Voluntary Aid Detachment

The VAD nurses worked in field hospitals, i.e., close to the battlefield, and in longer-term places of recuperation back in Britain.

[1][2] In August 1914, just after the outbreak of war in Europe, the British Red Cross and the Order of St John proposed to form a Joint War Organisation with the intention of working with common aims, reducing duplication of effort and providing St John personnel with the protection of the Red Cross;[3] an agreement was concluded on 24 October 1914.

[5] 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.

Female volunteers over the age of twenty-three and with more than three months' hospital experience were accepted for overseas service.

St John's VAD cloth embroidered insignia (1916)
First World War recruitment poster for Voluntary Aid Detachments
VAD nurse Olive Middleton , back row far right, in 1915 at Gledhow Hall , the estate of her cousin Baroness Airedale
Violet Jessop in her Voluntary Aid Detachment uniform