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

mission and of 25 Royal Army Medical Corps officers. The Secretary
of State for War, Lord Kitchener, was personally interested and kept
informed about the organisation and rapid despatch of the Mission to
Serbia as early as the 16th of February 1915. Colonel Hunter’s Mission
arrived in Niš, the war capital of Serbia, on the 4th of March 1915. That
date represents the beginning of the systematic, well organised and
ably led efforts, with the full support from the Serbian Government,
to control and halt the typhus epidemic in Serbia. Colonel Hunter’s
lifesaving mission in Serbia depended on several chief measures which
were taken: temporary stoppage of passenger trains throughout the
country, described as “rivers of infection conveying infection up and
down the country”, an imposition of quarantine on the main traffic
points, a ban on leave from the Army, a ban on visits, general measures
of disinfection in the whole of the country, and releasing sanitary
trains into operation. Most of these measures had already been
used without success, but consistent and systematic efforts and the
general use of improvised disinfectants, the so-called Serbian barrel,
brought about the first improvements. These measures coincided with
the arrival of numerous medical units, 100 French army doctors, and
independent doctors in Serbia from March to June 1915. Furthermore
the springtime and outdoor life in the countryside soon facilitated full
control over the epidemic. Colonel Hunter’s mission started an unprecedented
health mass propaganda campaign in Serbia in coordination
with the Serbian Committee for the Containment of Infection.
Under this scheme everyone in Serbia was to be informed about the
cause and the nature of the great contagion.
At the March 1915 conference in Paris, the British, French, American
Red Cross and Rockefeller Institute delegates set up the International
Sanitary Commission for Serbia composed of members of
the Allied and neutral missions in Serbia. The work of the Commission
was organised into 14 sanitary districts in Serbia. The British and
French were in charge of seven districts in the north of Serbia, while
the Americans worked in the south.
Half a million people were infected, and over 100,000 civilians
died from the epidemic in 1915. Colonel Hunter left Serbia in June 1915.
He thought that the exact number of victims might never be known.
Many Serbian villages were left empty and the grave consequences
were felt in the towns. The Serbian army had over 68,000 infected men,
and between 30,000 and 35,000 soldiers died from the epidemic, more
than in combat (26,373). The 70,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners suffered
a terrible plague, and more than half of them died in crowded
stables and makeshift prison camps, powerless to defend themselves
against lice and vermin. Huge responsibility for the tragedy in Serbia
fell on the government. The unanimous feeling of the people who
lived through those days in Serbia was that a great battle had been
lost. Serbian doctors did their utmost and suffered enormously. Every
fifth Serbian doctor (90 of them) died from typhus, relapsing fever and
typhoid; around 23 foreign doctors died in Serbia in 1914-1915, mostly
from typhus. Having heard of the heroic death of Dr Elizabeth Ross
in a military hospital in Kragujevac, her small native town of Tain in
Scotland raised £100 for the establishment of ‘The Dr Elizabeth Ross
Bed’ in the hospital in Kragujevac and for surgical and medical needs
in Serbia. The British medical units set up for clinical work with the
wounded were less well prepared for contagious diseases, and they too
suffered severely in the epidemic. The first Serbian Relief Hospital in
Skoplje lost two members to typhus, their third hospital in Kragujevac
lost three members to typhoid, and two Scottish Women’s Hospitals
units at Kragujevac and Valjevo lost four of their medical personnel.
The sacrifice of doctors, nurses and orderlies, their struggle against
infectious diseases, and their suffering was not in vain. Mrs. Mabel
Dearmer, an artist and playwright, who died in Serbia as a voluntary
orderly, shared this belief. She wrote in a letter that the only way to
see war is from a hospital. A friend of her explained the reasons why
she went to Serbia: She went on active service not because she was an
Englishwoman, but because she was a woman; not because Serbia had
been wronged and had fought gallantly, but because in Serbia help
was needed, and a place was vacant which she could fill. This place
Mrs. Dearmer found by her husband who served as a chaplain for the
British in Serbia, while their sons served in the British Army. Three
months after her death in Kragujevac, their younger son fell at Suvla
Bay in Gallipoli.
With the extensive sanitary and medical work in Serbia, by the
summer of 1915 the typhus epidemic was halted and localised. The long
calm in the spring and summer 1915, when those who had recovered
were discharged from hospitals, made it possible for the British to get
to know the country and to meet the people. The British formed a
romantic view of a primitive life in Serbian countryside which they
thought was far better than the life of the British poor in the East End
of London. The attitude of disobliging civil servants was ironically
described in three most commonly used words in Serbia: “tomorrow,
slowly and cannot” (sutra, polako, ne može). Serbian army officers impressed
the British as cultured and intelligent, and most of them spoke
German or French. The Serbian peasant was seen as grateful and curious,
stoic, long-suffering, non-complaining, and similar to the Irish.
Those similarities were found in a common tendency to enjoy life
rather than improve it, or in the instinct to live for today and not to
think of tomorrow. The Serbs, like the Irish, were seen as nationalist
in their politics and passionate about their land and property. Some
British thought highly of Serbia in her capacity to make sacrifices for
ideals. An impressive collection of books, pamphlets and articles published
about Serbia in the days of her ordeal helped to alter pre-war
British views about Serbia and the Serbs as a primitive and uncultured
Balkan nation.
The end of spring 1915 saw the beginning of a new phase of medical
work in Serbia directed towards the remote countryside and villagers
who hardly had any chance of obtaining medical services. This work
focused on endemic diseases and on much- needed healthcare for
women and children. In 15 towns in Serbia, the British, in collaboration
with the League of Serbian Women, opened workshops for disabled
soldiers and others who could make themselves useful and support the
country’s economy. This social engagement, which included, among
other initiatives, the opening of a sanatorium and an orphanage, was
stopped by the new enemy offensive.
The combined attack on Serbia by Germany and Austro-Hungary
from the north-west and Bulgaria from the east in October 1915 finally
battered down the exhausted defences of the country. Many members
of the medical units suddenly found themselves in the midst of
the chaotic retreat in Serbia. The gradual retreat of the Army and a
great number of refugees lasted nearly two months, when the decision
was taken, on the 25th November 1915, for the army and the state to
leave the country’s territory by way of Montenegro and Albania for
the safety of the Adriatic coast. In the retreat from various regions
of northern and eastern Serbia to the west of the country, the British
medical units gathered in Vrnjačka Banja and Kruševac. Due to the
impossibility of getting any means of transport for the evacuation of
the hospitals and patients, the majority of the female personnel decided
against abandoning their hospitals in the face of the enemy. The
safety and protection of the hospital’s patients were on the mind of
Lady Paget, who also decided to await the arrival of the Bulgarians in
Skoplje. The remainder of the members of the British units in Serbia,
under the aegis of Sir Ralph Paget, the British Commissioner in Serbia,
embarked on the great escape, enduring great hardships, hunger, extreme
cold and danger. Sharing the fate of the Serbs, the British looked
for solutions themselves during the retreat which, for some of them,
entailed a march of over 300 kilometres on foot. More than a hundred
British women retreating through Montenegro reached the safety of
the Adriatic coast in Albania. From here, by mid-December, the British
were transported by Italian steamships to the south of Italy, and
their eventual return home. The only casualty in the dangerous undertaking
was Mrs. Toughill, a Scottish Women’s Hospital nurse, who
died in a motor crash in Kosovo. Separately from this group, the third
Serbian Relief Fund unit, now attached to a Serbian division called the
“Flying Field Hospital” also successfully retreated, but a vast quantity
of hospital equipment and sanitary supplies, diligently procured over a
year, mostly became the enemy’s booty. The British in Vrnjačka Banja,
Kruševac and Skoplje, assembled in eight units numbering about 200
people, mainly women, continued their hospital work under the captivity
of Austro-Hungarians and Bulgarians until their repatriation in
February 1916. The enemy captured about 196,755 sick and wounded
Serbian troops, of whom about 50,000 died and the rest were interned
in prison camps.
Tens of thousands of Serbian troops and civilians died during the
epic retreat though Albania and Montenegro (more than 35,000). A
British hospital patient left an account of the retreat: Between us and
the sea were the mountains of Albania. You don’t know those mountains.
None who has not seen them can imagine them. They are naked,