A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes Read online

  “It took me a month even to learn how to pronounce ‘Kragujevatz’,” recalled Flora. Most of the conversations she had with patients were conducted clumsily through sign language. “Of course we made many ludicrous mistakes at first in consequence,” she said.

  I remember finding a man sitting on the operating table one day using the most awful language – I couldn’t understand everything he said, of course – and perhaps it was just as well I couldn’t, but I was very much surprised at a Serb making so much fuss about the pain, so I went and fetched an interpreter to find out what it was all about, and then I found it was not the pain at all he was fussing about. When he came into the operation, he had hidden, under his shirt, a large lump of sausage, which he was going to take as a refresher when he came to from the chloroform, and this lump of sausage had somehow got knocked down and mixed up with the dirty dressings on the floor, and couldn’t be found anywhere, and he was horribly annoyed about it, it wasn’t the pain at all he minded.29

  Emily too fell foul of the inevitable misunderstandings. “Passing through one of the corridors one day, I stopped on seeing a man try to get a better position for his leg which had been terribly smashed,” she wrote.

  I moved it a little and was much surprised to hear him say, “Him leg not much good, pretty bad.” I asked him if he spoke English and he said, “No, American.” He had worked in the mines in Colorado for three years and had acquired a good amount of “American”… Of course we tried to learn the language, but our efforts at first met with very poor success. I asked one man, as I thought, to open his mouth, but learnt from the shrieks of laughter of the entire ward that I had said “Open your window and put out your tongue”.30

  The long, hard hours of work and struggle to learn Serbian served to take Flora’s mind off an event that affected her deeply, the death of her ninety-two-year-old father on 23rd August, only eleven days after she had left for Serbia. From 15th September to 11th October she made no entries in her diary at all, a highly unusual gap from someone who otherwise wrote dutifully. Although it is not clear exactly when and how she was told, she almost certainly received a letter or telegram from home telling her the news. Pragmatic enough to realize that there was little point returning home but wracked with guilt about not being there, she suffered through these weeks with only Emily for support. Reticent about expressing emotion, she occupied herself as best she could. She knew that she would be as busy at Kragujevac as she would anywhere else.

  Emily was her sole friend, support and confidante. Although she had an air of earnestness about her that Flora lacked, they shared a keen sense of humour and fun. And both were determined to spend their little spare time away from the hospital, partly to take a break from the conditions but also because their relations with the other nurses were becoming strained to breaking point. By the time they had reached Serbia, the other women had formed another tight-knit group, their cohesion at least partly cemented by their dislike of the high-spirited pair.

  While one of the nurses had left to work at another hospital shortly after arrival, the other five quickly rallied around the hospital director, Dr Vučetić. He evidently enjoyed his exalted status among them and would read his “literary” essays on practical medicine aloud to them until late in the evening, his doting wife next to him, her eyes shining with pride.31 Understandably, Flora chose to spend her free time otherwise. Her diary makes frequent reference to trips with Emily – never any of the others – to the country for walks or rides, to restaurants for dinner, to the casino or theatre and, typically, to go shopping, much to the disapproval of the other nurses. Flora in turn delighted in thinking of unflattering nicknames for them. One became “a touch of mauve”, another, the “red-haired mouse”.32

  Neither did Flora think much of Dr Vučetić. She was appalled by the poor standard of management in the hospital. Everything about their work was disorganized, even chaotic, and he could not, she felt, be relied upon to solve the inevitable problems that arose. Worst of all was the standard of cleanliness. Emily too was horrified by what she saw. “I went for a walk one afternoon when I saw a dressing-room orderly emptying waste cans, filled with the pus dressings, in a ditch opposite the main building,” she wrote in a report to the American Red Cross. “He answered my question by stating in a surprised voice that they had never burnt them and it seemed unnecessary to start now.”33

  In late September, to their surprise the women were joined at the First Reserve by a young English doctor. Thirty-one-year-old William “Robert” Ridley, from Northumberland, was the eldest of four sons of a Lloyds Bank manager. He had spent his childhood in the picturesque village of Rothbury before attending boarding school in Edinburgh. He was studious and hard-working, and won a place in Edinburgh University’s prestigious Medical School in 1901.34 But the young student struggled through his studies, his health sapped by tuberculosis. In his battle with the disease, it took him nearly ten years to complete his degree. During his final year’s examinations, his health collapsed and he was rushed to a sanatorium in Dundee to recover his strength. The Dean eventually gave special dispensation for his degree to be granted, in 1910.35

  Four years later, Dr Ridley’s fortunes were beginning to turn around. He appears to have recovered his health, and had worked as a doctor in Leith, Sunderland and Newcastle. By the outbreak of war, he was also engaged to be married. Driven almost certainly by a combination of patriotism and adventure-seeking, he immediately approached the War Office, hoping for work in Belgium or France. When they refused on the grounds they had no medical vacancies, he contacted the Serbian legation who hired him on the spot. In early September his parents received a call from the War Office offering him a position. By then, it was too late – he had reached Marseilles en route to Serbia.

  By early October the weather was beginning to turn. The hot days of September had been replaced by overcast skies and the cooler days and nights of autumn. The 12th of that month was one such day. The rain, which had begun the day before, continued incessantly, turning the streets of Kragujevac into running rivers of mud and casting a gloom over the chilly wards. That morning, while Flora was at work, she was handed a note from Dr Ridley in which he had scribbled shakily that he was suffering from dysentery. She took it immediately to Dr Vučetić. “Told the Director with the usual results!” she commented disparagingly. As “no one seemed to be getting any move on”, she took Emily with her after lunch to visit him at his residence outside of the hospital grounds. Both were worried enough about his condition to stay with him for the rest of the day. Late that evening Flora dashed off through the dark to the hospital to collect a “B.P.” (presumably bedpan) for his use, while Emily stayed behind with him. Nurse Violet O’Brien caught her in the act of removing one from the hospital supplies. Any sympathy Violet may have had for Dr Ridley was eroded by her dislike of Flora, and she took umbrage at her breach of hospital regulations. “Met O’B. and had a row with her on the subject,” wrote Flora, who had little but contempt for her. Bedpan in hand, she returned to Dr Ridley. Alongside Emily, she stayed with him all night.36

  The following day, Ridley was still “very bad”. Although he required Flora and Emily’s constant attention, the other nurses made few allowances. “Americano and I nursed him and did the hospital work too. The Happy Family all furious and won’t speak to us. What ho!” jotted Flora sarcastically that evening. With Emily, she began to look after him night and day, in shifts, their exhaustion and resentment increasing as each day passed with no offers of help. Only on one occasion did one of the other nurses – Violet O’Brien, in fact – take a night with him. “Miss O’Brien took night with Ridley!” wrote Flora afterwards in amazement.37

  On Tuesday 20th October Flora recorded in her diary that, at last, Dr Ridley had had a good night, while Emily wrote his mother a letter. “He’s suffering from dysentery,” she told her, “but he’s much better and hopes to be up in a few days.”38 By Thursday they felt able to spend an evening together at the
theatre. But within a few days Ridley’s health started to deteriorate again. On 30th October they were worried enough to call in a doctor. On 1st November he was worse still. “Moved Dr Ridley up to Hospital at 5 p.m.,” scratched Flora in her diary. “I took night duty with him. Another all night,” she commented, bitter at the lack of help from all but Emily. “Dr Ridley better in morning but worse later on,” recorded Flora two days later. Finally, one of the other nurses stepped in to help. “Mrs Hartney stayed in afternoon, Americano took night. Called me at 3 a.m. Doctor sinking rapidly. Did all we could but he died at 5 a.m. No one else there.”39 On 6th November Dr Ridley’s parents received Emily’s letter saying that he was better. The following day they received a telegram from Dr Vučetić telling them that he had died.40

  At his military funeral two days later the young doctor was given “music, soldiers, [a] gun salute and all Kragurawatz [sic] turned out,” Flora recorded.41 Dr Vučetić, his stout figure puffed further with the importance of the occasion, gave Dr Ridley a florid tribute.42 One can only imagine what Flora and Emily must have felt standing at his grave alongside the other nurses listening to Dr Vučetić’s speech, when they had done so little to help them keep Dr Ridley alive. A week later, they left the hospital for good.

  In the days before their departure they had little time to mourn. With the hospital already full, new and pressing demands were placed on it. On 7th November, with winter closing in and the recalcitrant Serbs still undefeated, Austria-Hungary attacked again across Serbia’s north-western frontier. This time the invaders left little to chance. They sent an army strong enough in terms of both manpower and munitions to crush the Serbs. Their initial target was Valjevo, a town north-west of Kragujevac. They then planned to move on Kragujevac itself.

  The casualties of the fighting were taken in droves to Kragujevac, quickly overwhelming the limited resources of the town and its hospitals. Even before the invasion, the First Reserve Military Hospital had almost run out of medical supplies. “The dressings began to give out early,” explained Emily. “You see, we had not been able to take much of a consignment with us, and the supply dwindled so that we couldn’t dress wounds more than once in eight or nine days, when all required one fresh dressing a day, and some two.”43

  Mabel Grouitch had left her Unit a week after arrival to join her husband Slavko in Niš, but kept in close contact with her nurses who told her of the desperate shortage. In a telegram to England begging for supplies, she reported that surgical stores were running short, surgeons were working eighteen hours a day and that her nurses were exhausted from the strain but doing “noble work”.44 However, when the hospital finally ran out of anaesthetic, it became too much for some of them to watch their patients undergo major operations and amputations whilst fully conscious. “[The Serbian soldiers] had to be held down,” recalled Mabel. “So indescribably terrible were the sights and sounds that even the nurses couldn’t endure it. I remember one day when an experienced Irish nurse [Violet O’Brien], who had seen service in India and many campaigns, fainted during one of these operations. She couldn’t stand it.”45

  Along with the medicine and supplies, the First Reserve ran out of clean clothing to replace the filthy uniforms of their patients. Beds were first pushed up against each other in pairs to accommodate three men, the least seriously wounded in the middle. When the beds ran out, the wounded were placed on sacks of straw. Then, when the sacks of straw ran out, beds were improvised from wooden planks placed on iron railings.46 Food too ran short for both patients and staff.47 Finally, the hospital could take in no more men. “After the battle of Valjevo,” recorded Emily, “we received so many wounded prisoners that, having filled all the houses, we had to improvise beds of boughs along the roadway, and place the wounded there until room could be made on the trains going into the interior. Peasant women helped feed them while they lay there.”48

  Kragujevac alone could not handle the number of wounded. Thousands were evacuated instead to hospital centres farther south like Niš, Skopje and Gevgelija. Some of the patients were sent to hospitals run by other Allied missions, which were now starting to arrive two months after the Anglo-American Unit. Of the British units, many members had been inspired to volunteer for “brave little Serbia” by the stories that had trickled back to Britain in September and October about the “gallant” work of Mabel Grouitch and her “tiny band” of nurses.49

  The Serbian army was no match for the firepower of the Austrians. The enemy advanced rapidly through the forested and mountainous country in the direction of Valjevo, with the Serbs in full retreat before them. When Valjevo fell on 15th November, the Austrians prepared to move on Kragujevac, only thirty-five miles away. On hearing the news Dr Vučetić flew into a panic. He rushed into the room where the five remaining nurses were eating breakfast to tell them that they had to leave in half an hour. “It was awful,” commented Ada Mann. “We just stuffed our things together and then went to the patients. For those who could walk all the clothes were thrown out of the window, and they put on the first that came to hand. Then the helpless ones were dressed as far as possible, and put on stretchers, then in the bullock carts, and off to the station. The last sound we heard was the knocking down of the beds.”50 All the wounded who could be moved were sent to hospitals in Niš and Skopje, well away from the fighting, while the nurses fled south to Niš by train.

  “Saw a dead Austrian. Had tea 400 metres from the Austrian lines. Drove back under fire… bombardment all night,” wrote Flora excitedly in her diary on 15th November from her room at the Slavia Hotel in Belgrade. The Slavia was the only hotel still open, and they had taken the only available room.51 She had left the First Reserve with Emily three days earlier, after completing her three-month contract. With hospital supplies at an end and relations with their colleagues beyond redemption, they had made up their minds to leave. They could do more good raising money for the Serbs at home, they felt, and a short holiday in the capital before they returned would do them no harm.

  Anyone they asked would have told them it was pure folly to travel to Belgrade just as the Austrians were making their plans to storm the city, but, for Flora and Emily, the danger was part of the attraction. After dropping their bags in their hotel room, they dashed out immediately to visit the newly built and well-equipped military hospital run by the American Red Cross, a short walk away.52 There, Flora and Emily made the acquaintance of its thirty-year-old head, Edward Ryan, a tall, dark-haired doctor of Irish descent from Scranton, Pennsylvania. If they were unaware then of his unrivalled ability to attract hatred, controversy and scandal, they were to learn of it soon.

  For the next two days and nights Flora and Emily became archetypical war tourists. “Looked round town at the ruins,” scribbled Flora happily in her diary,53 while Emily’s breathless account of their holiday found its way into the pages of the New York Times. “While I was there, shells fell anywhere,” she reported. “People were killed in the courtyard of the [American Red Cross] hospital. The Austrian troops were so near that we could see them. They were just across the River Sava. At night they played two big searchlights on the city, and if a sign of life appeared anywhere shells were dropped on the spot. No lights were allowed in the city, and it was forbidden to appear on the streets after dark.”54

  When they left the capital for home on 17th November, they left Dr Ryan and the American Red Cross behind to sit out the invasion. The campaign was evidently nearing the end. On 28th November, with his soldiers virtually out of ammunition, General Putnik, the Serbian Chief-of-Staff, took the decision to abandon Belgrade. The Austrians, now certain of victory, paused for three days in their campaign after occupying the capital, to allow their tired soldiers to rest. During this interval a small amount of ammunition arrived for the Serbs from the Allies. It was not much, but it made a limited Serbian counter-offensive possible and, more importantly, it lent them hope. On 2nd December Putnik ordered an attack on the Austrian columns in what he knew would be his final c
hance to stem their advance.55

  The attack caught the Austrians entirely by surprise. In the chaos that followed they lost one position after another. Soon they were in full flight, unable to take their weapons or equipment with them over the roads of churned mud. By 15th December Belgrade was back in the hands of the Serbs and the Austrians had been routed. The defeat was catastrophic for Austria-Hungary. Nearly half of its four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers had been killed, wounded, declared missing or taken prisoner. Serbian losses exceeded one hundred and thirty thousand, an immense number in proportion to the size of the army.56

  The Austrians had left behind a further sixty thousand POWs, bringing the total within Serbia to about seventy-five thousand. While some had been wounded, others had deserted. Czech regiments in particular were reported to have surrendered to the Serbs en masse, complete even with regimental bands.57 The war had also created five hundred thousand internal refugees.58 Civilians who lived near the fighting to the north and north-west of the country had fled to the interior, terrified of a recurrence of the atrocities at the hands of the Hungarians which had marred the first invasion.

  The Serbs did not have the infrastructure or resources to cope with the scale of the refugee crisis. When winter descended, the towns and villages to the south of the fighting were overflowing with half-starved and ill-housed refugees and prisoners. Across Serbia the incidence of disease started to mount ominously.59 The British Red Cross, based in Skopje, began to receive patients with diphtheria, enteric, pneumonia and scarlet and relapsing fever, and they were forced to stand by helplessly as several of their patients died agonizingly of tetanus.60 The rate of illness among the staff also began to rise worryingly. When one of the volunteers contracted smallpox, it sent panic into the ranks of his colleagues. Inevitably, the first deaths from disease soon occurred among the members of the Allied missions. The first British woman to die in Serbia, Miss Nellie Clark, succumbed to septic throat and Grave’s disease on Christmas Day, 1914. She had volunteered to work as a nurse with the Lady Paget Mission, also based in Skopje.61