Flora Sandes

Flora Sandes (, 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, as 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 ( Besnard). In 1916, during the Serbian advance on Bitola (Monastir), Sandes was seriously wounded by a grenade in hand to hand combat. At the same time, she was promoted to the rank of sergeant major. With Evelina Haverfield, Sandes founded the Hon. Evelina Haverfield's and Sergt-Major Flora Sandes' Fund for Promoting Comforts for Serbian Soldiers and Prisoners. She was finally demobilised in October 1922. She was cremated at Ipswich Crematorium and her ashes scattered in the Garden of Remembrance. In St Andrew's Church in Marlesford, a memorial plaque on the south wall in the choir stalls is dedicated to her.

Legacy

In 1920, the sculptor Alice Meredith Williams made a painted plaster model of Flora Sandes in action for the Imperial War Museum, where it remains. In 2009 a street in Belgrade was named after her. There was formerly a Wetherspoon pub named "The Flora Sandes" in her honour in Thornton Heath. It closed in 2018.

In popular culture Our Englishwoman, a television film based on the biography of Flora Sandes and directed by Slobodan Radovitch, was produced in 1997 by the Serbian broadcasting service RTS. The last track of the album England Green and England Grey by Reg Meuross is "The Ballad of Flora Sandes". It is an interpretation of her life.