The Lifesavers

THE LIFESAVERS were a small group of men and women who during WW2 were at the forefront of global progress in saving lives. Britain’s wartime blood transfusions service collected, preserved and courageously delivered blood, creating ground-breaking advances to improve survival rates with an impact comparable to the discovery of penicillin.

We meet the nurses who built and tapped the bank of volunteer donors (1.5m registered by the end of the war); the unsung technicians responsible for storing, preserving and moving the blood; and the specialist medical officers who risked their lives in traversing battlefields across the globe to give transfusions.

From Britain to the Balkans, Sicily to Japan, this trailblazing work was adopted around the world, and its lessons are still being taught today as NATO turns to methods from WW1 and WW2 in preparing for future conflicts.