A1 size poster promoting blood donation, reading 'BLOOD DONORS, IF HE SHOULD FALL IS YOUR BLOOD THERE TO SAVE HIM', circa 1940. Red, white and green gloss paper poster featuring a graphic of a soldier standing on a large shadowy hand, with a blood bottle superimposed over the figure.
Production date
1940
Production organisations
FIELD, SONS & Co. (PRINTERS) GAMES, ABRAM (ARTIST)
Labels
The poster, designed by Abram Games, is a public advertisement for the donation of blood to the military in Britain and America. Games was a graphic designer who created posters as an Official War Artist, most famously his 'Blonde Bombshell' poster encouraging recruitment to the Auxiliary Teritorial Service (ATS), and all his work follows similar design and typography. The poster depicts a solider inside a glass blood flask, as polythene blood bags were not used in Britain until the 1970s. The red and green colour scheme is indicative of the importance of blood transfusion and saving lives. The poster states: “If he should fall, is your blood there to save him? The Army Blood Transfusion Service Needs Blood Donors”.
The Army Blood Transfusion Service (ABTS) and the Army Blood Supply Depot were established in 1939. Together, they formed the first military transfusion service in the world. During the Second World War, they started a campaign called “Plasma for Britain” to encourage the donation from the United States of America and Britain to help during the Blitz and for soldiers. This particular poster was displayed all over Britain with many other posters to encourage the support of the British home front.
Thousands of civilians donated and the ABTS proved successful, while also revolutionising blood transfusions and providing infrastructure which streamlined the process towards the end of the war. The mastermind of the operation, African-American surgeon Charles Drew, allowed this process to thrive with innovation to plasma and blood transfusion. He invented a method of extracting plasma from blood under controlled conditions. This allowed the plasma to be preserved, tested, transported over long distances, and later reconstituted, enabling donated blood to be stored for much longer before being used for transfusions.
