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The Nurses Corps of the Italian Red Cross volunteers is an Auxiliary Corps of the Armed Forces of the State and acts in time of war and peace.
 
A small yet big story.
The "small" history of the CRI's Voluntary Nurses Corps unfolds over a century, from 1908 to the present, in parallel and simultaneously with the "great" History of Italy,of Europe,of the world ravaged by wars,but above all as a witness to those events that have inflicted wounds on civil society and that affected our country during almost one hundred years.
A small, great story about women,volunteers called and always present where the suffering humanity has sought for their presence.
A story made by women of all walks of life, queens and housewives all the same when in uniform,all inspired by the same ideal,all ready to sacrifice even their lives,to follow their ideal.
This is not petty rhetoric but a reality as witnessed by our anthology of old and new images that show us the smiling faces, sometimes tired and suffering of those women at the front lines, in hospitals,on ships,in the cold of Russia or under the burning sun in tents,in lands devastated by man or nature,among refugees or flood and earthquakes victims.
Wherever and however, Red Cross nurses.
The images speak, tell far away stories, reveal characters and moods.
For this reason we will not make a detailed history of the Corps,crammed with figures and statistics,preferring instead to tell the story throughout the pictures.
Images are immutable evidence which may serve as an example for new generations of "sisters" to show the true spirit that should guide them when undertaking a volonteer path;exciting but also difficult,as difficult as it can be the self-denial in order to live up the own life choices .
Florence Nightingale
(Florence 1820 - London 1910)
Young English woman of good family, Florence gave up the comforts of her social status to devote to the sick.
This vocation subsequently led to a work commitment in the field of clinical problems also thanks to her experiences in Germany and France.
In 1854 the Crimean War breaks out and Florence offers to the British Minister of War to put her expertise at the service of military health services in the current conflict that had highlighted major weaknesses in that field. Along with 38 nurses trained by herself,Florence went to Scutari at Barrak Hospital.
Florence had to fight the prejudice and the hostility of the military doctors but in the end,supported by the english public opinion,managed to impose her route and reorganized the care of the sick and convalescents good enough to earn herself,among the soldiers,the title of "Lady of the Lamp".
Although overwhelmed by her labors,she continued her work in her country where she gained the public's and the British General Staff's attention in order to implement a radical reform of health services and care for the sick and wounded in war.
With the 45,000 pounds fund collected during her stay in Crimea,she founded a nursing school that marked the beginning of modern nursing methods and operates the dissemination of the principles of hygiene among the population.
The highest and most coveted honors of the International Red Cross it is named after Frances Nightingale.
Foundation
The first Red Cross nurses training course was organized in Milan in 1906 by a group of women sensitive to the issue of assistance to the sick. Among them we recall Sita Camperio Meyer, Rosa De Marchi, Matilde Visconti di Modrone.
The course was a hit and the initiative spread to other cities such as Genoa, La Spezia, Florence and Rome where the course was inaugurated under the patronage of Queen Elena.
Officially it was the birth of the Voluntary Nurses Corps.
In 1908,a thousand nurses between graduates and students were already forming the available staff. 260 of them were mobilized for relief efforts in the Messina earthquake occurred that year.
In 1910, the Corps provided itself a new rule book and identical uniforms for all members and the following year it had,so to speak, the "baptism of fire",attending to the rescue of the wounded on the "Memphis" ship during the italo-turkish war.About 60 nurses took part to this operation,including the Duchess of Aosta.
The approaching entry into the war against the Central Powers caused the increasing subscribtions to the courses so that on the eve of World War I the Corps counted over 4,000 nurses.
The twenty years between wars:1919 - 1939
Thanks to the untiring services provided in time of war,the volunteer nurses,first tolerated then accepted with reservations in a strictly masculine enviroment,had earned the unanimous respect and consideration so to become a part of the Military Health Corp and to operate in military hospitals which became even schools for the nurse students.
Their work also extended to civilian hospitals,to care services such as summer camps,tuberculosis and malaria preventing units,clinics and home care.
Thanks to this intense activity the graduating courses for nurses quickly multiplied throughout the country and with them the availability of personnel to mobilize.
Since 1935, following the conquest dell'AOI (Italian East Africa) several sisters have been on board hospital ships that collected the wounded of war in order to bring them back home.
They were also entrusted with the care of the families of the settlers who boarded to reach the new lands of Africa and not many years later they had to accompany those same immigrants on their return journey as refugees forcibly repatriated by the new governments of former colonies.
The nurses have also been assigned to military hospitals in Ethiopia, Somalia, Abyssinia, Libya and Eritrea, where,in addition to the care of our soldiers in the specific set up structures, they also provided assistance for the civilian population.In 1936 they were accompanying the contingent of volunteers that left Italy to fight in the Spanish Civil War,a major test for the world war that would break out in a few years.
The winds of war are deduced from the photos that portray nurses wearing gas masks,sad experience of the First World War.
World War II:1940-1945
When the war was declared all health units including the Army Corps of CRI and that of the volunteer nurses have been mobilized.
On 1st of September 1939 Jose Maria Princess of Piedmont had been nominated national inspector;she settled her role a few days later and began the reorganization of the Corps by nominating,in May the following year,the 16 inspectors of the Centers for mobilization.
At the outbreak of war, June 10,1940,the Corps found itself having to deal with multiple demands that required support: military hospitals, field hospitals, trains and ships hospitals, extraterritorial hospitals;everywhere there was need for constant and competent assistance,the nurses answered the call.
In the written submissions of the sisters,there is an unanimous recognition for the National Inspector,"Sister of Piemonte"'s managment and organizational skills,supported by an excellent cooperation from her collaborators.
The irreplaceable and precious work of the voluntary nurses had concrete recognition when the government decided to proclaim as law of state the corp's regulation book by the decree signed on May 12,1942;decree still effective.
Those have been long years of sacrifice in a war that had no existing fronts and it was extending to other continents,in distant lands,parched by heat or hard ice.Distressing landscapes of destruction,death,physical and moral pain,where the sisters were often the only female presence that represented for the soldiers an image of their distant dear ones as well as care for their physical wounds and comfort to those who would have never returned.
Remarkable the contribution of voluntary nurses on hospital ships (to which is dedicated a monographic section) to transport the wounded from the lands of Africa and the rescue of survivors.
Accompanying Italian troops in the African campaign, the campaign of Russia, in Albania, Yugoslavia-of those missions there are left photographic evidence, diaries, memories,storytellings that are passing down to us the heroism of everyday, humble many "sisters", young women,less young ones,aristocratic and bourgeois, strong women who knew how to resist and suffer as soldiers among the soldiers.
The end of the war also meant the count of the sisters that had fallen in the line of duty: 18 nurses including two shot by the germans and two who died in a concentration camp.
With the advent of the republic,the National Inspector position covered by Maria Jose of Savoy until 1946 became vacant and the queen herself named S.lla Paola Menada regent ,later confirmed national inspector by presidential nomination and who will lead the corps until 1975.
In the postwar period, a time of desperation, of misery, of rubble,the corp had to reorganize itself and tighten the lines.
The events following September 8, 1943 had divided Italy and the italians, even the nurses had to make branch choices,more contingent related than political ones,and after the war was acknowledged to the sisters as well as the health personnel of CRI military corp, that their action was fully accordant to the humanitarian principles and international conventions of the Red Cross.
Several major problems had afflicted Italy at that time:dispersed or returning soldiers, prisoners and war invalids,orphans,shortage of drugs,refugees repatriated from former colonies, floods, epidemics ... but the will to rebuild the country morally prevailed over any difficulties and the sisters too rolled up their sleeves to be once again a silent and efficient presence at the humanity service.
The Corps Today
The voluntary nurses, auxiliaries of the Army, are now present in all areas of civic life in which their presence is required, are full rights part of the civil protection and armed forces mobilized personnel..
The activities of the Corps are ranging over all areas of social life in which their work is required and necessary.
They have been active in all the disasters that hit the country during the recent decades and starting 1982 they participated in all peacekeeping missions along with the armed forces and the Red Cross ones.
Therefore,in the last two decades,the corps has responded also to international emergencies by sending its sisters in the military hospitals of the international forces that have operated in various parts of the world.
From the first experience of Lebanon they have been present in Somalia where the young sister Cristina Luinetti lost her life,in Mozambique, Turkey, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Iraq, Turkey, and along with UN forces in Hebron.
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Red Cross Nurses