Eye Tests and Stretcher Drill

This chapter examines the ways in which men were recruited to the Royal Army Medical Corps throughout the period 1914 to 1918 using both official documentation relating to recruitment policy and personal recollections of the recruitment process. It then examines training manuals, both official and unofficial, to explore how civilian recruits were turned into servicemen with particular forms of caregiving expertise. In particular, it examines how these men’s training distinguished them not only from civilian society but also arms-bearing combatant units through the focus on specific forms of training and knowledge acquisition. In doing so, it explores questions of chance and continuity in the identity of the Corps, demonstrating how the status of military medicine altered over the course of the war, with consequences for the subjective masculine identities of the men who served in the ranks of the RAMC.

From Slackers in Khaki to Knights of the Red Cross

This chapter uses a range of cultural representations of the men of the RAMC produced during the war to explore how these men perceived their own work and status, and how these were perceived by those they encountered in their caring roles. Drawing on theories of cultural representation, it uses close readings of cartoons, poetry, hospital magazines, and memoirs to demonstrate the multiple and shifting ways in which the work of RAMC rankers was perceived and understood throughout the war. In contrast to the work of Jeffrey Reznick and Ana Carden-Coyne, it foregrounds the representation of the stretcher bearer and medical orderly to complicate understandings of the construction of power relationships within systems of military medical care. The range of representations explores, and the gendered nature of their construction further demonstrates, the complexity of cultural constructions of gender and gender relations in British society during the First World War.

From No Man’s Land to Auxiliary Hospital

This chapter revisits the chain of evacuation from the perspective of how RAMC Other Ranks’ work was influenced by strategic and technological changes in practice, both military and medical, as they developed over the course of the war. By exploring how such change over time affected the working practices of the men of the RAMC, it interrogates the question of whether the war was good for medicine from the perspective of the non-professional male medical care provider. In doing so, it contributes to wider debates over the relationship between war, medicine, and modernity, suggesting that many of the aspects of change associated with progression had a more ambiguous impact on the lived experiences of the men whose practice they shaped. This ambiguity was reflected in the impact that such developments had on the status of the ranks of the RAMC as both care providers and servicemen throughout the war.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the arguments made in the previous chapters, relating the points that they make to the representation of the Royal Army Medical Corps in the aftermath of the war. It further considers what information is known about the post-war activities of some of the men whose personal narratives have been discussed in the text, to reflect on the effect of the war on individual men’s constructions of subjective masculine identity over time. In doing so, it argues that the multiple masculinity that existed in wartime society was evident across a range of wartime service, complicating and nuancing historians’ understandings of gender relationships in the period. Exploring such relationships in detail, it contends, enables us to more fully understand the work and experiences of a previously underexamined but significant category of First World War British servicemen.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the subject of the book, outlining the reasons why it is a significant subject for historical analysis. It summarizes the historiographic context of the study in relation to medical histories, gender histories, and social histories of the conflict. It identifies relevant gaps in the existing literature and appropriate approaches, in particular those that use patient voices and studies of specific categories of caregiver. It then outlines the methodological approach of gender history using close readings and reception analysis that is used in this volume. Finally, it outlines the structure of the book, summarizing the approach taken and argument to be made in each substantive chapter, before concluding with the statement of the overarching thesis that a study of the men of the RAMC in the First World War enables historians to further understand the complexity of gender and gender relations in British society in this period.

Carrying, Cleaning, Caring

This chapter outlines the chain of evacuation along the line of communication which formed the remit of the work of the Royal Army Medical Corps throughout the war. Using official publications and personal narratives, both contemporaneous and retrospective, it explores the diverse spaces in which men from the ranks of the Corps undertook their caring roles. In doing so, it identifies these roles as centring on the work of carrying, cleaning, and caring. By focusing on the work of these men, it nuances understandings of gendered relationships within these spaces, between nurses and medical rankers, doctors and medical rankers, and carers of both sexes and their patients. By examining the work of medical rankers in terms of both physical and emotional labour, it further expands readings of the range of labour associated with appropriate masculine service in wartime.

Bandage Wallahs and St John’s Men

This chapter surveys the formation and reformation of the British Army Medical Services in the period from the Crimean War to the outbreak of the First World War. It locates the social and political debates around the nature and make-up of the unit in the context of wider reforms to the military and the medical profession. It further identifies the ways in which these debates were shaped by the development of the humanitarian voluntary-aid movement in Europe. It argues that the reforms to both the military and medicine as gender-demarcated professions constructed medical caregiving in the context of military conflict as a socially and culturally ambiguous role for men to undertake.