Air ambulances and passive defence

Description

Within the French Red Cross, women were for a long time relegated to the rank of patronesses. It was only during the Moroccan Campaign (1907) that nurses were officially mobilised. It’s at that time that the trope of the reassuring nurse appeared in the military imagination – a trope which still finds echoes in contemporary representations of the First World War. In the decades that followed, the French Red Cross volunteers were increasingly deployed to care for the wounded in wars, but also in natural disasters, epidemics, and provide health support to the population. With these new developments in the Red Cross activities, women volunteers found themselves at the forefront. This coincides on the one hand with increased autonomy for the women and nurses working with the Red Cross, and with the now-ubiquitous association of the Red Cross with the female figure in popular imagination.

In 1933, the Marquise de Noaille gave the impetus for the creation of courses for 'nurse escorts in medical aircraft' and for 'women pilots'. These women were trained to look after the wounded during flights, embarkation, and disembarkation. In 1937, the French Red Cross societies even created a team of 'parachute' nurses and first aiders. Here we see a training session of a medical aviation unit in 1935.

Credits

Air ambulances and passive defence. Document Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge. Collection International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Geneva

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