Flora Sandes

Flora Sandes (Serbian Cyrillic: Флора Сендс, 22 January 1876 – 24 November 1956) 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 senior captain. She was decorated with seven medals.

Biography

Early life

Flora Sandes was born on 22 January 1876 in Nether Poppleton, Yorkshire, the youngest daughter of an Irish family. Her father was Samuel Dickson Sandes (1822–1914), the former rector of Whitchurch, County Cork, and her mother was Sophia Julia (née Besnard). When she was nine years old, the family moved to Marlesford, Suffolk; and later to Thornton Heath, near Croydon, Surrey. As a child she was educated by governesses. She enjoyed riding and shooting and said that she wished she had been born a boy. She learned to drive, and drove an old French racing car. She took a job as a secretary.

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 First World War in 1914, she volunteered to become a nurse, but was rejected due to a lack of qualifications.