Aristocrats, Adventurers & Ambulances: British Medical Units In The Spanish Civil War Hardcover

Linda Palfreeman

When a military coup provoked civil war in Spain in July 1936, many thousands of people around the world rallied to provide humanitarian aid. Britons were no exception. Collective efforts in Britain to provide aid for the Spanish Republic were vast in both scope and effect. Whilst such enterprise has formed the focus of a few previous studies, some of the most dramatic stories of the Spanish war have yet to be uncovered. This book seeks to shed light on the activities of two separate ventures that played important roles in British medical and humanitarian aid to Spain the Scottish Ambulance Unit and Sir George Youngs Ambulance Unit. The volunteer members of these teams (those who went out to Spain and those who supported them in Britain) earned the unstinting praise of the Spanish government for their selfless commitment to the cause, as well as winning the respect and gratitude of the citizens whose welfare they strove so selflessly to protect. Recently discovered documentation reveals previously undisclosed details of these remarkably altruistic and, indeed, heroic enterprises, clarifying the reasoning behind their creation and documenting their endeavours in Spain endeavours of key relevance to the wider history of the conflict. In Spain, the volunteers of the Scottish Ambulance Unit and the George Young Ambulance Unit offered a heartening and inspiring antithesis to the suffering they sought to relieve. They deserve to be remembered for what they embodied during those days of untold cruelty and destruction outstanding examples of mans humanity to man.

9781845196097

English

Sussex Academic Press

1 December 2013

256

Linda Palfreeman is Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Cardenal Herrera, Elche, Spain. She has spent some years researching local aspects of the Spanish Civil War and of the International Brigades Medical Service. Her Salud! British Volunteers in the Republican Medical Service during the Spanish Civil War, 19361939, published in 2012, was a response to the lack of accessible literature on what was surely one of the most important aspects of the conflict health care and medical assistance during wartime.

"In Aristocrats, Adventurers and Ambulances : British Medical Units in the Spanish Civil War Palfreeman has rescued from the shadows the invaluable contribution made by the SAU and the GYAU during the Spanish Civil War, in the process illuminating the complex nature of the war-time organisational relationships that developed during this period. It is through such studies that a more nuanced understanding becomes possible of how something seemingly as simple as the provision of what by todays standards and even by the standards of the day were two small ambulance units, could have such a big impact upon the lives of those people it touched." - Jonathan Sebastian Browne, University of Kent, Cercles, June 2014 "Linda Palfreemans new book, Aristocrats, Adventurers and Ambulances. British Medical Units in the Spanish Civil War, makes an important contribution to the historiography of Spains bitter civil war." - Alan Sennett, Left Central, 28th July 2014 "...a strongly researched and well-written book that explores both political and humanitarian commitment in the Spanish conflict. Her desire to set the historical record straight leaps from the page." - Peter Anderson, University of Leeds, War in History 22(1)