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as VADs themselves. When people discuss VADs they often think of those who worked in support of trained nurses, either in Red Cross hospitals or in military hospitals at home and overseas. However, VADs carried out a wide range of tasks including nursing care, cooks, kitchen maids, clerks, house maids, ward maids, laundresses, and motor drivers. Sometimes we also forget that many VADs (over 30%) were men.
As the war went on, duties increased, and regulations relaxed as the demand for personnel grew. A new system of ‘special service’ was introduced to supply nursing members to military hospitals. Conditions of employment for these VADs stated that they must be trained in first aid and home nursing, they were required to work under fully trained nurses, and they had to be between 23 and 38 years of age. These VADs were to be paid for their service.
The number of VADs serving in military hospitals in France was small in comparison to the number of Army nurses. Nonetheless they made a significant contribution. Army nurses mention the work of the VADs in their diaries and reports. They were seen as an important part of the workforce who together as a team cared for the sick and wounded, and created the best environment they could for both patients and staff.
In addition to supplying VADs to the Military Hospitals, the Red Cross also supplied 10 complete hospitals staffed by Red Cross members. Many of these were funded by public donations or had wealthy sponsors. May Chavasse volunteered as a ward maid in one of these, No. 6 British Red Cross Hospital, more commonly known as the Liverpool Merchants Hospital.
With medical services becoming essential in France, Lord Derby appealed to the merchants of Liverpool to provide funding for facilities. Within 24 hours, enough was raised to build the Liverpool Merchants Mobile Hospital. This was a timber, collapsible structure that was shipped to Etaples and set up in a large complex of hospitals. It was fully equipped and had space for 200 beds, rising to 250 in an emergency. Before it made the journey, the building was put up in Sefton Park. People paid to look around providing further funding for the hospital. Being funded, built and staffed entirely by Liverpool people, it was the only UK hospital to be raised by a single city.
In April 1918, author CS Lewis recovered from wounds he received
at the Battle of Arras at the Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital. The hospital features in his novel, ‘Spirits in Bondage’. The hospital remained in Etaples until June 1918, when there was a series of air raids and a number of bombs fell onto the hospital and those nearby. The hospital was moved to Trouville where it remained until 1919, having tended to over 18,000 patients.
May Chavasse was employed as a ward maid, which we know was a role that encompassed any duty that helped to keep the wards and other clinical areas in a clean and tidy condition. Most military hospitals were a mixture of marquees or large tents and buildings. The marquees would have had temporary flooring, and keeping them clean was not easy. The prefabricated huts used in the Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital would have made May’s role a lot easier. Keeping the clinical areas, staff areas and themselves free of mud was a major exercise.
May served with the hospital from the 1 April 1915 to 11 December 1918. She was Mentioned in Despatches by Sir Douglas Haig on 9 April 1917.
Between 1922 and 1925 May trained as a nurse at the Nightingale School
May Chavasse in World War 1 VAD uniform
Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital history
of Nursing at St Thomas› Hospital, London, which provides a link to our very first paper. At the outbreak of the Second World War May joined the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (Reserve) and was mobilised for overseas service.
In the period between the two World Wars many nurses with military experience married and had families, whilst others became too old for service in the Second World War, and so some of the experience and knowledge of military nursing was lost. Nonetheless, as in previous conflicts, there was a core of regular Army nurses and also a framework in place for the rapid expansion of the nursing service, firstly by mobilising existing reserves, and then by recruiting new members into the reserves.
May was one of those who had military experience even though it was now 20 years since she had served in France. There are records in our archives of others who served in both World Wars. The Second World War was very different from the First World War as it was a more mobile war and weapons had become far more destructive. Hospitals and other medical resources had to be prepared to move with the ebb and flow of battle.
The higher risk to medical assets and staff meant that nurses wore battledress rather than the nurses’ uniforms we saw in previous conflicts. Like nurses in conflicts throughout history, they had new skills to learn. For example, the management of wounds changed significantly with the advent of antibiotics, and there were huge advances in plastic and reconstructive surgery requiring specialist nursing skills.
May Chavasse went back to civilian nursing after the war and she and her sister Marjorie both lived to be over 100 years old.
This ends her story and our quick look at the development of Army nursing and the influence of Florence Nightingale through the eyes of Gertrude Veysie, Florence Nightingale Shore and May Chavasse.
Keiron Spires, Chair QARANC Association Heritage Committee
The Association generously supported five members of the Heritage Committee to attend and present papers at Florence 2020. Chavasse family papers are held at St Peter’s College, Oxford; The Bodleian Library, Oxford and the National Archives at Kew.
The Gazette QARANC Association 39