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Jessie Kirby
British Red Cross No.12 Voluntary Aid Detachment Cambridgeshire
Jessie Kirby of Hill Farm, Over, first volunteered with the Red Cross in 1915 to nurse at 12 VAD Auxiliary Hospital, Swavesey, her sister Mary Kirby later volunteered to nurse there as well. From June 1917 to October 1918, Jessie worked as a full time paid nurse at 1st Eastern General Hospital, Cambridge. From her photos, she seems to have largely worked on ward 14. I remember her talking about the cold they experienced working there in the winter.
She wrote later: "Apart from the farm, what kept me busy at this time was First Aid and Home Nursing classes, then a large empty farmhouse at Swavesey was taken over, as a convalescent hospital for wounded men, from the 1st Eastern General Hospital in Cambridge. The wounded who first were brought to Cambridge were put into beds in the cloisters of Trinity College, and the wounds healed so well there that when the 1st Eastern General was built, it was to the same plan. All right for the men in bed, but chilly for the staff. When I finally went there full-time, I got chilblains and didn't know what they were until Sister saw them... I'd never had them in all the work on the farm."
