the Hospitals were asked by the Director General of the Army Medical
Service to train V.A.D.'s in large numbers as probationers, for
three or six months, to fit them for work under trained nurses.
Every possible woman, trained or partially trained, was mobilized and
thousands have been trained during the three years of war, and V.A.D.
members have been drafted to military and Red Cross Hospitals, abroad
and at home, in addition to doing the work of the V.A.D. Hospitals. A
V.A.D. Hospital with a hundred beds will have two trained nurses, and
all the other work is done by V.A.D.'s. The Commandant-in-Chief now
is Lady Ampthill. Dame Katharine Furse was Commandant-in-Chief until
quite recently, but is now head of the new Women's Royal Navy Service.

Many have gone to France and done distinguished work and there is no
body of women in our country who have done more faithful and useful
work than our V.A.D.'s, who nurse, cook and wash dishes, serve meals,
scrub the floors, look after the linen and do everything for the
comfort and welfare of our men, with a capacity, zeal and endurance
beyond praise. About 60,000 women have helped in this way. Our nurses
and V.A.D.'s have distinguished themselves at home and abroad.
They have been in casualty lists on all our fronts. They have been
decorated for bravery and for heroic work. The full value of all
they have done cannot yet be appraised. They have spent themselves
unceasingly in caring for our men. They have nursed them with shells
falling around. Hospitals have frequently been shelled and in one
case two nurses worked in a theatre, wearing steel helmets during the
bombardment, with patients who were under anaesthetics and could not
be moved. They have waited out beside men who could not be got in from
under shell fire of the enemy until darkness fell. Two V.A.D. nurses
in another raid saw to the removal of all their patients to cellars
and, while they themselves were entering the cellars after everyone