A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes

by Louise Miller

  “The days were very long,” wrote Flora. “We had no books or pencils. I used to gaze up at the narrow strip of blue sky and think that I would never keep an animal in a cage.”77 It was also apparent to the other women how wracked with worry she was about Yurie. “Her anxiety about him, her efforts to catch the smallest glimpse of him were agonizing,” remembered Ruth.78

  By the end of the first week of May, Katherine and Alice had left the stinking Albanian town of Durazzo behind. With the other British prisoners, they had been flown in groups to the east coast of Italy. German officers were everywhere, lending their Axis ally the appearance of being yet another country that they had conquered. The arrival of the British allowed the Italians to show their contempt for the Germans. “There we were treated like princes,” commented Patrick Maitland of the Times, one of the interned journalists. “Under the noses of German officers we were stood drinks and all payment was refused.”79 The prisoners were taken by train and bus through Italy. “At each stage we found our transport ready and waiting, and we were treated with consideration and good humour throughout,” reported Flavia. The last leg of their long journey took them through countryside of olive groves, vineyards and picturesque villages to the hilltop walled town of Chianciano, in the province of Siena.80 They stepped out in disbelief into a spa resort that had been built around famed mineral springs.

  The prisoners were taken to three adjacent hotels and given unlimited food and drink, access to the gardens, which were thick with lilacs and irises, along with the use of a former horse-show ground as an exercise field. “It was impossible to believe that we were in an enemy country,” wrote David Walker, another journalist. “Not one of us had been interrogated, not one of us had received anything but kindness at the hands of the Italian Foreign Office and the Italian people.”81 Within days they had their own newspaper, cricket, baseball and football teams and, for the less athletically inclined, bridge, chess and draughts. Every afternoon they were allowed out on walks in the company of detectives, while in the evenings they could go shopping for half an hour. “The Italians gave us a very generous rate of exchange for our now practically worthless Yugoslav money,” praised Flavia.82

  All the while, as the chilly month of May gave way to the hot, long days of early June, the American embassy in Rome worked hard on securing their release. Finally, on 10th June, they received the news that they could leave the next day. The prisoners packed their bags, drank the rest of their wine and prepared to leave. “Our departure from Chianciano was marked by friendly gestures from the inhabitants,” wrote Patrick Maitland. “They hoped to see us again in better times and were certainly going to miss our trade. Within five weeks, they admitted, the British prisoners had drunk more beer than the whole village normally consumed in two whole years.”83

  “The prison was exceptional, perhaps unique, in that it was an amateur affair hastily organized,” wrote Flora’s cellmate Ruth, who spent two months languishing in its confines before she was sent into internment in Germany. “It was staffed by half-witted local scum, who were ludicrously unsure of themselves and who therefore vacillated between needless ferocity and lazy apathy.” The guards had been selected from the Volksdeutsche for their ability to speak both Serbian and German. The most senior staff in the prison were also Volksdeutsche. Most day-to-day authority was invested in Richter, the chief warder, and Hahn, the second warder. Richter, in peacetime, had been a carpenter and a good one at that, by reputation. He was also a sadist. “He was constantly telling women that their husbands or sons were going to be shot that night and then eagerly watching for a twitch of agony,” wrote Ruth. “He seemed to be always a member of the firing squads.” Cruelty came less easily to blond, blue-eyed Hahn. “He had obviously been born with decent instincts, and it was strange to watch him slowly deteriorate,” she commented. “Several times he did small kindnesses to the women but was furious if thanked.” Like Richter, he also joined the firing squads but struggled to cope. “For four days Hahn drank steadily and could not eat a mouthful,” recalled Ruth after one hundred and twenty-eight Serbs were executed, not all from that prison. “I knew, because I had to place and remove his meals. As conditions in the prison became steadily more frightful, Hahn drank more and more.”

  The “frequent” executions took place at two a.m., although it is unclear whether any occurred while Flora was there. At first the men and women selected for death were dragged out of the prison to a nearby park, almost certainly Kalemegdan. Then, one day, Hahn announced to one of the women that as such detours were “a waste of time” they would henceforth take place in the cellar. The steps to it lay off the same passage as the women’s cell. Although the guards first slammed and bolted the door and turned up the radio in the office to drown out the sound, they could still hear the muffled bursts of firing above the dance music.84

  The women lived day by day with the threat that they might be shot. Flora refused to be intimidated. “Had a row with Hahn because he shouted at me and was threatened with the cellar,” she scribbled.85 The other women looked on with a mixture of alarm and admiration. “Flora Sandes knew how to handle [the guards],” commented Ruth. “She possessed a wonderful fund of Serbian swear words which she launched at [them] with such devastating effect that while she was there they behaved almost respectfully.”86

  4th July 1941 was Yurie’s fifty-third birthday. That day Flora heard that he had become so ill that even the prison doctor – a man of brutal instincts named Jung – had agreed that he needed to be taken to hospital. The women in the cell could see the almost physical impact the news had on her. They spoke to her quietly in sympathy while Ruth, as “head woman”, approached Hahn to ask that she be allowed to say goodbye to him first. Brusquely, he agreed. That afternoon she accompanied Flora into the cobbled yard. “Out stumbled her thin, dying husband, supported by a stick,” she wrote. “He fell on the bench; his head bowed as he coughed.” Without words, Flora sat down next to him and put her hand on his arm. Shortly after he was “roughly” removed and taken through the prison doors on his way to hospital. “He looks terribly ill, shall I see him again?” Flora wrote in despair after seeing him.87

  The next morning, Hahn threw open the door to their cell. “Achtung,” he shouted. “Flora Sandes. Take your things and come.” He paused for effect while the other women stood still with horror. Then he broke the tension with a single word. “Home,” he said. The women burst into applause, crowded round her and enthusiastically wished her luck. “I could hardly believe it,” wrote Flora, “and I felt, in an odd way, rather mean at leaving those women there.”88

  She was taken to the office, handed her possessions and money and told that she first needed to visit Gestapo headquarters on the Terazije to complete some paperwork. “I said goodbye quite friendlily with Hahn and Richter,” she scribbled, “and we shook hands and I showed R[ichter] my Kara-G[eorge] legitimation with my photo as an officer, which seemed to tickle him very much, and when we got to the Gestapo the young man who escorted me there asked for it too, and showed it to the others.” There, she was introduced to “Mr Huber” who became, in effect, her Gestapo parole officer. In his presence she signed some paperwork in promise of good behaviour, agreeing to speak only to Serbs, to show any letters she received to him first and to say or do nothing that might “offend Germany”. She also had to agree to report to him weekly.

  In disbelief that she was free, she was escorted to the door and told to return home. She hurried through the streets feeling “dazed” and “very dirty”, all the while expecting to be rearrested at any moment. She was nearly at her door when someone called out to her. She turned to see Yurie waving at her from a carriage. He had been released from hospital at the same time that she had been sent home. “Richter had fetched him himself, and got him a carriage and even carried his bag, as Yurie was so ill and weak,” she wrote.89 They stepped through their front door together after eleven days in prison.

  “We sat on the porch and had break
fast and talked,” recorded Flora on the day of her release. “M[arica] and the dogs overjoyed to see us… Yurie went to bed very soon. He had a very bad night, and called me (I was sleeping in the other room then) about 11.30, and I sat up with him all night, in the armchair. His heart [is] very bad.” The next morning, a Sunday, he was so ill that in desperation Flora raced through the streets trying to find a doctor from a local practice. None were open. On her return, she sent Marica out with instructions to fetch Dr Svetislav Stojanović, Katherine’s former chief surgeon. He came at once to give him an injection. That night Flora stayed with Yurie on a campbed. “He had a bad night,” she wrote simply.90

  The next morning he was no better. In despair about what best to do, she ordered a taxi to take him back to the clinic that had “starved” him when he had stayed there last, comforting herself with the knowledge that at least he would have medical care on hand. “He was put into a nice little room by himself,” she wrote that evening. “I am only allowed to stay from 12 to 1 with him. I came home feeling very sad.” Every day for the rest of July Flora walked to the clinic to see him for the solitary hour she was permitted. She brought him his lunch, kept him company and noted the state of his health each day in her diary. His arms and hands swelled and he had had to have fluid removed from his lung – “one litre (4th time)”, she noted flatly.91

  Meanwhile she kept as busy as she could. When she was not with Yurie she passed her time searching the shops in the sticky July heat for food she thought he might like. She also gave English lessons, something that the Gestapo had forbidden her to do, but she felt she had no choice. With prices in Belgrade soaring, her invalids’ pension bought her almost nothing, and she needed money to care for Yurie. She had a steady if not abundant succession of students – most people in Belgrade believed that the Allies would win the war and enough were willing to take the risk of running foul of the Germans by taking lessons.92

  She also had Mr Huber to visit weekly. She would dress in full Serbian uniform, recalls Mirjana Harding (née Vidaković), to stand up to him. “Paid my visit to Gestapo as ordered, at 11, all most pleasant,” she wrote in her diary after her first interview with him on 12th July. Soon she felt confident enough to make queries and requests of her own. In late July she marched into his office to ask him about a man who had questioned her. “If anyone comes to see you again they must show you their badge, unless they’re in Gestapo uniform,” he told her. Feeling emboldened at his response, next she asked him if she could visit Miss Jane Allison, a “stern old Scottish spinster” whom the Gestapo had thrown into prison. Her request was too much for Huber. “He most indignantly refused,” she reported.93

  Flora’s request was symptomatic of her attitude towards abiding by the Gestapo’s rules. If she thought she might get away with it, she did as she pleased. Not only did she continue to teach English “under the noses of the Germans”, she had no intention of obeying the order that she speak only to Serbs.94 But as the weeks passed, she had fewer opportunities to savour each small victory. The small colony of British women dwindled rapidly, as one arrest followed another. Most, after a stay in the same prison as Flora, were interned in Liebenau, a civilian internment camp in southern Germany. And of those who remained free, many were too fearful to be seen with her. “I abruptly realized the folly of being seen speaking to an Englishwoman… especially one who had lately been to prison,” wrote Lena Yovitchitch of a chance encounter with her.95 It meant, for Flora, an increasingly isolated and lonely existence.

  By the third week of July, Yurie’s health had seemingly begun to stabilize. On 2nd August, after nearly a month at the clinic and a final check by the doctor, he was released. Flora was overjoyed. So too was Yurie. “Yurie came home,” wrote Flora happily, another event she considered important enough to merit capital letters in her diary.96 For the first couple of days, all went well. He rested in the shade on the porch, slept in the afternoons and sat with Flora sipping the “real tea” that she had saved for special occasions. But on 4th August his health took a turn for the worse. His feet and legs swelled, his thin frame was wracked by coughing fits and he barely slept. Flora now began to voice a fear in her diary that had lingered unwritten for months. “Yurie about the same,” she noted six days later. “I made cakes for tea and we had tea together by his couch – perhaps for the last time?”97

  The following morning she brought him back to the clinic. For the first few days he was so ill that the doctors, contrary to regulations, allowed her to sleep there. She spent every possible moment with him, sometimes hiding from them after they began reinforcing their strict visiting rules. Yurie too began to face the fact that he was dying. “Yurie seemed awfully bad,” wrote Flora on 29th August after a visit that left her deeply shaken, “and for the first time said to me he thought he was going to die, and would like to die at home but ‘it would be more trouble for me!’… I went home feeling very miserable and wondering if Yurie would be alive tomorrow.”98

  Two days later he was carried home by ambulance for what his doctors almost certainly assumed would be his final days, although Flora may have held lingering hopes that he would stage a temporary recovery of the sort he had enjoyed time and again. “Great rejoicings,” she scribbled that day. “I can hardly believe my eyes that he is home again, and he is so delighted himself.” But the strain must have been almost unbearable for her over the days that followed. With the help of Marica she looked after him, sitting with him during the day and often for much of the night. She got little sleep and called the doctor frequently. One told her quietly, after giving Yurie a morphia injection, that the “end was very near”.99 Flora already knew as much.

  “I went to find Milenka after tea and get his wife to come and help, long walk and couldn’t find the place and was away for two hours, and Yurie was worried about me,” wrote Flora with remarkable presence of mind on 11th September.

  He only had milk for supper and coughed a lot. I went to bed and slept from 9 till 12 and Yurie didn’t wake me though he had been coughing, he says softly so as not to wake me. But at 12 he asked for tea, and we had it together and we sat and talked and smoked and he seemed all right. Then he said he wanted to sleep so I tucked him up and heard no more coughing and thought he was asleep. At 1.30 heard a little gasp and then a sound – the death rattle, rushed to Yurie but it was all over. Yurie had died in his sleep. Could not believe it and spoke to him frantically, but no heartbeat and no pulse. His eyes were closed as if asleep.100

  It was pouring with rain and very cold when, two days later, Flora and Marica shivered through the grey, wet streets on their long walk to Belgrade’s New Cemetery. They walked through the elaborate stone and wrought-iron gates, past the ornate sepulchres to the small Russian chapel. Crowded inside were several of Yurie’s Russian friends. So too was Lilian Vidaković (née Allen), the former president of the English Club who, along with her twelve-year-old daughter Cherry, was one of the few Englishwomen who had so far escaped arrest.101 She was putting herself at risk by being seen with Flora, as Flora realized. “A great help she was to me,” she commented appreciatively. The solemn group attended the long, Orthodox service, then trailed behind the hearse in the mud and rain to the grave. “Flowers on coffin. Cherry fainted from the incense but recovered afterwards,” noted Flora simply. Then the sad group turned away, walked out through the great gates to a café across the road. “Then walked to Alex. St [Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra] and all went our ways, Maritza and I walked home. Terrible day,” concluded Flora. “I slept for an hour after lunch on the sofa. M[arica] lit the fire as it was so cold. Wrote up diary.” It was the last time she did so for the duration of the war.102

  For three and a half long years Flora remained in German-occupied Belgrade. Her life in recent months had revolved almost entirely around her beloved Yurie and, alone with her thoughts, she suffered his loss both constantly and keenly during what must have seemed like an interminable and often forlorn wait for Allied victory. Not only was she l
argely cut off from the few British women who had avoided arrest and internment, with nothing but propaganda in the newspapers and over the airwaves, she was also cut off from her family and the rest of the world.

  The feeling of loneliness must have been particularly acute during the long, cold winter evenings after the six o’clock curfew when she sat indoors alone, listening to the sound of gunfire as it broke the eerie silence. “I cannot remember a night when there was no shooting; but later, when the people had learnt their bitter lesson, I think it was only the patrols keeping in touch to encourage themselves,” she commented. She also lived with a constant weight of worry. “I never went to bed without placing a dressing gown handy in which to receive the police; and a pair of slacks, warm jumper and thick shoes in case of acute emergency.”103

  She also suffered grinding poverty. Many of the wealthier inhabitants of the capital had been able to move to the outlying villages where they swapped comfort for relative freedom and more plentiful food, but Flora could not have afforded the luxury even had she wanted. She was reliant for income on teaching English and her students were in the capital. “As everyone in Belgrade seemed to be learning English I was kept busy teaching it,” she wrote. Busy as she remained, her work earned her barely enough to make ends meet. No longer able to afford the services of Marica and Sava, she moved from her large house to a smaller one in the same district, with only Pat for company. And difficult as it had been for her to buy food and fuel during her first summer under occupation, by winter it had become far worse. The cold had swept in on the back of a howling Arctic wind at the end of November, driving flurries of thick snow before it and coating the streets thickly with ice. “Neither firewood nor coal was obtainable, and winter fell exceptionally hard, even for the Balkans,” recalled Flora. “So I had to break up tables and chairs to make fires… Had it not been for the black market, which flourished openly, we would have starved.”104