Flora Sandes

Flora Sandes the only British woman officially to serve as a soldier in World War 1 ( in Serbian army )

## Physical description

### Gender

female

Flora Sandes was a British woman who served as a member of the Royal Serbian Army in World War I

She was the only British woman officially to serve as a soldier in that war.

Initially a St. John Ambulance volunteer, she travelled to the Kingdom of Serbia, where she was welcomed and formally enrolled in the Serbian army.

She was subsequently promoted to the rank of Sergeant major, and, after the war, to Captain.

She was decorated with seven medals

## Life and career

She was born 22. January 1876. in the small town of Neder Poppiton, in the parish of the same name in Yorkshire, England, in a well-to-do clerical family from Cork.

Her father, Samuel Dixon Sands,was a respected London citizen, in 1885. he moved with his family to Marlborough borough of Suffolk, where Flora spent her childhood and youth.

She was educated at a Swiss girls ' school for two years. with a lot of reading and advocacy, during her education she learned to speak French fluently, quite well Serbian and mastered violin playing.

As a young girl, she learned to ride horses, shoot firearms and drive a car.

She also worked as a secretary.

## A participant in the Great War

In her spare time, Sandes trained with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), founded in 1907 as an all-women mounted paramilitary organisation, learning first aid, horsemanship, signalling and drill.

She left the FANY in 1910, joining another renegade, Mabel St Clair Stobart, in the formation of the Women's Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps.

The Convoy saw service in Serbia and Bulgaria in 1912 during the First Balkan War.

At the outbreak of the World War I in 1914, she volunteered to become a nurse, but was rejected due to a lack of qualifications

Disappointed by this decision, she managed to get in touch with Mabel Gruić, the wife of Slavko Grujić, head of the Ministry of foreign affairs of the Kingdom of Serbia, who at the time was gathering nurses and Surgeons for an Anglo-American unit designed to help Serbia.

Gruic accepted Flora's offer to include her in the list of nurses, and 12.August 1914. in the year, she took a train with an Anglo-American unit towards Serbia from the platform of the Charing Cross railway station.

After arriving in the Kingdom of Serbia, she first disembarked from the train in Niš, from where, according to the decision of the Red Cross, she traveled to Kragujevac.

In Kragujevac, Flora Sands and other members of the Anglo-American unit were received by the Chief of Medical Services of the Serbian Army, Dr. Roman Sondermajer, and the director of the hospital, Dr. Nikola Vučetić, on August 29 at the First Reserve Hospital in Kragujevac.

Flora's arrival followed immediately after the great victory of the Serbian army at Cer, so there was a lot of work in the hospital to care for the wounded from the wounds received in this battle.

For her service in caring for the wounded and self-sacrificing work in the military hospital she was awarded the Medal of the Serbian Red Cross and the Cross of mercy.

At the end of year, she returned to England with her friend Emily Symonds and collected aid for Serbs, primarily money to buy medicine for wounded Serbs. with the money raised, they were able to obtain twenty tons of medical supplies, disinfectants and an X-ray machine.

She returned to Serbia via Thessaloniki and Đevđelia in February 1915 together with her friend Emily. She stayed in Niš for a short time, where she donated an X-ray machine to the Second Reserve Hospital.

From Niš, by the decision of medical colonel Dr. Vojislav Subotić, she was sent to Valjevo, the "city of hospitals" where spotted typhus was rampant.

In Valjevo, she and Emily worked in the High School Hospital and both contracted typhus while treating patients .

After the defeat of the Serbian army and the occupation of Serbia in the fall of 1915, Flora joined the ambulance of the Second Infantry Regiment of the Moravian Division "Knjaz Mihailo" - Iron Regiment in Prilep along with Milunka Savić

In June 1919, a special Act of Parliament was passed in Serbia that made her the Serbian Army's first female commissioned officer.

She was finally demobilised in October 1922

In May 1927, Sandes married Yuri Yudenitch, a former Russian White Army general officer. The couple lived for a time in France, but afterwards returned to Serbia (which had become part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and settled in Belgrade.

When, during the Second World War, Germany launched its attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941, Sandes and Yudenitch were recalled to military service, but the invasion was over before they could take up any military duties.

They were briefly interned by the Germans, before being released on parole. Yudenitch fell ill, was removed to hospital, and died there in September 1941.

Sandes subsequently returned to England. She spent the last years of her life in Suffolk, living at Lower Hacheston near Wickham Market.

She died at the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital on 24 November 1956.

She was cremated at Ipswich Crematorium and her ashes scattered in the Garden of Remembrance. In St Andrew's Church in Marlesford, a memorial plaque on the south wall in the choir stalls is dedicated to her

## Note

she also published two autobiographical books :

·       Sandes, Flora. An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army — London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916.

·       Sandes, Flora. The Autobiography of a Woman Soldier: A Brief Record of Adventure with the Serbian Army 1916–1919 — London: H.F. & G. Witherby, 1927.