'RAMC Parachute Units', 1944

Lithograph recruiting poster, after Abram Games (1914-1996), printed by Henry Hildesley, London, 1944.

This poster depicts a Royal Army Medical Corps parachutist who has just landed, holding on to his parachute. The latter is emblazoned with a red cross symbol. Medics would parachute or fly into battle alongside parachute and glider units. Eventually seven Parachute and Air landing Field Ambulance units were established during the war.

This poster encouraged medical personnel to transfer to the parachute units of the Royal Army Medical Corps. To research this design, Games visited the final training exercise of these units before Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Of the 3,082 men of the Parachute Regiment that took part in the Battle of Arnhem, only 426 avoided death or capture.

From a collection of 45 posters from World War Two (1939-1945).