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II Sessione: ZONE DI GUERRA 183

sition entrusted to Archduke Franz Salvator. In the course of the war the ‘voluntary
medical service’ proved to be of high importance. In 1916 the Austrian Red Cross
alone disposed of 1,500 doctors, 2,800 female nurses and 5,000 male nurses. In addi-
tion to professionally trained nurses, auxiliary nurses were now employed to ease the
burden of those in regular medical service. The quantity needed of course impaired
the quality. The majority of auxiliary nurses only received a short and not very sub-
stantial training.
In administrative terms the ‘Central Office for the Nurses of the Austrian Red Cross’ 5
(Zentralstelle für Krankenpflegerinnen des Österreichischen Roten Kreuzes) was responsible for
the facilites and the personnel of the Red Cross. The registration and distribution
of all female members of the Red Cross was carried out and all personal records
were kept there. In an agreement between the Red Cross, the ministry of the inte-
rior, and the Austro-Hungarian army administration the nurses provided by the Red
Cross were called ‘Army sisters of the Red Cross’ (Armeeschwestern vom Roten Kreuze). 6
The ‘army sisters’ were not to be assigned to the medical facilities of the divisions and
brigades and thus close to the front lines but to field hospitals in the communications
zone and to institutions in the rear area. Nevertheless ‘army sisters’ were active in the
actual fighting zone, which occurred especially in the first year of the war and was due
to the general course of military operations and is to be qualified as exceptional.
The employment of ‘army sisters’ was judged very differently. On the one hand, it
was recognized that female nurses were much more suited for the care of patients in the
rear area than male ones, especially when latter were already older. The rough military
tone in military hospitals was often not very helpful and earned female nurses many
sympathies due to their more civilian habits. On the other hand, the integration of tho-
se nurses into military hierarchies to which most of them were not accustomed often
caused frictions. Besides, the quite limited training was not sufficient to turn volunteers
into fully fledged nurses. All this notwithstanding there was a tremendous willingness of
women to volunteer for nursing in the first two years of the war. Many volunteers had
even to be rejected. This widespread desire to serve as ‘army sisters’ was often at least par-
tially explained by a kind of ‘casualty romanticism’ (Verwundetenromantik), which might
in fact be called naïve. The desire to provide medical treatment to injured soldiers close

5 Brigitte Biwald, Von Helden und Krüppeln. Das österreichisch-ungarische Militärsanitätswesen im
Ersten Weltkrieg, 2 vol., Vienna 2002, p. 225.
6 Generalbericht der Österreichischen Gesellschaft vom Roten Kreuze, ihrer Stamm- und Zweigver-
eine 1914-1917, Wien 1918.

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