This paper will focus on a special group of travel writers: British voluntary nurses who served abroad during World War One. These VADs were middle and upper class women who had little experience of either war or the world. Their war-time writings demonstrate the intersection of the "outside world" and their previous insulated national perspectives
Travel and War: What have these in common? War almost inevitably involves travel: The Greeks sail to Troy, the Romans trek to the provinces, the French march east with Napoleon. Indeed, in many cultures, war and travel have been thought of as defining experiences in a young man's life. Yet neither war nor travel are usually seen as holding that same power of self-definition for young women.
Women, with few notable exceptions, have generally been victims of war's fallout rather than active participants in either the glory or danger of the battlefield. Except for camp followers, most societies cautioned women to stay back and keep the home fires burning. AsWWI began however, British women's roles had begun to change, and the horror of war hastened that change. Middle and upper class British women chose to fill the urgent need for medical help by joining the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), a group of medically trained volunteers under the auspices of the British Red Cross. Before the war was over, more than 90,000 female VADs would change dressings, mop floors, prepare food, and drive ambulances.
Thousands of VADs were posted to hospitals in France, Italy, Serbia, Greece, and Malta, as well the Middle East. Some of these young women had never been abroad before; others only on carefully chaperoned tours. Their unpublished diaries and letters form the basis of my paper and offer a glimpse into their world changed utterly by this devastating war. Thrown into an alien culture, away from home and family, and forced to view the carnage of war, they grapple with and wonder at their surroundings. Through the unique perspective of middle-class English young womanhood, we see Belgrade fall, Indian gurkhas defend the Empire, and the Italian retreat from Caporetto. Drawing on Edward Said's theories on Orientalism, Ihab Hassan's redefinition of quest narratives, and Paul Fussell's work on WWI,we witness too the life altering powers of travel for those in the age before cyberspace.
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