Nurse or not? The Voluntary Aid Detachment and Australian Army Medical Women’s Service during the Second World War

Some 8500 women served in the Australian Army with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and then the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service (AAMWS) during the Second World War. Their story has often been omitted from histories of Australia in the war, largely because of difficulties in differentiating the servicewomen working in an auxiliary service to support nursing staff from the Australian Army Nursing Service. 

While clear distinctions existed, such as their training, technical acumen, uniform, and the power of military hierarchy, many women serving in the VAD/AAMWS came to assume – and were often expected to assume – the role of nurse trainees in military hospitals.

To regain agency and identity, the VAD/AAMWS had to contend to create a separation from the trained nurses, both as an army service and individually as servicewomen, and challenge the gendered narrative that their work was ‘domestic’ and akin to the duties of the housewife.

This paper draws from Dr Smeaton’s first book, Nursing Aids at War (Cambridge University Press, 2026), which traces the training, opportunities and experiences of VAD/AAMWS servicewomen during the Second World War, and the effect their work had on these women, the military medical system, and the nursing profession in Australia more broadly.

Image: The Duke of Gloucester inspecting a parade of VAD/AAMWS, 1945 (Australian Army Museum of Western Australia).