You’ll Make a Lovely Sergeant
Jeannette Robinson
Flora Sandes was the only British woman to officially fight as soldier during World War I. She was a Sergeant Major in the Serbian Army and a Captain after the war. She was born in 1876 in Yorkshire. She often wished she had been born a boy and as a child she learned to drive, shoot and ride a horse. While working as a secretary, she spent her spare time training with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps, a women only military unit. She learned to march, give first aid, and signal.
She travelled to Serbia a week after World War I broke out. She worked in military hospitals, became fluent in the local language and joined the Serbian Red Cross.
Flora Sandes joined the Serbian Army and was promoted to the rank of Sergeant within a year. In November, 1916 she was seriously injured by a grenade, when the army retreated to the Adriatic coast and spent 2 months recovering in hospital. She was awarded Serbia’s highest military award, the Order of the Star of Karadorde. While on sick leave in England, she raised money to help the Serbian army. After the war, Flora Sandes lived in Paris and Belgrade and married an officer in the Serbian army. When Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Sandes was too old at 65 to join the Yugoslav army. The Germans arrested her but released her soon afterwards. Flora Sandes returned to England after the war and died in Suffolk in 1956. She wrote two autobiographies describing her exciting experiences in the army and elsewhere.
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Bookings being taken for the excursion to Newmarket for the National Horse Racing Museum. Places still available. Contact joan.garner1@btinternet.com .