Red Cross Blogs

Happy birthday, British Red Cross!

By Katrina Crew
August 4, 2009 at 10:48 am

Dear British Red Cross,

Today you turn 139 years old. Trust me, you don’t look a day over 120.

Over the years you’ve seen a lot. From your infancy helping wounded soldiers in the Franco-Prussian war, to your adolescence in the trenches, no one could accuse you of having an easy childhood.

Between the wars, there was no rest for you. You nursed thousands of people suffering from Spanish flu pandemic, set up the blood transfusion service, and organised first aid posts where trained volunteers treated people who crashed those new-fangled automobiles.

You turned 70 in 1940. When most people would be thinking about retiring, you were nursing civilians in the bombed home front as well as soldiers overseas. You sent food parcels to hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, helping them stay healthy.

Over the years you’ve nurtured volunteers like Vera Brittain, Agatha Christie, E.M. Forster and Rudyard Kipling.

You’ve helped thousands of people recover from disasters in the UK and around the world – from the Aberfan mining disaster in 1966 to Vietnamese refugees crowding onto boats to Hong Kong in the 70s.

You welcomed Asian Ugandans to the UK in 1972, giving them hot food and clothes to cope with the British winter.

At the height of the Falklands conflict when communications broke down, you carried messages between families on the islands and their worried families in the UK.

You’ve set up health and social care services for thousands of people and continue to thrive with 30,000 volunteers and staff.

All in all, it’s been a good innings. Here’s looking forward to the next 139.

---

Comments (10) »

---

Tags: conflict, First aid, history, International, UK

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 10:48 am and is filed under Fundraising and events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---