A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes

by Louise Miller

  95 FSC/D, 18th–27th June 1915. See also: ISL, p. 25; ‘Nursing and the War’, British Journal of Nursing, 1st May 1915, p. 363.

  96 IWM/EA.

  97 IWM/EA. See also EYS, p. 30. Coincidentally, Katherine’s father, who was also a doctor, was an expert on typhus fever. See Donald MacPhail, ‘Statistical Comparison of Typhus and Enteric Fevers’, Glasgow Medical Journal, No. 10, October 1879.

  98 See CLM/FTL.

  99 TF, p. 20.

  100 TF, p. 3. See also: WSB, p. 273; HM/WBF, p. 456.

  101 TF, p. 6; LDN/VD. See also: ‘Magazines’, Scotsman, 2nd September 1915; ‘Dr Cookingham Receives Award’, Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, 22nd May 1915.

  102 SRCU, p. 42.

  103 TF, p. 5. See also: Michael D. Nicklanovich, ‘Rebecca West’s “Constantine the Poet”’, Serb World, Vol. XV, No. 4, March–April 1999; Papers of Richard Pearson Strong, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University [Rare Books GA82].

  104 FSS, p. 26.

  105 LFH, pp. 156–57.

  106 Letter from Dr Elsie Inglis, 22nd June 1915, quoted in Anne Powell, Women in the War Zone (Stroud: History Press, 2009), p. 172.

  107 SNW/TYE.

  108 FSC/D, 9th July 1915.

  109 SNW/TYE.

  110 FSC/D, 29th July 1915.

  111 FSC/D, 3rd, 4th August 1915.

  112 With thanks to Dr Jonathan Standley for providing the modern-day diagnosis for what Flora described as “infective jaundice”.

  113 See ‘Austro-German Menace to Serbia’, Times, 5th October 1915.

  114 Peter Kemp, ‘Gunboats on the Danube’, History of the First World War: Bulgaria: Germany’s New Recruit, Vol. III, No. 7 (London: BPC Publishing, 1970), p. 1086. Troubridge and the other members keenly felt that they had been sent as punishment to what the British Admiralty considered an operational backwater. See WSE, p. 105. Troubridge, for example, had had a long and distinguished naval career until he was subjected to a court martial, accused of letting two German cruisers escape from the Adriatic in August 1914 without engaging them in battle. He was later “fully and honourably acquitted”. See: RND, pp. 44, 45, 53, 187; DOS, p. 136.

  115 See: SC/TOS; MP, p. 51; TSC, p. 285.

  116 EWS, p. 183. Emily left Liverpool for New York on 22nd September 1915.

  117 See: IWM/WS; WWU, p. 36.

  118 ISL, p. 236.

  119 WWU, p. 37.

  120 FSC/D, 23rd October 1915.

  121 See ‘Ships Torpedoed Without Warning’, Nevada State Journal, 15th October 1915.

  122 IWM/WS.

  123 FSC/D, 23rd October 1915.

  124 FSC/D, 3rd November 1915.

  125 During 1917, the dangerous voyage between Marseilles and Salonika was practically abandoned, in preference to a route through Italy and mainland Greece that minimized sea travel. That year, on 21st November, south-west of Sicily, the Mossoul was sunk by a torpedo.

  126 EWS, p. 55.

  127 WWU, p. 67.

  Chapter 5

  1 EWS, pp. 9–10.

  2 EWS, p. 4.

  3 FSC/D, 3rd November 1915.

  4 OWW, p. 12.

  5 A/ITB.

  6 EWS, pp. 5–6; FSC/D, 6th, 8th November 1915.

  7 FSC/D, 8th, 9th November 1915.

  8 EWS, p. 6.

  9 FSC/D, 8th November 1915.

  10 WWU, pp. 48–49.

  11 EWS, p. 13; FSC/D, 9th November 1915.

  12 EWS, pp. 15–16.

  13 FW, p. 90.

  14 See: FW, p. 96; TSC, p. 67.

  15 FSS, p. 20.

  16 FSJ, p. 131.

  17 EWS, pp. 22–23.

  18 EWS, p. 21.

  19 FSC/LET to Sophia, 21st November 1915.

  20 FSC/D, 14th November 1915.

  21 EWS, p. 23.

  22 IMC, p. 21.

  23 EWS, pp. 27–28.

  24 FSC/D, 14th November 1915.

  25 EWS, p. 29.

  26 FSC/LET to Sophia, 21st November 1915.

  27 EWS, p. 33.

  28 FSC/D, 15th November 1915.

  29 FSC/LET to Sophia, 21st November 1915.

  30 FSC/LET to Sophia, 21st November 1915.

  31 EWS, p. 38.

  32 EWS, pp. 63, 89.

  33 FSC/LET to Sophia, 21st November 1915.

  34 EWS, p. 30.

  35 FSC/D, 19th November 1915.

  36 EWS, p. 51.

  37 FSC/D, 20th November 1915.

  38 EWS, p. 64.

  39 FSC/D, 24th November 1915; EWS, pp. 68–70.

  40 FSC/D, 24th November 1915.

  41 EWS, p. 72.

  42 EWS, pp. 74–75.

  43 EWS, p. 47.

  44 FSC/D, 20th November 1915.

  45 FSC/LET to Sophia, 21st November 1915.

  46 EWS, p. 80.

  47 FSC/D, 26th November 1915; EWS, p. 81.

  48 EWS, p. 81.

  49 Diary entry, 28th June 1917, IWM/MM. They had two children. Greig died in 1958.

  50 FSC/LET to Sophia, 21st November 1915.

  51 EWS, p. 85.

  52 AWS, p. 13.

  53 AWS, pp. 13–14.

  54 EWS, p. 91. See also FSC/ALN.

  Chapter 6

  1 EWS, p. 94.

  2 FSC/D, 29th November 1915. In fact, the flesh had been stripped by POWs and refugees, who sometimes ate it raw. See: MSY, p. 209; FSJ, p. 150; ANZ/MMA. The women of the Stobart Unit were also forced to eat the fallen animals. See IMC, p. 65.

  3 EWS, p. 101.

  4 MFS, p. 318.

  5 FW, pp. 150, 158.

  6 See TSC, p. 150.

  7 See: FW, p. 168; K. Peball, ‘Serbia – The Long Retreat’, History of the First World War: Mackensen’s Balkan Victory, Vol. III, No. 8 (London: BPC Publishing, 1970), p. 1,119.

  8 EWS, pp. 104–106.

  9 EWS, pp. 113, 120.

  10 EWS, pp. 109–10.

  11 See for example SRCU, pp. 201, 203.

  12 Fortier Jones, ‘Glimpses of Serbia in Retreat’, Century, August 1916, p. 513.

  13 FSC/D, 11th December 1915.

  14 FIS, p. 191. See also: SRCU, p. 228; TSC, p. 291.

  15 WSA, pp. 72, 74.

  16 ‘Germans Showed No Mercy to Her Patients in World War I’, Kansas City Star, 5th July 1942.

  17 HSWH, p. 165. See also: EWD, pp. 180, 204; ‘In Man’s Attire’, Irish Times, 13th February 1916.

  18 HARCN, p. 215. See also: FIS, p. 130; RND, p. 66.

  19 WSA, p. 20.

  20 EWS, pp. 125, 135.

  21 EWS, p. 140.

  22 EWS, p. 141.

  23 AWS, p. 40.

  24 EWS, pp. 142–43.

  25 See: ‘Saving Serbia’, Western Morning News [Plymouth, MA], 24th April 1920; Jan and Cora Gordon, The Luck of Thirteen (London: John Murray, 1916), p. 236; SMH/FSII; RCS, p. 39; EWD, p. 59; LGP, p. 23; BBF, pp. 107–108; SH, p. 153; LLV, p. 203.

  26 AWS, p. 17. See AMM for a feminist interpretation of the phenomenon of women soldiers, including Flora. Serbian women did not always achieve instant acceptance among their male colleagues. See for example BBF, pp. 108–109. Women combatants were not unusual elsewhere in the east, particularly along the Russian front. The Russian “Women’s Death Battalion” achieved widespread publicity during the war although its actual performance under fire was questionable. See Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front (London: Constable, 1974), p. 305. Flora too had heard of it. “I’d very much like to see it but I don’t think I’d like to be in it,” she scribbled in a telling letter to her sister. See AMM, p. 129.

  27 EWS, pp. 144–50.

  28 EWS, p. 159; FSC/ALN.

  29 EWS, p. 158.

  30 See: HSWH, p. 155; Olive M. Aldridge, The Retreat from Serbia (London: Minerva Publishing Co., 1916), p. 70; LOS, pp. 69–70.

  31 TSC, pp. 267–68.

  32 ISL, p. 41.

  33 FSS, p. 245.

  34 TSC, p. 275.

  35 LOS, p. 67.

  36 Two were lucky to survive. The cook, Selina “Tubby�
�� Tubbs, caught paratyphoid and had to be held on horseback across the mountains to Scutari, and nurse Florence Clifton was shot through both lungs during an affray. See ‘A Unique Experience’, British Journal of Nursing, 11th January 1919.

  37 EWS, p. 160.

  38 EWS, pp. 161–62.

  39 EWS, pp. 166–67.

  40 EWS, pp. 167, 169.

  Chapter 7

  1 EYS, p. 240.

  2 See: IMC, p. 15; BLGF, p. 586; MFS, p. 318; ISL, p. 42. Estimates of civilian dead varied wildly from 50,000 to 200,000 depending on whether deaths during the retreat but prior to the mountain crossing were taken into account. The lower of the two figures is almost certainly the more accurate.

  3 BSL, p. 102.

  4 See DH.

  5 MOMI, p. 36.

  6 FW, pp. 204–205.

  7 FW, p. 242.

  8 EWS, pp. 170, 172, 180.

  9 EWS, p. 172.

  10 ASSA, p. 123.

  11 EWS, pp. 172–73.

  12 FSC/LET to unnamed friend, 14th October 1916.

  13 EWS, pp. 173–74.

  14 ‘Nurse Goes Back to Serbia’, New York Times, 3rd December 1915.

  15 Roughly ten thousand refugees reached Salonika. See: SNW/TYE; Private Papers of Miss K.E. Royds, IWM [Documents.12811].

  16 SNW/TYE. They likely told her disingenuously, as they had other relief workers, that there were “no Serbs in Durazzo”. See also: ESRC/HA; ASSA, p. 121.

  17 See: BTR, p. 143; SNW/TYE.

  18 EWS, p. 184.

  19 See: Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider, Into the Breach: American Women Overseas in World War I (New York, NY: Viking, 1991), p. 84; SNW/TYE.

  20 LLV, p. 195; EWS, p. 184.

  21 SNW/TYE.

  22 See: MSY, p. 287; ASSA, p. 48; Jeannette Grace Watson, Our Sentry Go (Chicago, IL: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1924), p. 158.

  23 RCM/WSR, p. 119.

  24 FWDN/ND; IWM/IFS.

  25 RCM/WSR, p. 119.

  26 See: LLV, p. 187; ESRC/HA.

  27 See: RND, pp. 180–81; MSY, pp. 225–27; ‘American Red Cross Nurse Tells of Terrible Experiences in Albania’, Augusta Chronicle, 5th February 1916.

  28 RCM/S, p. 415.

  29 RCM/WSR, p. 120.

  30 EWS, p. 185; QA, p. 126; LLV, p. 187.

  31 FSC/ALN; ASSA, p. 138; FW, pp. 247–48.

  32 EWS, pp. 187–91.

  33 FSJ, p. 169.

  34 Report of Miss M. Barclay, IWM [Documents.4320]. See also: FSJ, p. 240; IMC, p. 15.

  35 FSJ, p. 198.

  36 FW, p. 218.

  37 BSL, pp. 107–11.

  38 LOS, p. 93; BM/MAW, p. 112; ANZ/MMA; Alice and Claude Askew, ‘The Great Serbian Retreat: A Personal Narrative’, The Great War, No. 85, 1st April 1916.

  39 FW, pp. 250–51, 260.

  40 FW, p. 215.

  41 ASSA, p. 126; RCM/WSR, p. 117.

  42 RCM/WSR, p. 119.

  43 FW, p. 215. While they waited on the coast, there were rumours that some of the men resorted to cannibalism. See MWWI.

  44 See: JEB, pp. 74, 81; MC, p. 87.

  45 Figures are commonly cited to the effect that twenty of a total of thirty thousand schoolboys died in the mountains. See: WSB, p. 101; MFS, p. 318; NAB, p. 59; HSWH, p. 238. However, according to Corbett, who had the Yugoslav embassy in London as a source, roughly twelve thousand did not attempt the mountain crossing and turned back. See RCS, p. 45.

  46 ‘How 30,000 Serbian Boys Perished’, Weekly Dispatch, 28th January 1917.

  47 See: FW, p. 244; MWWI, diary entry 20th December 1915.

  48 See QA, p. 37.

  49 See: Helen R. Hughes, A Quaker Scientist: The Life of Theodore Rigg KBE (Rotorua, New Zealand: Beechtree Press, 2005); ANZ/MMA.

  50 See: JEB, pp. 73, 74, 82; QA, p. 126; RCM/WSR, p. 119; LLV, pp. 189–90.

  51 RCM/WSR, p. 120.

  52 JEB, pp. 74–75.

  53 ‘American Woman Saw Serbs Fight’, New York Times, 24th November 1916.

  54 JEB, p. 75.

  55 EWS, pp. 195–96. See also FW, p. 251.

  56 BM/MAW, p. 115.

  57 FW, p. 260.

  58 Dr Alice Hutchison, ‘In the Hands of the Austrians’, Blackwood’s Magazine, April 1916, pp. 457–60.

  59 FIS, pp. 227, 235; ‘Nursing and the War’, British Journal of Nursing, 26th February 1916, p. 181.

  60 SRCU, pp. 274–81.

  61 WSA, pp. 93–94; BJN/NW, p. 314; ‘Nursing and the War’, British Journal of Nursing, 15th April 1916, p. 337. See also: ‘Austrian Government Pays Tribute to Former American Girl’, Fort Wayne Daily News, 20th January 1917; ‘Hungarian Tribute to Lady Paget’, Scotsman, 13th March 1916.

  62 JEB, p. 82.

  63 RCM/WSR, p. 122.

  64 JEB, p. 76.

  65 IS/OMS.

  66 EWS, pp. 198–200. Two days later, with the Austrians pressing from the north, the last of the Serbs were evacuated from Durazzo. FW, p. 257.

  Chapter 8

  1 EWS, pp. 204–205.

  2 FSC/ALN.

  3 EWS, pp. 208–11; FSC/ALN.

  4 FSJ, pp. 203–204.

  5 RCM/S, p. 416.

  6 EWS, p. 206. See also BTR, p. 145.

  7 It was also used to rid healthy soldiers of lice before reclothing them. See LLV, p. 190.

  8 BTR, p. 147.

  9 FW, pp. 264–65; ASSA, p. 158; PTC, p. 24; BTR, p. 145.

  10 MOMI, p. 119. In total, around ten thousand Serbian soldiers died on both Corfu and Vido. See FW, p. 265. Flora visited Vido in the company of Robert Carr Bosanquet on 15th February 1916. However, her visit coincided with that of the Crown Prince and the island had been “swept and disinfected” and all bodies removed. See LLV, p. 190.

  11 FSC/D, 25th November 1915.

  12 EWS, p. 212.

  13 In fact, Flora had met Bosanquet previously, as he had sailed on the Arménie from Durazzo as far as Gallipoli.

  14 EWS, pp. 215–16.

  15 EWS, pp. 231–32.

  16 EWS, p. 216.

  17 FSC/LET to an unnamed friend, 14th October 1916.

  18 EWS, p. 217.

  19 See HOM/WP, p. 55.

  20 See: Alice and Claude Askew, ‘With the Serbian Army in Corfu’, Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLIV, June–November 1916; BJN/NW, p. 313.

  21 Private Papers of Miss F.E. Latham, IWM [Documents.5592].

  22 HOM/WP, p. 55; ‘Care of the Wounded’, British Journal of Nursing, 22nd July 1916.

  23 TM, p. 169; ‘Care of the Wounded’, British Journal of Nursing, 29th July 1916.

  24 Report No. 3 on Corfu Hospital, IWM/WW [Serbia 6.2/11].

  25 RCM/S, p. 416. See also: ESRC/HA; IWM/RCW.

  26 See: LLV, p. 193; ESRC/HA.

  27 IWM/RCW.

  28 LLV, p. 194.

  29 TM, p. 172.

  30 EWS, pp. 220–23.

  31 EWS, pp. 225–29.

  32 Anthony Dell, Report for Week Ending, 10th June 1916, IWM/WW [Serbia 5/19]. See also Society of Friends, War Victims’ Relief Committee, IWM/WW [Relief 4.1/46].

  33 SNW/TYE.

  34 RCM/S, p. 416.

  35 PTC, pp. 51–55, 67.

  36 See: BTR, p. 150; WWU, p. 77; HFWW/DB, p. 2986.

  37 During this reorganization, Flora’s Morava Division became part of the First Army. Previously, it had been part of the Army of the New Territories. See DH, p. 56; MOMI, p. 120.

  38 GS, p. 60. See also FSJ, p. 244.

  39 EWS, pp. 235–41.

  40 See: NG/OMR, pp. 385–87; GS, p. 61.

  41 EWS, p. 241.

  42 IWM/FS.

  Chapter 9

  1 FSC/D, 12th September 1916.

  2 FSC/D, 16th August–11th September 1916.

  3 See ASF, pp. 99–103.

  4 See RCS, p. 69.

  5 See: Lesley M. Williams, No Easy Path: The Life and Times of Lilian Violet Cooper (Brisbane, Queensland: Amphion Press, 1991), p. 59; ASF, p. 157; NAB, p. 168; SWH/LET.

  6 FSC/D, 11th, 13th September 1916; AWS, p. 26.


  7 From a photograph of Major Pešić, FSC.

  8 AWS, p. 44.

  9 AWS, p. 39.

  10 See: LS, pp. 112–14, 121, 129–30; AMM, pp. 53, 60, 147.

  11 FSC/D, 21st September 1916.

  12 AWS, p. 30.

  13 AWS, p. 22.

  14 DAB, p. 87.

  15 FSC/D, 30th September 1916.

  16 DAB, pp. 85–86.

  17 ‘Miss Beauchamp’s Report’, SWH [Circulated Letters, Tin 42, November–December 1916].

  18 LGP, p. 37.

  19 SWH/LET. See also OWW, p. 35.

  20 See: Letter from Miss Agneta F. Beauchamp, 27th December 1916, SWH [Circulated Letters, Tin 42, November–December 1916].

  21 FSC/D, 9th October 1916.

  22 AWS, pp. 27–28. See also FSC/D, 9th October 1916.

  23 AWS, p. 27.

  24 FSC/D, 14th October 1916.

  25 AWS, p. 30.

  26 AWS, pp. 16, 24.

  27 AWS, pp. 30, 17, 19, 26.

  28 FSC/D, 11th September 1916.

  29 AWS, pp. 42–43.

  30 AWS, p. 32.

  31 FSC/D, 19th October 1916.

  32 AWS, p. 64; FSC/D, 20th October 1916.

  33 AWS, pp. 46–47; FSC/D, 20th October 1916.

  34 AWS, pp. 34–35.

  35 FSC/D, 20th October 1916.

  36 AWS, p. 29.

  37 FSC/D, 22nd October 1916.

  38 FSC/D, 3rd November 1916.

  39 AWS, p. 40.

  40 FSJ, pp. 318, 320–21. See also: NG/OMR, pp. 391–92; MOMI, p. 236.

  41 AWS, p. 58.

  42 AWS, p. 59.

  43 CT/SS. See also L/NWB.

  44 ‘Flora Sand’s [sic] Own Story’, Kansas City Star, 2nd June 1917. See also: NYT/WEG; II/KSS; ‘Women in the War’, Indiana Evening Gazette, 10th October 1917; ‘A Woman in the Serbian Army – Sergeant Flora Sandes’, Morning Post, 14th December 1916.

  45 AWS, pp. 63–66.

  Chapter 10

  1 AWS, p. 67.

  2 See OWH/WF.

  3 AWS, pp. 67–68.

  4 AWS, p. 60.

  5 AWS, p. 68.

  6 OWH/WF.

  7 AWS, p. 69; FSC/ALN; DAB, p. 100.

  8 RCS, pp. 86–87.

  9 WSB, p. 68.

  10 LSW, p. 139.

  11 LSW, pp. 145–46.

  12 AWS, p. 72.

  13 See: F.G. Hemenway, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Mosquito, No. 101, March 1953; LGP, p. 16; SF, p. 160.

  14 See UDE, p. 168.

  15 See Marguerite Fedden, Sisters’ Quarters: Salonika (London: Grant Richards, 1921), p. 75.