World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
“These months at Krushevatz were a strange mixture of sorrow and
happiness,” Dr. Inglis wrote afterwards. “There was a curious
exhilaration in working for those grateful, patient men ... yet
the unhappiness in the Serbian houses and the physical wretchedness
of those cold, hungry prisoners lay always like a dead weight on our
spirits.”
By February, 1916, the hospital was emptied and the staff sent as
prisoners to Vienna. After enduring many discomforts, they were
eventually released through the good offices of the American Embassy,
and enabled to return to England, where their friends had heard no word
of them during four months. When the veil was at last lifted, it showed
Dr. Inglis coming out of all the stress and suffering the first woman
to wear the decoration of the White Eagle, given to her by the Serbian
Government in recognition of her services. Other members of her unit
received the Order of St. Sava. “The Serbian nation,” said the Crown
Prince, “will never forget what these women have done.”
But not content with such services to Serbia, and with her courage
still undaunted, Dr. Inglis again set out in September, 1916, at the
head of a fresh unit, for service with the Serbian army fighting in
South Russia. The unit, numbering seventy-six women, comprised a
staff of women doctors, an X-ray operator, a dispenser, seventeen
fully-trained nurses, sixteen orderlies, besides cooks and laundresses.
The accompanying transport column, under the Hon. Mrs. Haverfield,
consisted of eight ambulances, two kitchen cars, a repair car, four
lorries, and three touring cars, with a large staff of women chauffeurs
and cooks. The unit landed at Archangel and travelled across Russia
to Odessa, where the workers met with a rousing reception. They then
proceeded to join the Serbian division to which they were attached,
in the Dobrudja, and another splendid chapter of Scottish Women’s
Hospital work was opened. A base hospital was started at Medjidia in
Rumania, with a field station nearer to the front; but after about
a fortnight’s work the inevitable evacuation was ordered before the
Bulgarian advance, and the unit retreated with the army. Of this first
hospital in Rumania Dr. Inglis writes: “The day after the unit arrived
at Medjidia, where the whole seventy-five were obliged to camp in one
big room, wounded began to pour in and ambulances to ply between there
and the firing line. There were no roads, just tracks across endless
plains.” Of the field station Dr. Inglis says: “The destination was a
place smoking from shells, and filled with a sense of destruction and
desolation impossible to describe. The Scottish women set up a camp
near by, and were attached to the Serbian Field Hospital. Aeroplanes
bombed them daily, and on one occasion the ambulance suffered a heavy
bombardment. When the orders came to move, the transport went through
five appalling days of labour, which can be understood only by people
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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