Friends in Flanders: Humanitarian Aid Administered by the by Linda Palfreeman PDF

the chums' Ambulance Unit (FAU) used to be created presently after the outbreak of battle. the belief of the unit's founder, Philip J. Baker, used to be that it will supply younger pals (Quakers) with the chance to serve their nation with no sacrificing their pacifist rules. the 1st volunteers went to Belgium on 31 October 1914, below the auspices of the Joint warfare Committee of the British purple pass Society and the Order of St John of Jerusalem. The FAU made a sustained contribution to the army scientific prone of the Allied countries, developing army hospitals, operating ambulance convoys, and staffing medical institution ships and ambulance trains, treating and transporting wounded males. made up our minds to convey succour to all these in desire, the FAU additionally assisted civilians trapped within the battle sector and residing in determined conditions. Nowhere used to be this extra acute than within the besieged and battered city of Ypres the place hundreds of thousands sheltered within the underground passage-ways of the town's historic fortifications - 'a subterranean inhabitants, hopeless, frequently lightless', wrote Geoffrey younger, the Unit's younger box commander, 'living on what they could and breeding disease.' The Unit supplied hospitals for the remedy of civilians, and labored intensively within the containment and therapy of the typhoid epidemic that swept the sector, finding victims, offering them with remedy, and inoculating humans opposed to the affliction. It performed an enormous position within the purification of the town's infected consuming water, allotted milk for babies and meals and garments to the unwell and needy. It helped came upon orphanages, made provision for education and organised gainful employment for refugees until eventually, ultimately, it grew to become chargeable for the definitive evacuations of the civilian population.