A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes

by Louise Miller

  As darkness fell over the bare, grey hills, the Serbs moved quietly into their positions lower down the ridge, lying flat on their stomachs in the shallow ruts that they had scraped from the hard earth, the moon bright above them. Only occasionally that night did the sound of distant artillery fire break the eerie silence. Then, without warning, as dawn approached, the roar of heavy guns ripped through the air, followed by explosions that shook the earth for miles around as French artillery went into action. The shells burst on the hard ground, illuminating the crest and sides of the ridge with continuous flashes and exploding earth and rock in every direction, while deafening echoes reverberated from mountain peak to mountain peak.

  After half an hour of bombardment, as Allied observers watched intently through field glasses from the safety of hills to the south, the Serbs were ordered to attack. With white, green and yellow star shells bursting like fireworks over their heads, they clambered out of their shelters and began to advance up the steep sides of the ridge towards the village, to the added crack of rifle fire and spit of machine guns. The observers could see men fall as they scrambled up the exposed slopes under the moonlight, only to be replaced by others who passed their crumpled bodies during their advance. The Serbs pressed on ever higher, while the heavy guns opened fire again on the ridge, only to be replaced by the sound of rifle fire from the far left. All of a sudden, a red star shell soared over the summit, followed instantly by a storm of sound just below, as they used every gun, rifle and bomb at their disposal in an attempt to break through the thick barbed wire that protected the Bulgarian trenches atop the crest. The Allied observers held their breath. When the attack finally died down, the ridge was in Serbian hands.3

  At four a.m. the boom of artillery from the fighting at Gornicevo had shattered the sleep of the women of the “American Unit” of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.4 The unit was based near the town of Ostrovo (now Arnissa, in northern Greece), a few miles from the fighting. Sixty women under the capable charge of the Australian-born New Zealander Dr Agnes Bennett had arrived on site in early September, attached to the Serbian Third Army. By mid-September they had nearly finished setting up a two-hundred-bed tented hospital on a stretch of level ground under the shade of ancient elm trees, a short walk from Lake Ostrovo. To the north rose the heights of Kajmakcalan, a vast, twin-peaked, snow-crowned mountain that dominated the region for miles around. Due west lay Gornicevo ridge.

  As the Serbs had prepared to launch near-simultaneous attacks on Bulgarian positions atop both Gornicevo and Kajmakcalan, the grey-, white- or khaki-uniformed women rushed about making the final preparations to their wards, the thunder of the guns lending added urgency to their work. Theirs was the only hospital near the front and they knew they would be expected to treat the most dangerously injured men.

  A few days later the women chauffeurs of the Scottish Women’s Hospital’s Transport Column delivered their first patients in their five Ford ambulances. This unit, which operated independently of Dr Bennett’s, was under the charge of sixty-one-year-old Katherine Harley, the sister of Sir John French, the British Commander-in-Chief at the start of the war. Its eighteen women, almost all of whom came from wealthy car-owning families, had been selected for their ability to drive and do their own repairs. Many had not worked a day in their lives before the war.

  Each morning at first light they pulled flannel shirts over their bobbed hair, stepped unhappily into khaki skirts (having been banned from wearing breeches) and laced up heavy army boots before grinding the first cigarette of the day under their heels. After cranking their engines, they set out for the dressing stations. One was situated at the base of Kajmakcalan. The other lay five thousand feet up. To reach it, the women had to drive up a mountain track strewn with boulders, to one side of which lay a precipice, competing all the while for space with horses, mules, soldiers and motorized transport. On arrival two or three severely injured men were loaded into the back before they turned their ambulances around ahead of the perilously steep descent. When the women eventually reached the hospital they would sometimes make the horrifying discovery that one of the men had died during the journey. So distressing was this to the drivers and hospital staff that Dr Bennett travelled to the dressing stations to beg them not to send them the “hopeless cases”.5

  At three a.m. on 13th September, ahead of the victory on Gornicevo, the Fourth Company was ordered forward in pursuit of the retreating Bulgarians. Flora was only too anxious to leave the shelter of the hollow. Not only was it “very cold and smelly”, during the attack a shell had burst just six yards from where she had been sitting and she had been lucky to escape unscathed. “Chased Bulgars all day over the most awful hills and stones, I don’t know how many miles,” she scribbled during quieter moments. “Had a great shooting match at long range. I used up all my ammunition. Saw Vukoje [her platoon officer] bring one down with my carbine at 1,000 yards.”

  Over the following days they continued their gruelling march north. Although Flora carried very little – only a cartridge belt, her carbine and revolver, a water bottle and a square of canvas tenting – the advance was pushing her to her physical limits. Hardened to the outdoors though she was, as she had dragged her aching limbs and bleeding feet over the hills she had at times wondered if she could “stick it”.6 It was also highly dangerous. With the men, she was shot at and shelled repeatedly, a matter-of-fact account of which she duly recorded in her diary.

  On the occasions she had a particularly narrow escape she would be whisked off to lunch or dinner by Major Pešić, the Commandant of her battalion. Flora was only too glad to accept the invitations from the middle-aged “old soldier” who wore a row of medals across his chest, walked with a swagger stick and kept his dark hair neatly trimmed and his moustache turned up at the ends.7 She had come to think highly of him. He “seemed to know the name and family history of pretty well every man in the regiment,” Flora recalled, “and had a laugh and joke for everyone, even under the most trying circumstances.”8

  Her old friend Colonel Milić, the Commandant of the Second Regiment, also kept a protective eye on her insofar as she would let him, despite his heavy responsibilities. “Nothing could have exceeded the Colonel’s kindness to me,” she recalled. “After any big engagement he would send an orderly right up to the line to find out if I was all right; generally with a present of two or three packets of cigarettes, a bottle of wine or a tin of sardines; the latter a much prized luxury.” Like Pešić, Milić treated Flora as his equal on her visits to his headquarters, to the scowling disapproval of his servant. “He used to be greatly scandalized when the Colonel told him to hand me the coffee first; a mere sergeant, and a woman at that,” she commented. “The Colonel used always to laugh and ask him why he didn’t, whereupon he would shake his head and say he couldn’t possibly, it wasn’t right.”9

  Flora’s other great friendship during this time was with Jović. Over the course of the ten months they had known each other, an intense bond of affection and common cause had arisen between them from their close collaboration in ensuring the survival of the men of the company. Although their relationship has been portrayed as a romantic one, there is no proof whatsoever of this, and it is unlikely that Flora would have been willing to compromise her status as a combatant and “honorary man” in this manner.10 Nevertheless, they were together constantly, playing cards, drinking, eating and arguing. So familiar had they become with each other that, to Flora’s annoyance, he began to lecture her about what he saw as her transgressions. “Janachko… jawed me like the devil for gambling!” jotted Flora crossly in her diary, after she lost money playing cards.11 But spats and bickering were soon followed by reconciliation. Despite his fondness for her, Jović understood her determination to fight on equal terms alongside the men of the company. He accordingly made no attempt to protect her by trying to send her away to battalion or regimental headquarters.

  The men of her company had no difficulty in having a woman among them at
the front. Flora by now had been with them for nearly a year and had proved time and again that she could hold her own. “They are all awfully good to me, and treat me like a kind of mascot,” she wrote. “I’m always in the front line with them, and they are terribly worried that I may get killed.”12 They were even more afraid that she might be captured. Her “great pal” Sergeant Miladin, who at 6'4" towered over most of the men in the company, tried to take on a role akin to her personal bodyguard in battle. “Whatever happens, stick close to me,” he told her urgently. “As long as I’m alive I’ll never let the Bulgarians take you prisoner.”13 But in other respects she was an old comrade. They accepted unquestioningly that she would fight alongside them in any “scrap” and they called her “brother”, as they did with each other. The men also found her presence reassuring, not only as a symbol of British support, but also on a more fundamental, practical level. If they were injured they knew that Flora would be on hand to bind them up. Although she had in the past resisted being forced back into her old role, she was now confident enough in her abilities as a soldier – and in her colleagues’ acceptance of her as such – to be willing to act, on occasion, as nurse.

  The Fourth Company were sent into reserve a few days after the successful attack on Gornicevo. After ten days of sitting around, gambling and helping anyone with a supply of wine get through it, Flora was getting restless. Paying a visit to the Scottish Women in nearby Ostrovo, she thought, would at least help pass the time. Her request for a day’s leave reached the ears of General Miloš Vasić, Commander of the Third Army. Vasić, who in his earlier capacity as Commander of the Morava Division had approved Flora’s enlistment at the outset of the retreat, was all too happy to oblige. To her delight, he offered to accompany her personally on a visit to their camp. Early in the morning on 29th September Flora set out with the red-overcoated colonel, his gold epaulettes glinting regally in the sun, in one of the divisional motor cars.14 After a dusty two-hour trip, they reached their camp. “Went to Scottish Women, met little Harley [Edith Harley, Mrs Harley’s daughter] and went back with her to lunch with Mrs Harley’s unit,” summarized Flora briefly in her diary.15

  Within days Dr Bennett was regretting Flora’s visit. Even before the hospital had opened its doors, she was struggling to maintain order among the more rebellious elements in her unit. Far from disapproving of unconventionality, many women of the American Unit were busy seizing the opportunity to embrace it, in the comparative freedom that being so far away from home gave them. The girls of the nearby Transport Column were already providing what she considered a bad example. “It has been awfully hard having the Harley lot always in view,” she complained in the pages of her diary. “They are absolutely undisciplined and I think the results are being seen now… Some of them are nice girls and I should like to have them, but Mrs H. is too old and won’t see where their want of discipline is leading… I am worried; these girls will smoke so much, but I don’t think it is wise to interfere at present: some are even, out of mere bravado, smoking cigars.”16 At least the women were “quite free from any trace of what we call ‘nonsense’ where men are concerned,” reported a commissioner from the Scottish Women’s Hospitals on a visit to the two units later that year, apparently entirely oblivious to the fact that a number of the women were by inclination more interested in each other.17

  Flora’s appearance, in the uniform of a Serbian sergeant, sent ripples of excitement through the units. She was just the sort of example that they could seize upon: a British woman doing precisely what she wanted, all the while ignoring social convention with apparent impunity. “She is quite tall with brown eyes and a strong, yet pretty face,” wrote a cook with the American Unit in enthusiasm after having met her. “She is a sergeant in the 4th Company and talked to us for a long time about her experiences, and the fierce fighting she and the men of her company had to face. We felt so proud of her and her bravery.”18

  Two weeks later Dr Bennett bemoaned in a letter the “most undesirable” temptation that joining the Serbian army was presenting to the women of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Three ex-employees had already succeeded in joining the Serbian Army Medical Service as drivers and Flora’s visit only served to encourage the others.19 Not long after, more women of her unit tried to follow her example. One, “a woman with two little children at home, has tried to enlist in the Serbian Army like Miss Sandes,” wrote the scandalized Commissioner. “She was not accepted because I was consulted and said I strongly disapproved.” So worried were the Executive Committee of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals about future defections to the army that they inserted a new term into their contracts, to the effect that anyone leaving their organization needed to travel directly home and report immediately to headquarters.20

  In early October the Fourth Company were ordered back into the thick of the action in a Serbian offensive that, over subsequent days, succeeded in driving the Bulgarians nearly seven miles north, from peak to peak in the cold, barren mountains. By 8th October they had reached Slivica, a desolate jumble of low, stone houses set below hills bristling with great, jagged stones. Flora had enjoyed every moment. Although she had again become footsore and had suffered with the rest of her company in the extremes of heat during the day and bitter cold at night, there had been plenty of excitement to make up for it. She had watched villages being shelled, Bulgarian prisoners taken, and had spent moonlit evenings with Jović and the men of battalion headquarters. She met the news with disappointment the following day that her company were being sent back into reserve so soon after they had left it last. “We have nothing to do all day but sit on a rock while they shell all around,” she grumbled sulkily.21

  Leaving the rest of her company to settle into their dugouts, Flora irritably clomped off to explore the surrounding area. She picked her way nonchalantly over the rocky ground towards the Crna River, then looked up at the noise of a commotion nearby. To the sound of a torrent of curses, she approached a knot of Serbs gathered idly in a circle around a young, badly wounded Bulgarian soldier. Flora stood for a moment taking in the scene in front of her. The man was lying on the ground in the hot sun, unable to move, just out of reach of a pool of water. “No one was doing anything for him,” she wrote. “I took to this chap because he had such spirit, and wouldn’t kowtow to anyone. Though he was badly shot through both thighs and couldn’t move, and expecting every moment to be treated as they treat the Serbs, he lay there hurling abuse at everyone, and said if he had a rifle he would shoot us yet, and he was just a lad.”

  As her admiration for the courage of the Bulgarian grew, she felt a rising tide of anger with the soldiers surrounding him. “Why aren’t you doing anything to help?” she snapped, before ordering them imperiously to fetch bandages, iodine, bread, water and brandy. She knelt beside him to clean and dress his wounds. All the while the Bulgarian watched her suspiciously through narrowed eyes. He “refused [the water and brandy] at first under the impression that it was poison!” commented Flora incredulously. He was beside himself with gratitude when he finally accepted that she meant him no harm. “The poor chap was quite grateful… and said I was a ‘silna brat’ [‘fine brother’],” she crowed proudly.

  Flora’s next task was to see that he received proper medical attention. Hesitantly, she approached Pešić. As she suspected, he was anything but happy about her rescue mission. “What on earth do you think you’re doing, Sandes?” he responded furiously while she stood silently before him. “I can’t even get my own men off to the ambulance! And what business was it of yours wandering around when they’re shelling? You were lucky not to get yourself killed.” That evening Pešić gave orders for the Bulgarian to be sent to the nearest field ambulance. “His bark is always much worse than his bite,” she observed later, pleased to have got her own way. “They think a lot of my opinion, and would even let me keep a pet Bulgar, I believe, if I wanted to,” she finished smugly.22

  To Flora war was still little more than a glorified game, pl
ayed on a grand scale, where courage combined with the rules and virtues of the cricket pitch applied – self-control, willingness to follow the rules, the desire to compete with honour and, above all, the necessity of upholding fair play. Killing the wounded and defenceless was not sporting, and neither was leaving them to die in agony. It made no difference to her, when faced with the wounded Bulgarian, that “the least the Bulgars do to our wounded and prisoners is to cut their throats”.23

  War was the most exciting “sport” that Flora could experience, far greater than racing her Sizaire-Naudin at Brooklands, travelling across America by goods van, hunting deer or even heading straight into the middle of a typhus epidemic in full knowledge of the danger. She littered her diary with sporting references. “Had a great shooting match at long range,” she jotted in her diary following the attack on Gornicevo. “Janachko got some fine shooting,” she commented enviously after another eventful skirmish. So too did she believe that a day’s merit could be evaluated according to whether it was “sport” or not.24 “There’s no sport at all in climbing a mountain all night in pouring rain, or sitting behind a rock till you have cramp,” she complained.25

  But there was plenty to make up for the moments of adversity. It was a life of “incessant fighting, weariness indescribable” that went “hand-in-hand with romance, adventure and comradeship, which more than made up for everything”. It was everything she loved to do. She was out in the fresh air, pitting her wits against others and pushing herself to overcome severe hardship. It was also a life without pretence or affectation, airs or graces. War was quite the most exciting thing she had ever experienced. “I’m sure when I do get home, except for sunburn, no one will believe I’ve been through anything at all, as I seem to thrive and grow fat on it,” she scrawled happily in a letter.26