During the Great War there were many persons who found ways to serve in humanitarian and medical capacities in spite of their ineligibility for military duty. The most numerous of these were the members of the British Voluntary Aid Detachments, familiarly known as ‘V.A.D.’s’, which numbered about 80,000 young women. These volunteers became nursing assistants and hospital workers, and Wikipedia lists twenty-three noteworthy V.A.D.’s, some of whom were Vera Brittain, Agatha Christie, E.M. Delafield, Amelia Earhart, Violet Jessop, and Freya Stark.
