Vera Mary Brittain was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth recounted her experiences during the First World War and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.
Brittain shortly after the First World War
Plaque at 58 Doughty Street, London
Tombstone of Edward Brittain, Granezza British Cemetery, Asiago Plateau
A promenade bears the name of Vera Brittain in Hamburg-Hammerbrook
The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The most important periods of operation for these units were during World War I and World War II. Although VADs were intimately bound up in the war effort, they were not military nurses, as they were not under the control of the military, unlike the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service, and the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. The VAD nurses worked in field hospitals, i.e., close to the battlefield, and in longer-term places of recuperation back in Britain.
St John's VAD cloth embroidered insignia (1916)
First World War recruitment poster for Voluntary Aid Detachments
VAD nurse Olive Middleton, back row far right, in 1915 at Gledhow Hall, the estate of her cousin Baroness Airedale
Violet Jessop in her Voluntary Aid Detachment uniform
