Red Cross Workers

Red Cross volunteers and staff offered a “friendly hand” to America’s fighting men and women abroad. Its camp service branch provided counseling, family information, even financial assistance. Its service clubs—often in makeshift quarters—offered recreation and meals, barbershops, and laundries. “Clubmobiles” brought coffee and doughnuts to troops in the field. Red Cross social workers and nurses served in military hospitals. Blood banks collected and distributed 13.4 million pints of blood during the war. Other workers coordinated relief programs for Allied POWs and civilian war refugees.