Miss Flora Sandes, who died recently at the age of 80, served for seven years from 1915 in the Serbian Army as a fighting soldier and was decorated for her bravery in the field.
She was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Samuel Dickson Sandes, Rector of Whitechurch, co. Cork, who later moved to England, where she was born. She was adventurous by nature and learnt to ride and shoot and, in the days when motoring was an adventure and not just a means of transport, acquired an old French racing car. In such ways she relieved the monotony during the period when she had to earn her living as a secretary in a London office.
At the beginning of the 1914-18 War, having been a member of the St. John Ambulance Brigade for some years, she had a chance to go out to Serbia with a small nursing unit. She later joined the Serbian Red Cross, and when the Bulgarians invaded Serbia she obtained permission to join the ambulance of the 2nd Infantry Regiment as a dresser. The Serbian Army was slowly being driven back by overwhelming odds with their only line of retreat through the Albanian Mountains, and conditions were such that Miss Sandes drifted by successive stages from a nurse into a soldier. The soldiers with the ambulance took it for granted that anyone who could ride and shoot would be a soldier under such conditions, and it was not unusual for Serbian peasant girls to fight with the army. When, therefore, they reached country impassable to ambulances she took the Red Cross badge off her arm and said she would join the 2nd Regiment as a private. The procedure was simple; the colonel took the little brass regimental figures off his own epaulettes and fastened them on the shoulder straps of his new recruit, and official sanction came a little later. She was regarded as a considerable asset, for the simple peasant soldiers looked on her as a representative of England and a pledge that in the end England would help them. But their personal affection for her soon increased almost to idolatry, for under the stress of war she showed all the qualities they most admired-outstanding courage, cheerfulness, and sympathy.
MOUNTAIN WARFARE
Her service with the Serbian Army lasted seven years and she experienced the hardest conditions of mountain warfare, with terrible losses, through defeat and victory until the general demobilization in the autumn of 1922. The 2nd Regiment was known as the "Iron Regiment" and spent most of its time in the front line where she fought in every battle until she was severely wounded by a Bulgarian hand grenade in November, 1916. Sergeant Sandes, as she then was, was taken to a British military field hospital for Serbians, where she remained for about two months, and where she was decorated by the aide de camp of the Prince Regent with the Order of the Kara-George - a rare decoration given for conspicuous bravery in the field.
She was given sick leave in England, where she raised more funds and collected comforts for the Serbian soldiers, and in May, 1917, she returned to her regiment and took part in all further operations. She was given a commission in June, 1919, and promoted to lieutenant on demobilization in 1922, and in 1926 she received the rank of captain.
In 1927 she married Yurie Yudenitch, who had been a colonel in the White Russian Army and had escaped from Russia during the revolution. He joined the Serbian army as a sergeant and had been in her regiment. They lived in France for a time and later in Belgrade where during the last war they were both interned by the Germans. They were later released on parole. They had little to live on, but she had her army pension and taught English. Her husband died in 1941, and at the end of the German occupation she settled in England in a small cottage in Suffolk where she lived until her death.
