Neutral Caregivers or Military Support? The British Red Cross, the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, and the Problems of Voluntary Medical Aid in Wartime

Abstract

During the First World War the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) served as the coordinating body for voluntary medical aid giving in Britain. Among the many units which came within its purview was the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU), formed by a group of young men whose desire to serve their nation in wartime conflicted with their pacifist principles. Both the BRCS and the FAU were wracked by ideological conflicts in the years which preceded and throughout the war. These struggles over voluntarist identity highlight the contested meanings of service and conscience in wartime. Through a critical examination of the language of official histories and biographies, this article will argue that the war formed a key moment in the relationship between the British state and voluntary medical aid, with the state’s increasing role in the work of such organizations raising questions about the voluntarist principles to which aid organizations laid claim. The struggles that both organizations and individuals within them faced in reconciling the competing pressures that this new relationship created form a legacy of the war which continues to have important implications for the place of medical voluntarism in wartime today.

Keywords:

• Friends’ Ambulance Unit
• British Red Cross
• medical aid
• voluntarism
• First World War

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Alison Fell, Christopher Phillips, Dominic Berry, and Cyril Pearce for their comments on this article as it evolved. A very early draft was presented at the Legacies of War seminar at the University of Leeds, where audience feedback gave much food for thought. The research for this article was generously funded by the Wellcome Trust, grant number WT094154MA.