Imperial Sisters: Patriotism and Humanitarianism in the Letters of British, Australian and New Zealand Professional Nurses, 1914-1918

Introduction

During the First World War thousands of professional nurses volunteered to serve in their nations’ military nursing services. The British services, consisting of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) and the Territorial Force Nursing Service (TFNS), were mobilized rapidly in the late summer and autumn of 1914.¹ Volunteer-assistants, known as ‘VADs’, worked alongside them in military hospitals, and were permitted to serve in general hospitals at military bases overseas from the spring of 1915.² The Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) was a more coherent single unit which mobilized in the later summer and autumn of 1914³, and the New Zealand Army Nursing Service (NZANS) – also a discrete unit – formed slowly during the first nine months of the war.⁴ The first contingent of Australian nurses, accompanied by a small number of New Zealanders, sailed to Egypt in November, 1914, with the first NZANS group departing for overseas service in April 1915.⁵