-ships of many kinds, transports, cargo boats, mine-sweepers, hospital ships, and Greek fishing boats side by side. Our Headquarters Staff is located on the R.M.S.S. “Aragon,” and it is there we report for orders. In the elaborately glazed deck spaces and saloons, red-tabbed officers innumerable “live and move and have their being.” A visitor on board the “Aragon” once remarked that “he had never seen such a __ __ conservatory full of scarlet geraniums in his life!

Anzac, first week in August, 1915.

The “Gloucester Castle” lies about a mile from the shore at Gaba Lepe – now known as the Anzac beach in honour of the Australians and New Zealand Army Corps. It is only a narrow strip of beach, backed by bold red-coloured bluffs, deeply scarred and furrowed in their formation, and reaching to a height of nearly 1,000 feet. There are occasional tracks like those of a mountain goat, with here and there little terraced spaces. The face of the cliffs is covered here and there with patches of dull green prickly undergrowth, chiefly consisting of a shrub resembling holly, but bearing acorns; these, however, scarcely relieve the red-hot glare of the midday. In the distance on the right is Achi-Baba, and on the left, beyond the New Zealand lines, the land falls away into a tree-dotted plain, while beyond that again are the Salt Lake and Chocolate Hill. In the early morning and at sundown this strange, forbidding coast assumes a beauty all of its own; the gullies are deeply blue, and the sea and sky glow with wonderful tints; then, as the darkness falls, lights spring out up and down the hillside, like busy fireflies.

The insistent tapping of machine-guns and the sharp reports of the snipers who are no longer afraid of betraying their hiding place destroy the silence of the night. Sometimes stray bullets are found embedded in the woodwork on board. One of the best Australian snipers is of partly Chinese origin. The costume of a Turkish sniper was brought on board. It was of a dull green colour like the foliage, with coverings for face, hands and feet. Some snipers prefer to paint their faces. The Turks who know the country have found and provisioned posts in most of the larger trees, where they stay for a week or more. In the day time, shelling goes on for hours at a time. The white smoke of the bursting shells can be seen against the blue hills. “Beechy Bill” is responsible for many casualties, and “Tucker Time Liz” always chooses the meal hours; there is really no good cover either on sea or shore.

We have been interested in watching a mine-sweeper dodging about for three days trying to land a cargo of hand-grenades. At last she was hit and stopped alongside the “Gloucester Castle” for a few minutes to leave one of the crew whose arm had bee literally torn off. (I am glad to say he is getting well.) We hear few particulars on board, but can gather that this is to be a great and decisive week. Many senior officers have come on board to rest before their turn comes; they say that a bath and a well-served meal make new men of them, but that the sheets and soft beds keep them awake. Bathing on the beach is very dangerous and strictly forbidden. There is an Australian patient named McRodgers, who won the V.C. and a commission in South Africa, and is now of the Australian Army Service Corps. He is over 40 years of age, and has a fractured skull and arm, but does not consider himself permanently incapacitated to say the least. The “Gloucester Castle” leaves Anzac on August 6, with all the sick and wounded who unfit to take part in the decisive action of the following days. High hopes are held by all who are left behind.

(to be continued)

Australian VADs

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of information out there about the part played by Australian and Canadian VADs during the Great War, so I was interested to find this British Red Cross Society document which gives an account of the work of an Australian VAD detachment in England. I'm always puzzled that while Britain was struggling to staff its own hospitals; had few spare trained nurses, and was pushed to the limits to find suitable VADs to augment the numbers, the Canadians and Australians remained unwilling to release some of their own trained staff to the British and employ VADs to fill the gaps. The writer of the article sounds a bit puzzled too.

AUSTRALIAN RED CROSS SOCIETY
REPORT ON THE AUSTRALIAN IMPERIAL VOLUNTARY AID DETACHMENT

36, Grosvenor Place,
London,
S.W.1

29^th September 1919

The Australian Imperial Voluntary Aid Detachment was inaugurated in March 1918. Office accommodation was provided at the Australian Red Cross, 36 Grosvenor Place, and every possible assistance was afforded by Lady Ampthill, Colonel Murdoch and Lady Mitchell, to make the scheme a success.

Members who joined the detachment were assured of official recognition, their status being acknowledged by the Imperial Government and the Australian Red Cross Authorities. Therefore it was thought that the many Australian women who were working in England and France would be glad to be united in one organisation, the officers of which would be responsible for their welfare and be pleased to help them in all difficulties connected with their various duties. There was never at any time any intention to disturn members who were already on duty in British Hospitals, or workers with the Australian Red Cross. There were at liberty to join or not, just as they pleased.

In October 1916 Australia had sent over thirty V.A.Ds. to England. These ladies were all members of detachments in Australia and were lent to the British Red Cross to help nurse the wounded in the British Hospitals. These members, together with the various Red Cross workers at Headquarters, formed the nucleus of the detachment. The ranks were quickly filled, new members enrolling daily and officers were appointed. The Uniform worn by the members is the regulation dress of the British Red Cross Society, with the distinctive badges granted by the A.I.F. Authorities, i.e. the bronze “Rising Sun” with the Red Cross in the centre. The hat badge was the same as that of the Joint War Committee and Princess Mary's Detachment.

Generally speaking, all detachments are divided into two classes, Nursing Members and General Service Members, and the latter class included all descriptions of clerical workers, motor drivers, orderly workers in hospitals etc. For various reasons, the Australian Medical Authorities declined to admit nursing V.A.Ds. into their hospitals. This decision was difficult to understand, in view of the fact that Australian Hospitals in France were chiefly filled by British wounded and the Australian wounded were scattered in various British hospitals where V.A.Ds. were freely employed. General Howes had decided to employ V.A.D. General Service Workers at the 1^st Australian Auxiliary Hospital, Southall. Very few Australian women did this kind of work in the hospitals and the members for these duties were mainly drawn from British Detachments. Arrangements were made, however, in the case of any Australian girl wishing to do this work for her to be given the first opportunity where any vacancy occurred.

Australian girls being barred from nursing in their own hospitals and wishing to do this form of work had to do it in the British hospitals in England and France. That they carried out their duties most successfully is evident from the reports of the Matrons of the several hospitals. I regret to report that Miss Kathleen Adele Brennan (N.S.W.) who had done excellent work, died on the 24^th November 1918 while serving at the North Evington War Hospital, Leicester.

At Australian Red Cross Headquarters the members were divided into five sections – the Wounded, Missing and Enquiry Bureau; Prisoners of War Department; Entertainment Department; Hospital Visitors and Supplies, and the Newspaper Department. The Wounded, Missing and Enquiry Bureau was under the able direction of Miss Vera Deakin (Victoria) Assistant Commandant, with Miss Johnson and Miss Lily Wrybrow (Victoria) as Quartermasters. After the return of Miss Deakin and Miss Johnson to Australia, Miss Wrybrow was promoted Assistant Commandant, and carried on the work in a most efficient matter. The Prisoners of War Department, under the splendid organisation of Miss Mary Chomley (Victoria) as Commandant, and Miss Pauline Reid (W.A.) the General Service Superintendent, did work which will never be forgotten. The Entertainment Committee under Miss Florence A. Aikman, the Quartermaster and Assistant Secretary to the Committee, worked exceedingly hard to make the entertainments the success they undoubtedly were. The fourth section consisted of members of the detachment in charge of the Australian Red Cross Stores in various hospitals and Hospital Visitors. The Newspaper Section under the direction of Mrs. Aimee Hewson (Asst. Quartermaster) and Miss Florence Henty (Asst. Quartermaster) worked wonderfully and these ladies deserve particular thanks for their devotion to their entirely voluntary duties. The work was particularly well done.

It is not possible to speak too highly of the way V.A.Ds. have responded to the unique opportunity of training and practical work under supervision. At its maximum strength the membership of the Detachment was 186, comprising 37 officers and 149 members (nursing, clerical and general service). As explaining the large number of officers in proportion to members it must be remembered that V.A.D. officers were often in command of a large number of civilian workers in addition to V.A.Ds.

The advantages of the formation of the Australian detachment were apparent in many ways. The conditions under which the members were working and the accommodation provided by the several institutions where they were engaged were investigated and where necessary efforts were made for their improvement. Members were assisted to find suitable work for their several attainments, and encouraged to keep in touch with Australian Headquarters and each other. As a result of being attached to an organised unit they obtained privileges from which they would otherwise have been debarred. We have been able to render much assistance to members during the difficult process of repatriation, and in recognition of their long and arduous service special privileges were secured for Australian V.A.Ds. which have been greatly appreciated by the Members of the Detachment.

I cannot conclude this report without saying how greatly I appreciate the privilege of being associated with such a splendid band of workers, who have rendered such helpful and devoted services at great personal sacrifice and often under very trying conditions. They have thoroughly deserved the appreciation of those who have benefited by their efforts during this long and terrible war.

Rose H. Robinson
Commandant