A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes

by Louise Miller

  Flora had also adapted extraordinarily well to being under fire. It was all part of the game. Even though she had seen men around her “catch it”, she never appeared to doubt for a moment that her luck would hold. In print she passed lightly over the problems she encountered during her first weeks in the field. “I seemed to take to soldiering like a duck to water (perhaps I may have been one in some previous life),” she wrote. In reality she had at times been shocked, albeit briefly, by the conditions she was expected to endure. “Where are we going to sleep?” she had yawned to Vukoje at the end of a long day at the start of the campaign. “Why here of course,” he responded. “I looked down at the squelchy, black mud, and sat down gingerly beside him, without further comment,” she recalled. She had also faced a considerable physical challenge. “You can’t call it marching, over these mountains,” she grumbled to a friend. “It’s the most devilish country, bare hills covered with big rocks, loose rolling stones, and no water. The Serbs are used to that sort of thing, and think nothing of going miles over these hills at a good stiff pace.”27 Nothing short of grim determination and sheer willpower had got her through the first days of the campaign and, although she soon became “more seasoned”, she often trailed behind the men during their advances.28 “Sometimes I would be so tired after some long climb that when the critical moment came to run across the last stretch of open ground, fling ourselves down and open fire, I simply could not run,” she commented later. And so, she summarized modestly, she acquired “a quite fictitious reputation for bravery and coolness”.29

  With Slivica firmly in Serbian hands, the army began its advance on Polog, a village of similar size three miles due north, over barren, broken and mountainous country. The advance, over the following weeks, was characterized by quiet intervals punctuated by vicious attacks and counter-attacks that gradually decimated the ranks of both armies. “Ours was an entirely different sort of warfare to that on the Western Front,” wrote Flora. “Anything more unlike the engagements one sees in pictures, and on the cinema, it would be hard to imagine. There was no ‘going over the top’, there being no trenches; getting to the top of one mountain after another, where the Bulgars were snugly ensconced, was always our objective.”30

  The Bulgarians put up ferocious resistance, in the full knowledge that if the Serbs continued to make ground against them through the mountains east of Monastir they would be forced to abandon the prized town. With the Fourth Company, Flora continued to play her full part in the cycle of stop and start, attack and counter-attack, failure and success that typified the fighting that month. In the midst of such warfare, the relative abilities of their commanders soon became apparent. Flora sprinkled her diary with both praise and criticism. “Avram drunk in afternoon. Ordered us ahead, no lines of communication, no officers to give orders, our whole Company bunked… 4 of our men wounded,” she scribbled furiously after one disastrous attack.31 Only one man received consistent praise from her, Dodić, a “very small” lieutenant.32 He would soon prove himself beyond doubt to be one of the bravest men in her company.

  By mid-October the weather was beginning to turn. The fine, hot days of a Macedonian autumn had gradually been replaced by grey, overcast skies, while the clear, pleasant moonlit nights had given way to biting cold. With winter in the air and the loss of so many of their old comrades weighing heavily upon them, Flora reported moments of discouragement among the men of her battalion. Their morale worsened further following the deaths of several of their commanders. The Third Company had been particularly hard hit, losing three in as many days. On 17th October Jović was sent to replace the last one killed.

  Three days later Flora’s faith in the seemingly blessed existence of her closest circle of friends was shattered. She woke early with the Fourth Company behind a position they called simply the “big rock”, a natural fortification on high ground between the villages of Slivica and Polog. They had been on guard throughout the night and into the dismal, grey hours of the early morning, knowing full well that the Bulgarians were planning a counter-attack. Just before daybreak, in the pouring rain, it came. Its violence took them all by surprise. Flora first heard the sudden war cries of the Bulgarians – Hourra! Hourra! – as they hurled themselves towards the Third Company, on her left. With her nerves “strained to breaking point”, she knelt on the sodden ground, raised her rifle to her shoulder, tightened her grip, placed her finger on the trigger and blinked her eyes rapidly through the sheets of rain, readying to fire at the first sight of Bulgarian khaki. Instead, to her dismay she saw the blue-uniformed Third Company rushing back towards them in disarray, the Bulgarians in hot pursuit. “The man lying beside me collapsed with a grunt, shot through the heart [and] several were wounded,” she wrote breathlessly of the events that followed.33

  The panic spread to the Fourth Company. They leapt up en masse and ran with the men of the Third to the inadequate shelter of a ravine. Flora too had to run for her life, bullets flying all around her. By late afternoon she was lying flat on the ground behind a small rock with Bulgarian bullets humming in the air over her head, having had nothing to eat for nearly twenty-four hours and soaked through to the skin in the continuous downpour. Every bitter blast of wind ripped through her wet uniform, chilling her further, while the ground on which she lay was “rapidly turning into a very squishy bog”. “The only thing I could think of to keep up my spirits and while away the time, was to repeat the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’, which, as a child, I thought the most wonderful poem in the world. Over and over at intervals I repeated it to myself, though excepting for the fact of being ‘in the mouth of hell’ there wasn’t much in the poem that would fit our case.”34

  Flora straggled back to battalion headquarters that evening, taking what little consolation she could from the fact that the Serbs had finally rallied to seize the big rock from the Bulgarians. She was exhausted, wet and hungry, and covered in mud and blood from the wounds of a couple of men she had dressed under fire. She knew at a glance from the solemn faces of the Commandant and the Battalion Staff that something was seriously wrong. “Janatchko was killed by a bullet in the morning,” she wrote tersely in her diary after she left them, her hand shaking as she forced herself to write a few words. “He had been Commander 1st Co. 3rd Battn. 3 days. I heard it from Comm. [Pešić] in the evening.”35

  His death struck her to the very core. In a stroke she had lost her constant companion, best friend and confidant, someone for whom she had endless admiration and affection. Jović had overseen her enlistment as a private into the army, had struggled alongside her during the retreat to keep the men of the Fourth Company alive and had been her steadfast supporter. Now the reality of war was brought home to her with a shock and, for the first time, she questioned her perception of war as sport. There had been nothing sporting in his death or in her feeling of bereavement. She wrote furiously in a letter to a friend the following day that she had changed her “mind about ‘sport’, and loathe[d] war and everything to do with it with [her] my heart…” A few days later, the bitterness and anger at his loss as fresh as ever, she wrote another otherwise uncharacteristically cynical description of the war. “If anyone in Croydon begins to ask me to describe the war I shall tell them to go into their back garden and dig a hole and sit there for anything from three days and nights to a month, in November, without anything to read or do, and they can judge for themselves, minus the chance of being killed of course.”36

  Flora struggled through the next days. The section of the front assigned to her company once again returned to a state of relative quiet and inactivity. It gave her none of the excitement she needed to get her mind off Jović’s death. The bleak, wet weather did nothing to lift her mood, and she wrote forlornly in her diary that she was having problems sleeping. Her friends in the company rallied round her as best they could, although Flora would have done her utmost to keep her emotions in check. Pešić too continued to keep an eye on her. He was “awfully good to me”, she recorded af
ter he had tried to cheer her up over lunch two days later.37

  A fortnight following Jović’s death, she visited his grave whilst back in reserve. “I still feel as if I had dreamt it, that it can’t be true,” she noted.38 In her 1927 autobiography, the grief of his death still evident, she wrote him a restrained epitaph. “Our company had changed hands, and our old [commander], Lieutenant Jović, who had taken such care of us all through Albania, and to whom the men were devoted, was with the unlucky Third Company… He had fought through the Turkish and Bulgarian Wars; had every kind of medal for bravery, and had, in two years, risen from private to [commander]; almost a record in that army.”39

  On 13th November the Serbs made their final preparations to seize the village of Polog. Flora’s Morava Division, with French artillery once again in support, were ordered to lead the attack. An Allied journalist watched from a nearby summit as the Serbs readied themselves for the advance. “Every gun the Bulgarians could bring to bear was trained on the advancing troops,” he observed. “But the Serbs are past-masters of mountain fighting and know how to take advantage of every scrap of cover. We could see them crawling through the ravines, working their way along the dry watercourses, in and out of the boulders and trees, everywhere that nature had provided barriers against the bullets and shrapnel of the enemy.” That afternoon they retook the village from the Bulgarians while, that night, they captured the mountain crest above.40 Only two Bulgarian strongholds remained to be taken, Hill 1212 and Hill 1378. The odds could not have been higher. If the Serbs could seize both peaks, the Bulgarians would be forced to abandon Monastir in the valley below. Both armies were ordered to fight to the last man.

  While other units of the Morava Division took part in the attack on Polog, the Fourth Company were sent on extended reserve that lasted well into November. Near the middle of the month, fed up with forced inactivity, she asked Colonel Milić for two or three days’ leave to visit the Scottish Women’s Hospital and Transport Column near Ostrovo. But hardly had she returned to camp, his agreement secured, when the Fourth Company received their orders to return to the front. “So much for the visit,” thought Flora to herself.41

  As she was having lunch with her company en route to the front the next day, Milić spotted her. Over coffee, he spoke to her as usual in German, their only shared language at the time they had first met. “I thought you wanted to go to Ostrovo, Sandes,” he said. “Why don’t you go?” “But we are going to the front,” she replied. “Oh, we’re only going to hold some lines of communication near another reserve,” he responded genially. “We’ll not be near any fighting. You have plenty of time to stay away for several days, and I’ll give you a horse to start now, if you like.” Then he turned and spoke to a colleague in Serbian. “You know we are going right into the thick of it. It would be such a pity for her to get killed. I’d like to keep her out of it.” They all laughed with embarrassment when she responded in Serbian. “Thank you for your thoughtfulness,” she replied hesitantly, “but I would like to stay with my company.”42

  On the bitterly cold, snowy night of 15th November, Flora crept into place on the slopes of Hill 1212. With her were the five hundred remaining men of her regiment, which had been two thousand strong only three months before.43 She must have known that she faced a grave risk of being injured or killed but put such thoughts to the back of her mind, trusting luck once again to see her through. At the break of dawn the following morning, the Bulgarians used the shroud of fog that covered the peak to launch a devastating pre-emptive surprise attack on Serbian positions below. The brunt of it fell on the Fourth Company.

  What happened next was widely reported in papers around the world. Most contained Flora’s description of the attack:

  The fighting was a sight that day, but, unfortunately, I only saw the start of it. There was deep snow on the ground, the bugle was blowing the charge, and we were going up the steep hillside while the Bulgars, hidden by the early-morning mist at the top, were firing down on us. The Bulgars had counter-attacked at dawn and driven our men back, and everybody was mixed up. There were no trenches or anything like that.

  My company was peacefully sleeping in the snow behind a rock, as we were battalion reserve that night, when we were called up at dawn as re-enforcements. Battalion reserve is a rotten job. You get all the shellfire that’s going, and you never know what’s going on in front until you are suddenly roused out and plunged into the thick of it, as you’re only a few hundred yards back and you sleep with your rifle in your hand.

  There’s first a shout of “Company forward”, and everyone’s off like a streak. When we arrived on the scene the men were rallying for a counter-attack. The bugler had got “cold feet” and an officer had taken the bugle and was standing up against the skyline, where everyone could see him, a mark for every bullet, blowing for all he was worth. He wasn’t blowing a bit the right notes, but everyone knew what it meant. We knew the position had to be retaken at any cost, as it meant the fall of Monastir if we could.

  We went anyhow we liked, taking cover as we could. An officer and about a dozen men and myself got to the top, when some bombers dodged behind the rocks and hurled bombs at us at close range and scattered us.44

  “I immediately had a feeling as though a house had fallen bodily on the top of me with a crash. Everything went dark, but I was not unconscious for I was acutely aware that our platoon was falling back,” wrote Flora later. “It was exactly as though I had gone blind, but I felt the tail of an overcoat sweep across my face. Instinctively I clutched it with my left hand, and must have held on for two or three yards before I fainted.”

  Unconscious, Flora lay bleeding into the snow. Shrapnel had shredded the flesh of her back and the right side of her body from shoulder to knee. Her right arm had been both broken and badly lacerated by the blast. The other members of her platoon had run for cover to the nearest rock. Among them was little Lieutenant Dodić. He darted a glance out from behind his shelter in the direction of the enemy. Ahead, he saw Flora lying motionless on the reddening snow. Under the “very noses” of the Bulgars, he inched round the side of the rock and crawled out on his stomach towards her. “Stretch out your arm,” he pleaded in a low whisper as he neared her. “Stretch it out!” Flora lay unresponsive in front of him. Not knowing whether she were alive or dead, he edged out further, grabbed the wrist of her broken right arm and shuffled backwards, dragging her with him. Two men waited anxiously behind the rock for him to return. As he came within reach, they yanked them both to safety.

  Hurriedly, they wrapped Flora up in a piece of tenting. Then, while she slowly regained consciousness, they bundled her down the hillside “like a rabbit flung into a poacher’s bag”. Three or four other men had by now joined the attempt to get her to safety. They darted anxious glances around them through the falling snow, fearing a further Bulgarian advance. If they were taken prisoner, they all knew that they would almost certainly be killed forthwith. “Don’t all get taken on my account,” she whispered to them. “We’re not going unless we can take you with us,” they replied firmly.

  When the stretcher-bearers arrived, one of them dropped down next to Flora and pulled out a knife. He sliced through her clothing and bandaged her up as best he could. Then he poured half a bottle of brandy down her throat and put a cigarette in her mouth. “It takes a lot to kill me,” she assured one of the men who had been watching her, his eyes full of tears. “Wait and see, I’ll be back again in ten days.” To the worried glances of the men, they laid her on a stretcher, picked her up off the ground and set off down the mountain into a raging blizzard.

  The next day, after the Serbs had finally captured the Bulgarian positions on Hill 1212, they found the bodies of ten Serbians who had been taken prisoner lying in a row, near the spot where Flora was wounded. They had had their throats cut from ear to ear. For risking his life to save Flora from a similar fate, Lieutenant Dodić was awarded the highest decoration for bravery, the Karađorđe [Karageorge] Star
(Officer’s).45

  Two days later, the Serbs took the town of Monastir.

  Chapter 10

  Wounded

  1916–17

  “Is she alive?” demanded Colonel Milić when the doctor of the First Dressing Station answered the field telephone. He had called the moment the reports reached him of Flora’s injuries. “We’ve not seen her, sir,” the doctor replied. “Well, send out a patrol. She must be out there somewhere,” Milić responded curtly. Hardly had the doctor sent out a search party into the snow-shrouded landscape when Milić telephoned again. “Have you found her?” he asked. “Not yet,” replied the doctor. “Then send out another patrol,” he insisted. A few minutes later, he interrupted the busy doctor again. “Well?” he queried abruptly. “I’m sorry, sir, she’s nowhere to be found,” answered the doctor despondently. “I’ve already sent out two patrols. I simply can’t spare any more men.” “Are you waiting for me to come and join the search?” snapped the furious colonel. “I don’t care what it takes. I want you to send out every last man until she’s found.”1

  The stretcher-bearers had carried Flora off into the blizzard towards the dressing station, by coincidence the same one that she had joined near Prilep almost a year ago to the day. They stumbled though the snow, straining their eyes through the storm in an attempt to spot any landmarks that could lead them there. The trip should have taken them half an hour. Instead, they missed the station. As they walked grimly in circles carrying Flora, their faces whipped painfully by the snow and biting wind, her blood began to seep through her dressings, through the thick fabric of the stretcher, onto the snow. She remained conscious all the while, shivering and shuddering from the agony of her wounds, the loss of blood and the cold. “I was just about at the end of my tether,” she recalled. It took the exhausted men nearly two hours to spot the small tents of the station.