Not only does gender integration make the friend unit stronger, but by letting women into the group, the He-Men also gets to hang out with the Olsen twins (before they turned into bag ladies).
A pacifist, Stapledon served with a Friends' ambulance unit in World War I and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
After his first year, second world war service in the Friends Ambulance Unit took him to Italy and Austria (1943-46); he returned to graduate in classics in 1948.
He met Quakers during his service with the Friends' Ambulance Unit and decades later (after many years in the Church of England) he joined the Religious Society of Friends.
While Laurence Cadbury refused to fight during the first world war, spending it with the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU), a volunteer corps of Quakers, Bertie served on a minesweeper, became a pioneer pilot and was involved in downing two Zeppelins.
He was my father, Richard Wainwright, and the hearing's ruling in his favour led to six years' work with the Quaker-run Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU), from cleaning hospital bedpans in Gloucester to saving German families and refugees from reprisals after the allied victory.
With the second world war, his critical spirit and abhorrence of violence led him into the Friends Ambulance Unit, with which he served in the Middle East, and, in 1944, in Greece, along with a stim ulating group of pacifists, including Donald Swann (obituary, March 25 1994).
COs who were not absolutists might not fight, but agreed to work in a support role at the front or risked their lives in the Friends' Ambulance Unit.
The Corps was assisted in its work by voluntary help from the British Red Cross, St John's Ambulance and the Friends Ambulance Unit.
