Events

Battlefields Trust Online Lecture: Aristocratic Amazons in Arms: the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, 1907-1918

Monday 13th May 2024

This talk examines the early years of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps, drawing on members’ memoirs and oral histories, FANY records and newspaper articles. The FANY was the earliest quasi-military female force to be formed and actively prepare for service; the first to wear military uniform, as well as the first to adopt khaki; one of the first to go overseas on active service; the first to staff a Regimental Aid Post right behind the front line; the first women’s ambulance convoy to drive officially for the British army; the only British unit to be sworn in as soldiers of the Belgian army; the most highly decorated women’s corps of the First (and indeed in relation to its size also of the Second) World War; and, still in existence today with unbroken voluntary service. As one British soldier surmised during the First World War, its acronym must surely have stood for ‘First ANYwhere’. The talk considers the wider context of the formation of the Corps, the women who flocked to this innovative organisation and their service during the First World War.

Juliette Pattinson is Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent, with a particular specialism in gender and war, clandestine warfare, personal testimonies and home front culture. Key publications include: Women of War (2020), Men in Reserve (2017) and Behind Enemy Lines (2007), two special issues on incarcerated masculinities (2014) and partisan and anti-partisan warfare (2008) and five co-edited collections: British Humour and the Second World War (2023), Men, Masculinities and Male Culture in the Second World War (2018), Fighting for Britain? (2015), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (2014) and War in a Twilight World (2010).

For further information.

• Contact name : Battlefields Trust Online Lectures
• Contact email : info@battlefieldstrust.com