VOLUNTEER SERVICES You have seen them for many years going about their duties in military and veterans hospitals, in your community hospitals. This year, you might have seen them in your state or county hospitals for the mentally ill, in a home for the aged, the homeless, or the handicapped—even in the private home of one whose life is spent in a wheelchair or bed. This year, too, you could have seen them on the docks where displaced persons were landing, at ports of embarkation where servicemen's families were sailing, in ceme¬teries where the war dead were being laid to rest, in camps where youthful soldiers need new friends. You might have wondered what the girl in Red Cross uniform was doing registering people for the tuberculosis X-ray campaign, or helping at the Community Chest luncheon. That program of assistance to other com¬munity health and welfare agencies is an¬other new field of service for the well-trained members of Red Cross Volunteer Services. No statistics can show their real accom¬plishments— the lines of worry erased, the smiles brought to pain-ridden faces, the com¬fort given by a friendly hand. But you can picture the scope of accomplishments from these few highlights of the past year's work: More than 18 million surgical dressings made. (A surgeon may use only 10 dressings for a simple appendectomy; an involved chest operation may take 200.) Incidentally, our hospitals requested, and received, a mil¬lion more dressings this year than last. Calculate the time required to prepare a meal for your family—or refreshments for a 26 VOLUNTEER SERVICES few friends. Then picture the work done by Canteen Service last year in providing al¬most lyi million servings to disaster victims, blood donors, servicemen, and veterans. Think of how many errands could be run . . . supplies delivered . . . sightseeing trips made in clocking up 9,000,000 miles of short-trip driving in 1 year. Red Cross Motor Service drivers covered that distance last year. Imagine the work involved in staging 23,400 entertainment and recreation events (an average of 64 a day) with more than 4,000 community groups participating. Think of the comfort brought to patients by over 460,000 hours of duty by nurse's aides covering the wards of 744 hospitals and other institutions, and by the work of 25,000 friendly Gray Ladies. Count up the stitches required to make 19,000 complete layettes— and the staggering total of 847,000 hours of staff aide service answering telephones, giv¬ing information, writing letters, keeping files, sending messages. Behind all these accom¬plishments are the thousands of hours spent by volunteers administering these nine Serv¬ices, recruiting and training 33,000 new volunteers, keeping up with the demands for more and more volunteer service. All to-gether, the volunteer time given last year adds up to approximately a million hours every month of the year. While soliciting funds for this and other Red Cross programs, why not interest your friends, both men and women, in joining you as a Red Cross volun¬teer to help meet some of the needs of your com-munity. 27