Britain and Serbia in the WWI: British policy, public responses and humanitarian aid to Serbia

out with this unit as a transport officer left the following account of
the state of affairs in Niš: As we approached the building we passed a
great number of bullock wagons laden with wounded from the battle,
which was now nearing its close. The Hospital was full to overflowing,
and the wounded then arriving were being placed on the road and
Hospital yard (which was inches deep in mud), until other accommodation
could be found for them. These ox wagons had taken several
days and nights to the journey, and you can imagine the suffering of
the wretched men with fractured limbs and worse injuries. Many died
on the journey, and their bodies were left by the roadside. A few doctors
and orderlies were doing what they could to relieve the suffering,
but the doctors were few and the patients all too many, and they often
waited their turn for hours in the cold winter day before they found
shelter. But if the scene outside the Hospital was a pitiful one, within
the doors it was a thousand times worse, and I shall never forget the
scene of misery, suffering, and desolation we found there. One of the
largest buildings in the country was full to overflowing. Every inch of
space was occupied-it was impossible to pass between the beds, for the
poor patients were mostly lying on the floor, some on hay and straw,
and others on the bare stone or wooden floors. Sick and wounded lay
crowded together-men who had just undergone the amputation of
limbs; men in the grip of typhoid, dysentery, or frostbite; men dyingsome
were dead. So close together were they lying that one patient
could not move without disturbing his neighbour. Numbers had been
lying there with their wounds undressed for a week or more, and the
slightest wound, through lack of attention, often cost a man a limb,
and sometimes his life. Under such conditions many died of sheer neglect
alone. The few doctors and nurses were overwhelmed, and working
night and day against fearful odds and with few or no appliances or
medical stores.
One surgeon told me that he had been several days without chloroform,
and even major operations had been carried on without the aid
of anaesthetic. Worst of all, there was no means of ventilating these
dreadful wards. This first Scottish Women’s Hospitals unit, with
equipment for 100 beds, had to take over 250 patients on arrival in
Kragujevac in January 1915. In the same year, the Scottish Women’s
Hospitals established three more superbly run hospitals under canvas
where such hospitals were most needed in Valjevo, Mladenovac and
Lazarevac.
On the initiative of the tireless Mrs. Grujić, two senior doctors of
the Royal Free Hospital in London, Mr. and Mrs. Berry, set up their
own committee and with the help of the British Red Cross Society,
which already had one hospital in Skoplje, and with the help of the
Serbian Relief Fund, they personally took their hospital to Serbia.
The Berries were in charge of the Anglo-Serbian hospital stationed
in the well-known Serbian spa Vrnjačka Banja. In close cooperation
with the second British Red Cross hospital in Vrnjačka Banja, the
two hospitals provided superb services for the area where they were
located in early 1915.
One more organisation responded to the Serbian appeal for help,
the Wounded Allies Relief Committee, which sent a medical unit to
Kragujevac in the spring of 1915.
Mrs. Grujić was Patroness of the First British Field Hospital for
Serbia Committee, which sent two motorised medical units to Skoplje
and to Mladenovac attached to the Second Serbian Army.
Another motorised medical unit, the Allies Field Ambulance
Corps, arrived in Valjevo in June 1915 and should have served with
an army operating there, but the Foreign Office recalled this unit at
the request of the Serbian Government due to the presence of a Miss
Borthwick who was accused of espionage during the Second Balkan
War and was expelled from Skoplje.
Within a year, from August 1914 to August 1915, numerous individuals
and 17 British hospitals arrived in Serbia of which 15 were active
in the summer of 1915. These hospitals were truly British, composed of
four British nationalities, and had personnel from every corner of the
British Empire. Some British hospitals were international in character,
comprising British, American, Belgium, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian
and other nationalities in all medical capacities from surgeons to
orderlies, and from cooks to support staff. Protestants composed the
majority in them and besides Catholics, Quakers took part in medical,
sanitary and humanitarian work in Serbia. In almost all British hospitals
women accounted for the majority of staff, and they performed the
most demanding tasks: in addition to complex surgical interventions
and amputations, women tended the sick and wounded, drove ambulances,
or as sanitary officers tackled the filthiest and most unpleasant
tasks, until then regarded only as men’s work. The work of women in
the First World War crushed conventional barriers and defined the
contribution of women in war, which was exemplary in Serbia.
In the summer of 1915 the total number of international medical
staff who worked in 25 hospitals, in French and American sanitary
missions, in Serbian hospitals, or as independent medical workers,
in village first aid stations, and in other humanitarian engagements
was over 1000 people. Of this number at least 600 British staff, mainly
women, worked in the British hospitals or independently in Serbia.
The war in 1914, which was waged in three major battles in four
months, filled Serbian hospitals with over 92,000 wounded. Belgrade
was under constant enemy shelling, military operations were located
in regions which had no transport infrastructure, and the existing
railway was inadequate for the wartime transportation needs. Ordinary
trains without sanitary facilities were used to move the sick and
wounded up and down the country.
Serbian troops were gradually getting sick from the beginning of
the war to the end of 1914. The first cases of typhus were recorded in
November 1914. The contagious disease appeared in three forms: as
typhus, relapsing fever and typhoid. Typhus and relapsing fever were
spread by infected lice and typhoid by contaminated food and water.
The First Serbian Army suffered most from these infectious diseases.
Bad weather conditions, damp, cold and mud, overcrowding in army
quarters and damp trenches, were all reasons which contributed to
the occurrence of disease. Valjevo was especially badly contaminated
by filth and infection as it was the place where the Austro-Hungarian
army abandoned a large number of its sick and wounded troops.
Serbian soldiers had no fresh supply of uniforms to enable them to
change and to try to get rid of lice. Troops on leave, or those discharged
early from the crowded hospitals, gradually transferred contagious
diseases from the war zones to other parts of the country. The Serbian
army medical corps in the newly acquired territories was even less
organised and equipped with no staff to deal with the emergency, so
it was possible for the troops to carry contagious diseases unchecked
from the south to the war zone in the north of the country. The civilian
population was left medically unattended; without doctors who were
mobilised, women and children were exposed without knowledge or
advice about what to expect or how to protect themselves from diseases.
After the liberation of north-west Serbia, the fact that the police
authorities allowed destitute refugees to return to their devastated
regions and destroyed homes, going back to unsanitary living conditions,
was just another of many oversights. By the end of January
1915 the authorities realized that Serbia was in the grip of a large-scale
epidemic and that infectious diseases were not only limited to desperately
overcrowded hospitals. The reports which the Government received
from different corners of Serbia were alarming. In the village of
Goleš near Prijepolje, in the first half of January 1915, 11 members of the
Čović family fell ill and died from an unknown disease. Red and pale
blue rings and spots were noticed on the deceased. The disease was
afterwards transferred to neighbouring houses. A soldier on sick leave
brought the disease into the Čovićs’ home. He was the first to die, read
one report. The other read as follows: a teacher from the nearby village
of Seljane reported absences through sickness in his school: “yesterday
I had only 12 children in class and today only 7”. The teacher suggested
temporary closure of the school, but at the same time he thought that
it was inconvenient as the school celebrations of St Sava’s Day were approaching
and the children should learn to sing and recite. The same
scenes of illness were observed and reported on the opposite side of
Serbia. One military report summed up the situation accurately and
concisely: a large number of recruits were not provided with sufficient
accommodation, and they were crammed into available houses in Knjaževac.
The disease spread quickly among them. Of the 3600 recruits,
700 died, 1400 were discharged as sick, 264 were unfit for service, 1000
of them were hospitalized, and only 236 recruits were fit for service.
Concerned about military issues and faced with the ongoing disaster,
the Serbian Government appealed to the Allies on the 8th of February
1915, and asked each Allied country to send 100 doctors to fight the
epidemic of typhus which was raging throughout the country. Guided
by military and security reasons, the British War Office responded
promptly by dispatching a special British military medical mission
to Serbia, of which the official title was ‘The British Military Hospital
attached to the Serbian Armies’, with Colonel Hunter in charge of the