British Red Cross WW1 Volunteers

A digitisation and transcription project to make thousands of nursing records available on the web has reached completion. Family historians can now search through over 244,000 British Red Cross personnel index cards, providing details of men and women who served as Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) workers during the First World War. First launched in 2014, the project was undertaken by the British Red Cross in partnership with Kingston University, with help from more than 800 volunteers around the world. You can search the collection for free here.

Over 90,000 people volunteered for the Red Cross in World War 1 both at home and overseas.  Volunteers were not just from Britain - they came from all over the Commonwealth, including a number of Australians.  Below are the cards for Victorian volunteer Jessie Traill, who spent much of the war nursing in France.