he First World War broke out in Britain on the 4th of August 1914 and lasted until the 11th of November 1918, over the four year duration of the War the lives of women dramatically changed from the traditional views of how women should act into a much more modernized notion of women. When War began, the two spheres perspective of men and women was still widely accepted by the middle and upper classes. Therefore women were still being sheltered from public life and the idea that women, “[view] the world as if it were, from a little elevation in her own garden, where she makes an exact survey of the home scenes, but take not in the wider range” (More, 1800) was still believed but ratified slightly with the fact that women had begun to gain status in education. However, the outbreak of War significantly changed these ideals because abruptly hundreds of thousands of men were sent to the front lines of the War. This abrupt change in British society caused much upheaval in the daily lives of everyone because transportations workers, doctors, factor workers and an array of other workers were no longer working due to there deployment.

Thus many jobs opened up and had no traditional men workers to fill them. These changes in British society is what caused women to be taken from the confines of there homes and places into the traditional jobs of men. All the women who began work following the start of the War did so willingly in part because they wanted to be part of the War effort and wanted to keep the home fires burning. After the outbreak of War a record 2 million more women were in the work force, doing an array of difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs.

Before the War few women had jobs but those who did usually came from a working class background; with some middle class women working in class “approved.”

jobs.

Women from the working class had jobs because their family’s survival depended on it, while middle class women took jobs because they wanted to. Women of the Aristocracy never worked because they had the luxury of doing almost anything they wanted. Before and during the War aristocratic women would spend most of there time working on philanthropy project. As the War evolved the projects the women focused on changed. Before the War the philanthropy project these women organized where aimed at the deserving poor; while during the War the women worked hard on fundraising for ambulances, medicine and drug boxes. They would also hold regular parties dealing with comfort boxes, bandage rolling and knitting.

This is quite a different life compared to the lives being lead by middle class women before and during the War. Before the War, middle class women could choice to work with the approval of her father – seeing how at this time married women could not work due to the bad reputation it would give a family. Unmarried middle class women if elected were allowed to work and did so usually in offices or as nurses because these were class “approved” jobs. Women of the middle class prior to the war were also working militantly on women suffrage through out Britain. During the War, women of the middle class could be found in every type of work and married middle class women have also joined the work force. While those who had been devoted to suffrage changed gears and used their power to get support for woman in the work force. The women of the working classes were the only women socially visible in the work force before the War.

The jobs that they held were usually as domestic servant or textile factory workers, while during the War working class women were offered a larger variety of jobs. The jobs that had opened up for middle and working class women following the start of the War were in all industries; women were seen working in munitions, transportation, WAAC and as nurses or V.A.Ds. All these areas of work were important to the War effort, not only because it supplied the front-line with needed supplies but also because to kept the country running throughout the War. V.A.Ds were some of the most important women in the War due to the fact that they were working not only in hospital but also on the front-lines. These women are also important because they were directly connected to the soldier and where often the last person most soldiers saw before they died of battle wounds.

The term V.A.D stands for an individual person involved in a voluntary aid detachment. A Voluntary Aid Detachment was an organization created in 1909 to supply much needed medical assistance in Britain, during war. Prior to the start of the First World War only about 2,500 women were registered V.A.Ds and were working in hospitals, but with the start of the war over 46,000 women registered to become V.A.Ds compared to the approximant 90,000 registered as V.A.Ds at the end of the War (Imperial War Museum). The rising number is V.A.D is also contributed to the fact that women wanted to help the war effort

and also that in 1916, the job became a paid position due to the need for nurses and nurse’s aids. At the beginning of the War V.A.Ds worked mostly in hospitals but by 1915 V.A.D could also have post at the front-lines.

Areas in the field where V.A.D could have been found through out the War were the Western Front, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli and the Eastern Front. There were however restriction of who was allowed at the front- line, but the limitations was very minimal – they stated that the women volunteer needed to be at least twenty-three with more than three months of experience. The training to become a V.A.D was also very minimal with s short V.A.D course. However, the job of a V.A.D was a difficult one and women who elected to become V.A.Ds did so knowing that the tasks they would be performing would need courage, energy, patience, humility and determination in order to overcome the difficult aspects of the tasks asked of them (Furse, 1914). The jobs given to a V.A.D could vary from nursing assistant, to ambulance driver, to cook, to letter writer. But no matter the job every women would have an emotional rollercoaster because every V.A.D’s jobs would place then directly in contact with the war. Be that by having to pick up soldiers from the battle fields – any of whom could be someone the V.A.D knew – to having to watching patient after patient pass away due to their injuries. These aspects of the job made the decision to become a V.A.D a very courageous one. One women who became famous for her courageous work as a V.A.D in the First World War was Vera Brittain.

Vera Brittain became famous for her V.A.D work in the First World War due in part to her autobiography, Testament of Youth (1933). The book tells Vera’s spirited story from childhood, through the First World War, into the Second World War, and into her life after being a V.A.D. The book captures the emotion, trials and fears embodies in the women behind the V.A.D outfit. Vera’s story begins on December 29, 1893 in Newcastle-under-Lyme when Vera was born. Vera childhood was ordinary in comparison to children growing up in the late 1800’s- early 1900’s. She grew up with one younger brother, who was her closest companion do to the fact that the children lead very isolated lives because their parents “belief in the prerogatives of class and money” (Berry, 1995). It was not until 1914 when Vera’s life became at all interesting, that is because that is the year the First World War broke out. Vera was in University when the War started but decided to delay her degree so that she could join the war effort. Historically Vera became one of the first women to be allowed leave from school in order to join the war effort.

Vera’s decision to leave school and join the War was in part because her brother Edward and her fiancé Roland Leighton were both fighting and she feared if she didn’t help in the War and continued school she would fall out of connection with them. Vera decided to become a V.A.D in her effort to help. Vera began her first of four years as a V.A.D in 1915 and from the beginning of her stint as a First World War V.A.D, Vera did the daunting tasked asked of her with Roland in her mind. While caring for many wounded soldiers she pictured them all as Roland and though out this time her love for him grew. Vera’s attitude towards Roland is depicted in her autobiography the Testament of Youth (1933), when Vera writes “…it was always Roland whom I was nursing by proxy, my attitude towards him imperceptibly changed; it became less romantic and more realistic, and thus a new depth was added to my love”. Sadly in December 1915 Roland was killed on duty, heartbroken and saddened Vera continued to serve as a V.A.D. Vera’s determination to help in the war was strengthened further when two of her dear friends Geofferey Thurlow and Victor Richardson were killed in April and June of 1917. This however was not the final blow to Vera’s will because in June of 1918 Vera found out her beloved Brother Edward has also died on active duty (Brittain, Vera Mary, 1996). Five months after Edwards’s death the First World War was over and Vera ended her first four years as a V.A.D.

Vera had distinct reasons for joining the War effort and becoming a V.A.D but Vera’s reasons for joining the effort were not shared by all women, for each and every woman had her own reason for joining the war effort. The exact reasons for a woman to joining the war often depended on her social class and her emotional connection to the war. Vera had the choice of joining the war due to her social class and did so because of her connections to the war due to her friends and family. Other women had the same emotional connections but only joined the work force in the war effort in order to save the jobs left behind by their fathers, brothers and husbands believing they would be returning to those jobs. The women, who choice to join the war effort did in fact have the choice because they did not need jobs, do to their social class but there were women who began working in war related industries because they needed the job and not because of the outbreak of war these women were mostly from working class background.hi

When the war was completed in November of 1918, the traditional ideals of women did not return to the forefront of British sex segregation. Women did not have to return to their gardens and could elect to remain in the work force, with the approval of her husband (if he survived the war) and if her job was still available. The fact that women could remain in the work force was a unconventional idea, in part to the fact that women in the work place was intended to only last until the end of war and then all women were to return home. Reasons for the change in ideas, is that over three million men were lost during the war and although all the surviving men have returned to Britain their work efforts alone was not enough to combat the loss of such a large population of the pre-war work force. Thus, women’s work efforts were still necessary for Britain to run smoothly. Also during the War women had certain freedoms that they were unwilling to give up preceding the war. Women had had the experience of being part of society in a way that was other than ornamental and most women decided they liked this change. Therefore they did not want to return to their pre-war lives. Basically the genie was out of the bottle and could not be put back in. Women wanted to be out of their gardens and wanted to be part of the real world even after the war.