It was a common assumption during the war that VAs and AAMWS servicewomen wanted to be nurses, and it was this desire that motivated them to join this service rather than take up one of the other available wartime opportunities. As Sheila Sibley confessed in 1943, before she began her work as an AAMWS, she was ‘dreaming dreams’ of becoming ‘an angel of mercy, the wounded man’s guide … the Rose of No-Man’s Land’. Sibley imagined that she would ‘float down the wards in my nifty blue uniform, and tender sighs would float right after this war’s Florence Nightingale’. Both Hitchcock and Sibley suggest there was some truth in the assumption that VAs and then AAMWS saw themselves as akin to, or aspired to be, nurses. Like Hitchcock, Sibley’s references show a clear association with the nurse in her understanding of the VAD and AAMWS. But Sibley admits that once she joined her first military hospital, she learnt the reality of the AAMWS’ work and conceded, ‘better leave that noble figure in my imagination.’