Sussex 54 VAD assembles for the camera circa 1913/1914. Dr William Orton stands next to Commandant Margaret Cotesworth.  Other identified personnel are, back row: Ada West (second left), Edith Oliver, (fourth left), Rose Smythe (fifth left); middle row: Margaret Blencowe (extreme left); front row: A Gander (third left), Unis Grounds (fifth left) and Marina Grounds (extreme right).  Frances Blencowe sits in the foreground.

 

Who are the other nurses?  Click on the photo for an enlarged version of it.  If you can identify any of the other Sussex 54 VAD members, please contact me.

 

In 1909, The War Office issued its “Scheme for the Organisation of Voluntary Aid in England and Wales” which recognised the need to provide sufficient medical back-up to supplement that of Lord Haldane’s recently formed Territorial Force, acknowledging that efficiency would not be realised unless all voluntary aid was coordinated.  Responsibility for the Voluntary Aid Detachments was to be borne by the Territorial Associations, which were directed to entrust the work to the British Red Cross Society.

 

Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) were divided into those for men and those for women.  Men’s detachments comprised 56 men whilst the women’s detachments were comprised of a Commandant (who could be male or female and not necessarily a doctor), a Quartermaster, one trained nurse as Lady Superintendent and 20 women of whom four were to be qualified as cooks.  It was envisaged that while the men’s detachments would get on with the serious business of caring for the sick and wounded, the women’s detachments would form Railway Rest Stations, preparing and serving meals and refreshments for sick and wounded soldiers and taking charge of the more severe case who could not continue their journeys.

 

In Sussex, the organisation of Voluntary Aid Detachments was divided into seven separate regions. Chailey fell into the Mid Sussex region and its women’s detachment was the 54^th to be registered in the County.  Thus was born, Sussex 54 VAD.

 

Red Cross Society Field Day, Stanmer Park, Falmer, Sussex, June 1914. Sussex 54 VAD assembles with other VAD detachments at their annual Field Day in Falmer.  Together with Sussex 78 VAD (Worthing) the ladies provided a base hospital, patching up ‘wounded’ men from two companies of Lewes Territorials.  Nurse Oliver, a head taller than her companions, stands on the extreme left of the second row.  Click on the photo for an enlarged version of it.

 

During the First World War, Sussex 54 VAD operated two hospitals at Chailey and Newick.  Hickwells, in Chailey, was used by the detachment between March 1915 and June 1916, first as a convalescent home and then, from October 1915, as an auxiliary hospital attached to the 2nd Eastern General Hospital in Brighton.  In June 1916, Sussex 54 VAD moved its operation to Beechland House in nearby Newick and continued caring for wounded soldiers there until the end of the war.