ABSTRACT
The organisation, until the war, had been entirely voluntary and dependent on contributions. In 1915, however, the War Office recognised that there were insufficient trained nurses for the military hospitals and suggested supplying Voluntary Aid Detachments as probationary nurses to be paid and housed by the military authorities. The movement out into this particular moment in history was thus fraught with contradictions in aspirant nurses whose texts articulate the strain produced by their being both ‘in process’ as subjects and ‘on trial’ as women. One of the better-known Red Cross posters for the recruitment of nurses, by Alonzo Earl Foringer, depicts a seated female figure, robed and veiled with the Red Cross sign on her cap, gazing heavenwards while she cradles a tiny wounded soldier on a stretcher. Professional nurses were frequently antagonistic to the ‘untrained women’ who, with a handful of certificates and a few months’ experience, threatened to diminish their authority and devalue their expertise.
