Flora Sandes
Flora Sandes was was the only British woman who officially served as a soldier during the First World War. Women were not permitted to serve in combat roles on the front line. Sandes is therefore a fascinating exception.
She was born in 1876, in Yorkshire, England. From an early age, she exhibited an adventurous spirit, loving the outdoors, learning to ride horses, shoot and drive and reportedly expressing her wish she had been born a boy. When she grew up, she worked as a secretary and in her spare time she volunteered to train with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), in which she learned first aid, skills for riding horses and drill, among other skills. In 1910, she joined a similar organisation known as the Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy.
When the First World War began in 1914, Sandes applied to be a nurse but was rejected on the basis she lacked sufficient qualifications. Despite this, Sandes joined a St John’s Ambulance unit and left England for Serbia with a group of thirty-six other women to assist in the aid effort for the humanitarian crisis then happening in that part of the world as Serbian forces fought against the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She joined the Serbian Red Cross and, in her capacity as an ambulance driver, became attached to the Second Infantry Regiment of the Serbian Army. As the Serbian Army retreated through Albania, Sandes was separated from her unit and in the process enlisted as a soldier in a Serbian regiment. She served with distinction and was promoted to the rank of Corporal.
In 1916, as the Serbs advanced on Biotola, Sandes took part in an engagement involving serious hand-to-hand combat. In the struggle, a grenade exploded and seriously wounded her. For her courage, she was awarded the highest possible decoration in the Serbian military, the Order of the Karadorde’s Star. She was simultaneously bumped up to to the rank of Sergeant-Major.