resources and formed Voluntary Aid Detachments (or VADs) with members trained in First Aid, Nursing, Cookery, Hygiene and Sanitation. These detachments all worked under the protection of the Red Cross, working in hospitals, rest stations, work parties and supply centres. The Joint War Organisation also aided assistance at the front line, supplying the first motorised ambulances to the battlefields, which were significantly more efficient than the horse-drawn ambulances they replaced. It was active in setting up centres for recording the wounded and missing. Red Cross volunteers searched towns, villages and hospitals where fighting had occurred, noting names of the missing, the injured and the dead. This formed the basis of the international Message and Tracing service, still running today. Amongst the more innovative activities of the Red Cross in the war was the training of Airedale Terrier dogs to search for wounded soldiers on battlefields. Christie's auction house in Britain held an auction each year from 1915 to 1918 to benefit the Red Cross. People all across the United Kingdom donated their jewelry to help raise money. In 1918 one of the auctioned pieces was the Red Cross diamond. Inter-war years In 1919, after the cessation of hostilities, the League of the Red Cross (now the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies) was formed, and the role of national societies increased, with a shift of emphasis from wartime relief to focusing on "the improvement of health, the prevention of disease and mitigation of suffering throughout the world". The British Red Cross stayed involved with blood transfusion past the formation of the National Blood Service and it retained an ancillary role until 1987. The British Red Cross was instrumental in starting overseas societies through the Empire and Commonwealth, most of which are now independent national societies. In 1924, the British Red Cross started its youth movement, helping to promote its values to a younger generation. Second World War After the declaration of war in 1939, the British Red Cross once again joined with St John to form the Joint War Organisation, again affording the St John volunteers protection under the Red Cross emblem. The organisation once again worked in hospitals, care home, nurseries, ambulance units, rest stations and more, much of which was funded by the Duke of Gloucester's Red Cross and St John appeal, which had raised over £54million by 1946. The Red Cross also arranged parcels