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Women of War is an examination of gender modernity using the world’s longest established women’s military organisation, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, as a case study. Formed in 1907 and still active today, the Corps was the first to adopt khaki uniform, prepare for war service, staff a regimental first aid post near the front line and drive officially for the British army in France. It was the only British unit whose members were sworn in as soldiers of the Belgian army, and it was the most decorated women’s corps of the First World War. Bringing both public and personal representations into dialogue through an analysis of newspaper articles, ephemera, memoirs, diaries, letters, interviews, photographs and poetry, this book sits at the crossroads of British, social, gender and women’s history, drawing upon the diverse fields of military history, animal studies, trans studies, dress history, sociology of the professions, nursing history and transport history. It reconstructs the organisation’s formation, its adoption of martial clothing, increased professionalisation, and wartime activities of first aid and driving, focusing specifically upon the significance of gender modernity. While the FANY embodied the New Woman, challenging the limits of convention and pushing back the boundaries of the behavour, dress and role considered appropriate for women, the book argues that the Corps was simultaneously deeply conservative, upholding imperial, unionist and antifeminist values. That it was a complex mix of progressive and conservative elements, both conformist and reformist, gets to the heart of the fascinating complexity surrounding the organisation.
Total war tends to create a situation that falls back on established social and cultural discourses and institutional arrangements at the same time that it provides the opportunity for a shifting and renegotiation of these arrangements. This book explores how the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) drew upon, and/or subverted cultural mythologies to make sense of their wartime service. It focuses on this renegotiation of gender and examines seven key themes implicit in this process. The first theme concerns the ways women's military organizations utilized traditional notions of genteel femininity and its accompanying nurturance, cheerfulness and devotion in their promise of service, yet went beyond the parameters of such cultural mythologies. The second focuses on the gendering of military heroism. The third theme addresses the context of female military service in terms of the preparation women received, the opportunities they were given and the risks they took, and focuses on their coping behaviours. Theme four focuses specifically on women's transgression into the masculine terrain of driving and mechanics and shares the ways they developed skills and competencies previously off-limits for women. Such transgressions almost invariably led to women having to negotiate masculine authority and develop skills in autonomy, independence and assertiveness - the focus of theme five. The last two themes discussed in the book address the integration and consolidation of women's organizations as the war progressed and their service became indispensable.
in 1859, leaving more than 30,000 dead and wounded in a single day of combat. Henry Dunant, a Swiss citizen who was trying to get in contact with Napoleon III to request a concession in Algeria, came upon the battlefield and the dying, and the spectacle shocked the fervent evangelical (he was one of the founders of the Young Men’s Christian Association, later known as the YMCA). Dunant took an active part in organising first aid for the wounded, regardless of nationality
together this timely collection, as well as our anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive feedback on this piece. Notes 1 We use HEAT throughout, but such trainings are also known as Safe and Secure Approaches in Field Environments (SSAFE), Safety and First Aid (SAFA) or other names. 2 On intersectionality
A Woman of War has presented the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry as a case study of gender modernity. The Edwardian recruit (in her desire to evade gendered constraints, embrace venturesome possibilities and don martial uniform), the wartime first aider (who audaciously navigated her own way to northern France to undertake service for the Belgian, French and British armies in a modern conflict that utilised new weapons of war and required new skills) and the ambulance driver (in her espousal of technology, mechanics and danger, and in charge of a vehicle that quite
1 Aristocratic amazons in arms The founding of the FANY 1907–14 In 1908 the London Daily Graphic featured a new ladies’ volunteer organization in training to provide first aid to the fallen heroes of the battlefield. It was the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and they were starting to attract public attention. Alongside the newsworthiness of women breaking new ground, many FANY had aristocratic connections and a good number were young and attractive and looked quite dashing in their uniforms. As a result, the press loved to cover their activities and often
display, no idle trifling, but a great and noble movement of fit women to aid in the defence of the country’. 4 The horse ride, much like the drills, displays and exercises that they undertook in public, was proposed to exhibit the merit of modern, martial femininity. The ride is indicative of the complex and contradictory nature of the Corps. On the one hand, riding and dispensing first aid were safely entrenched within established understandings of elite femininity as decorous, leisured and compassionate. Yet the journey would be arduous and it was proposed as a
and she too returned home, taking a course of study at the conservative Bonar Law College and renewing her St John Ambulance Brigade Certificate in Air Raid Precaution and First Aid for Air Raid Casualties.40 Living in Dorset when war broke out, McDougall offered her services to the Director General of Medical Services at the War Office, but to no avail: this was 1939 not 1914, and she was now a middle-aged woman.41 McDougall also inquired directly with the FANY-ATS about renewing her service commitment and was told she was over age.42 McDougall referred to this as
-Smith and her brother Bill who had been ‘exchanged’ from his regiment to drive the FANY ambulance, Lieutenant Lillian Franklin (who became known simply as ‘Boss’), Corporal Edith Walton, Sergeant Isabel Wicks, Troopers Mary ‘Molly’ Marshall and Violet O’Neill-Power, and three infirmary nurses named Jordan, Dunn, and Robinson. In addition, orderlies Frank Brittain and Eric Hickson (a young medical student) came as male dressers. Pat Waddell, who had not yet passed her proficiencies in home nursing and first aid, saw this first FANY contingent off at Charing Cross Station and
VADs, field nursing services, had been established on a county basis from 1909. The principal organisations in Ireland associated with first aid work and maintained by voluntary effort before and during the Great War and ‘which different sections of the population, according to taste, ability, or opportunity, have found it within their power to support’ 9 were the St