A Farewell to Arms is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The novel describes a love affair between the American expatriate and an English nurse, Catherine Barkley.
Susan Mary Gillian Travers was a British nurse and ambulance driver who served in the French Red Cross during the Second World War. She later became the only woman to be enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, having also served in French Indochina, during the First Indochina War.
The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps) (FANY (PRVC)) is a British independent all-female registered charity formed in 1907 and active in both nursing and intelligence work during the World Wars. Its members wear a military-style uniform, but it is not part of the Regular Army or Army Reserve; members do not train at Sandhurst, nor do they hold a commission.
The Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) was a volunteer ambulance service, founded by individual members of the British Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), in line with their Peace Testimony. The FAU operated from 1914 to 1919, 1939 to 1946 and 1946 to 1959 in 25 different countries around the world. It was independent of the Quakers' organisation and chiefly staffed by registered conscientious objectors.
Major-General Sir Edward Louis Spears, 1st Baronet, was a British Army officer and Member of Parliament noted for his role as a liaison officer between British and French forces in two world wars. From 1917 to 1920 he was head of the British Military Mission in Paris, ending the war as a Brigadier-General. Between the wars he served as a Member of the British House of Commons, before once again becoming as Anglo-French liaison officer, this time as a Major-General, in the Second World War.
The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The most important periods of operation for these units were during World War I and World War II. Although VADs were intimately bound up in the war effort, they were not military nurses, as they were not under the control of the military, unlike the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service, and the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. The VAD nurses worked in field hospitals, i.e., close to the battlefield, and in longer-term places of recuperation back in Britain.
Sara Talbot MM, also known as Sadie Bonnell, was a British ambulance and supply driver in the First World War. She was awarded the Military Medal for her work in France with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She died at the age of 105.
Mary Borden was an American-British novelist and poet whose work drew on her experiences as a war nurse. She was the second of the three children of William Borden, who had made a fortune in Colorado silver mining in the late 1870s.
The Mechanised Transport Corps (MTC), sometimes erroneously called the Motor Transport Corps, was a British women's organisation that initially provided its own transport and uniforms and operated during the Second World War. It was a civilian uniformed organisation that provided drivers for government departments and other agencies. Among other roles, members drove staff cars, including for foreign dignitaries whose drivers were not accustomed to driving on British roads, and ambulances in the Blitz.
Hôpital Temporaire d'Arc-en-Barrois was an emergency evacuation hospital serving the French 3rd Army Corps during World War I. It was organised and staffed by British volunteers and served French soldiers.
Lady Dorothie Mary Evelyn Feilding-Moore, MM was a British heiress who became a highly decorated volunteer nurse and ambulance driver on the Western Front during World War I. She was the first woman to be awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the field. She also received the 1914 Star, the Croix de Guerre from the French and the Order of Leopold II from the Belgians for services to their wounded.
The role of Australian women in World War I was focused mainly upon their involvement in the provision of nursing services. Australian women also played a significant role on the Homefront, where they filled jobs made vacant by men joining the armed forces. Women also undertook fundraising and recruiting activities as well as organising comfort packages for soldiers serving overseas. Around the issue of conscription, women were involved in campaigning on both sides of the debate, while they were also equally involved in the New South Wales strike in 1917. Nevertheless, despite this involvement, women have never occupied a central position in the Australian version of the Anzac legend, although since the 1970s their role has been examined in more detail as a result of the emergence of feminist historiography, and specialist histories such as the history of nursing.
The Queen Elisabeth Medal was a Belgian decoration created by royal decree in October 1916 to recognise exceptional services to Belgium in the relief of the suffering of its citizens during the First World War. Its statute was ratified on 14 May 1919. It was awarded to people, both Belgians and foreign nationals, who, like Queen Elisabeth herself, had worked and cared for the suffering victims of war for a year or more prior to 10 September 1919. Although not limited to medical care of the sick and wounded, recipients who earned the medal by working in hospitals received a variant with a red enamelled cross within the suspension wreath. A great many Belgian and foreign doctors and nurses received the medal.
The Australian Voluntary Hospital was a military hospital staffed by Australian expatriates in England that served on the Western Front between 1914 and 1916. For most of the first year of the war, although not an Australian Army unit, it was an Australian presence on the Western Front.
The Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Services (SWH) was founded in 1914. It was led by Dr Elsie Inglis and provided nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, cooks and orderlies. By the end of World War I, 14 medical units had been outfitted and sent to serve in Corsica, France, Malta, Romania, Russia, Salonika and Serbia.
The Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont was a medical hospital during World War I active from January 1915 to March 1919 operated by Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH), under the direction of the French Red Cross and located at Royaumont Abbey. The Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey, located near Asnières-sur-Oise in Val-d'Oise, approximately 30 km north of Paris, France. The hospital was started by Dr Frances Ivens and founder of SWH, Dr Elsie Maud Inglis. It was especially noted for its performance treating soldiers involved in the Battle of the Somme.
American Ambulance, Great Britain (AAGB) was a humanitarian organisation founded in 1940 by a group of Americans living in London for the purpose of providing emergency vehicles and ambulance crews to the United Kingdom during World War II. The idea for the service came from Gilbert H. Carr during a meeting of The American Society in London shortly after the Dunkirk evacuation.
Katherine Mary Harley was a suffragist. In 1913 she proposed and organised the Great Pilgrimage on behalf of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. During the First World War she helped to found and organise the Women's Emergency Corps.
Mary H J Henderson was an administrator with Elsie Inglis's Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in the Balkans in World War I, earning five medals. She founded social work and civic groups led by women, in Dundee, Aberdeen and London and served on charitable bodies including Dundee War Relief Fund, and worked for women's suffrage. She was also a war poet.
Olivia Jordan was an ambulance driver in France at the start of the Second World War. She was the driver and interpreter for Charles de Gaulle in London from 1940 to 1943.
