Joint War Organisation

In August 1914, just after the outbreak of war in Europe, the British Red Cross and the Order of St John proposed to form the Joint War Committee with the intention of working with joint aims, reducing duplication of effort and providing St John personnel with the protection of the Red Cross.

[1]: 7 Katharine Furse was head of the VAD from 1915 to 1917, and was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1917 for her services.

[1] To promote flag day events, the Red Cross had Canadian women living in London sell tinted maple leaves, Australian sellers sold special Australian flags and leather kangaroos, and women from New Zealand sold kiwi badges.

Originally PoW's would receive food packages from governments, however this was soon blocked and with other charitable organisations, the JWO under the banner of the International Red Cross stepped in to send a parcel every two weeks to each prisoner.

During the First World War relief services for affected soldiers in India were provided by a branch of the JWC.

On 3 March 1920 a bill was introduced to the Indian Legislative Council by Sir Claude Hill (a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council who was also Chairman of the Joint War Committee in India) to constitute the Indian Red Cross Society, independent of the British Red Cross.

The system developed in World War I was adopted again with the organisation working in hospitals, care homes, nurseries, ambulance units, rest stations and elsewhere with much of the funding coming from the Duke of Gloucester's Red Cross and St John appeal, which raised over £54 million by 1946.

During this conflict, over 20 million standard food parcels were sent out using the International Red Cross distribution system.

With the bulk of Europe occupied by Axis forces early in the war, finding a route to deliver parcels was a problem, for which the JWO and the War Office received criticism until it was solved in spring 1941 when International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ships received permission to transport parcels from Lisbon to the South of France, for onward transport to Geneva and subsequent distribution to POW's.

[7]: 104 The only part of the British Isles occupied by Germany, the Channel Islands, were helped in the winter of 1944–45 and avoided starvation with food parcels, flour, grain and coal brought by the ICRC ship SS Vega to the local JWO's who had operated throughout the war in occupied Guernsey and Jersey.