An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army

Description

Flora Sandes was an officer of the Royal Serbian Army in the First World War. She was the sole English woman authoritatively to work as a soldier in World War I. Firstly a St. John Ambulance volunteer, she journeyed to the Kingdom of Serbia, where, in the upheaval of war, she was officially listed in the Serbian army. She was successively indorsed to the rank of Sergeant major, and, after the war, became a Captain. She was awarded with 7 medals.

Flora Sandes was born in Nether Poppleton, Yorkshire. She was the youngest daughter of Samuel Dickson Sandes, the past cleric of Whitchurch, County Cork, and of Sophia Besnard Julia. At the age of 9, their family resided at Marlesford, Suffolk; and then to Thornton Heath, close to Croydon, Surrey. In her childhood, she was taught by educationalists. She delighted in riding and shelling and sadly stated that she hoped she had become a boy. She knew how to drive, and drove a vintage French racing car. She worked as a secretary. In her vacant time, Flora was instructed with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) as an all women affixed revolutionary organization, coming to know first aid, horsemanship, communicating and training. She exited the FANY and joined another apostate FANY, Mabel St Clair Stobart, in the foundation of the Women’s Sick & Wounded Convoy. The Convoy saw assistance in Serbia and Bulgaria in the First Balkan War. At the occurrence of the WWI she aided to become a nurse, but was disqualified.

Flora thus enlisted herself at a St. John Ambulance unit founded by American nurse Mabel Grouitch, and left England for Serbia with 36 women to help the philanthropic emergencies there. They went to the town of Kragujevac which was the station for the Serbian forces battling against the Austro-Hungarian invasive.
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