Byzantine Blog

At the beginning of United Nations' (Nations United against Serbia, as Kapor would say) blockade of Serbia in 1991, Serbian artist, writer and famous bohemian Momo Kapor started a yet-another-blockade journal that was later published under the title Blockade 011. On Monday of the Fourth Week of the blockade, he wrote:

I read in the papers British Conservative Peter Bisley's statement that 'Yugoslavia's 1918 birth was unfortunate', with which I absolutely agree! But this honored Brit has no idea that among the midwives to that unfortunate birth was one of his compatriots - Miss Flora Sandes - who, as tender and beautiful as she was, was shot at by Slovenians and Croats dressed in Austro-Hungarian uniforms, while Albanians (that Great Hope of European Family!), according to their old tradition, were attacking her from behind during the long marches in the freezing torrential rains over Albania.

Born in 1876 to an Irish clergyman, Flora Sandes enlisted as a volunteer with a Serbian ambulance unit upon the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war with Serbia on 28 July 1914. During the Great Retreat, she joined the Iron Regiment of Serbian Army on the heroic march to Corfu through treacherous Albanian mountains - the deadly but ingenious strategy which allowed Serbian Army to break through the rings of siege and free Serbia from the outside, paying for that freedom with the entire third of its population.

Death itself, which was brutally cutting Serbian nation and army down with bullets, grenades and typhus, was halted for an instant in Valjevo hospital, stunned before those strange gray eyes of London fog and spared their lives. In 1915, it allowed the ship on which Flora rushed to return to Thessaloniki and then to Serbia to safely pass through torpedoes of Austro-Hungarian Sumarens and minefields, astonished by the courage of this woman who, after the lectures in London and fundraising for Serbian Army, was going back to hell. (Momo Kapor, Blockade 011)

The old Serbian journalist and diplomat, Milan Jovanovic Stojimirovic wrote that the "British Amulet of the Second Regiment" was an exceptional horse-rider (Serbs have given her a beautiful white mare which carried her through the four years of war and which she named Diana) and skilled gun and rifle shooter:

Her admiration for our common soldiers was endless, as was her moral exaltation and a determination to give her life for us. Soldiers loved and respected her like a sister, they practically carried her in their arms. Afterwards, Flora was saying she was never in the company of more honorable men, where no one has ever offended her or attempted to hurt her. Praising our soldiers as people who wouldn't steal and pillage even when they were dying of hunger, she always underlined their noble traits, for they were considerate of her feminine honor and have never injured her pride and integrity.

After the war in which she was wounded by a grenade, Captain Sandes retired with Serbia's highest war decoration, the Star of Karadjordje. She chose to stay and live in Belgrade, the capital of a newly born Yugoslavia. She married a Serbian Sergeant in 1927 and stayed in Belgrade even after his death, in 1941. During the WWII when Serbia found itself once again under occupation by yet another German incarnation, Captain Sandes was briefly called as a member of the reserves and, despite her age and the lingering effects of an old war wound, was willing to fight alongside Serbian Army again. She returned to England long after the WWII was over and Serbia was freed again, where she died in 1956, in Suffolk.

In her book An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army, published in the midst of WWI, in 1916, Flora wrote:

We finally came to anchor in a ruined Albanian hut in the middle of a bare plateau on the top of a hill, where we found the Commander of the battalion there before us, he having ridden another way. The Fourth Company, whom we had already met once that morning, were holding some natural trenches a short way farther on, and we were not allowed to go any farther. The Bulgarians seemed to have got their artillery fairly close, and the shrapnel was bursting pretty thickly all around. We sat under the shelter of the wall and watched it, though, as it was the only building standing up all by itself, it seemed to make a pretty good mark, supposing they discovered we were there, which they did very shortly.

An ancient old crone, an Albanian woman, barefooted and in rags, was wandering about among the ruins, and she looked such a poor old thing that I gave her a few coppers. She called down what I took at the time to be blessings on my head, but which afterwards I had reason to suppose were curses. The shells were beginning to fall pretty thickly in our neighbourhood, and our Battalion Commander finally said it was time to move on. He proved to be right, as three minutes after we left it the wall under which we were sitting was blown to atoms by a shell. My old crone had disappeared in the meantime to a couple of wooden houses on the edge of the wood. We had to cross a piece of open ground, which we did in single file, to reach this wood, and before we got to it we got a whole fusillade of bullets whistling round our ears from the friends and relations of the old lady upon whom I had expended my misplaced sympathy and coppers. These were the sort of tricks the Albanians were constantly playing on us from the windows of houses, whenever they got a chance.

We got down through the wood to where we left our horses, waited for the Fourth Company to join us, which they presently did, and then rode on, halting for a time, not far from where some of our artillery were shelling the enemy down below in the valley. The officer in charge showed me how to fire off one of the guns when he gave the word, and let me take the place of the man who had been doing it as long as we stayed there.

It was dark when we got to our camping ground that night, close to where the Colonel and his staff were settled, so I sent for my blankets and tent, which I had left with them, and camped with the battalion. After a light supper of bowls of soup we sat in a circle round the camp fire till late, smoking and chatting. The whole battalion was camped there, including the Fourth Company, with whom I had previously spent an evening at their camp in the snow, and I thought it very jolly being with them again. It did not seem quite so jolly, however, the next morning, when we were aroused at 3 a.m. in pitch-dark and pouring rain, everything extremely cold and horribly wet, to climb into soaking saddles, without any breakfast, and ride off goodness knows where to take up some new position.

It was so thick that we could literally not see our horses' ears; I kept as close as I could behind Captain Stoyadinovich, and he called out every now and again to know if I was still there. We jostled our way through crowds of soldiers, all going in the same direction up a steep path turned into a mountain torrent from the rain, with a precipitous rock on the near side, which I was told to keep close to, as there was a precipice on the other. A figure wrapped up in a waterproof cloak loomed up beside me in the darkness and proved to be the Commander of the Fourth Company. He presented me with firstly a pull from his flask of cognac, which was very grateful and comforting, and secondly a pair of warm woollen gloves, which he had in reserve, as my hands were wet and frozen.

We rode like this till after daylight, and then sat on the wet grass under some trees and had a plate of beans; they tasted very good then, but I've eaten them so often since that now I simply can't look a bean in the face. They asked me if I was going to tackle the mountain on foot with them or if I would rather stay there with the transport. I went with them, of course.

I can't help but wonder what would this brave woman and a WWI hero, who passed 50 years ago, say about the present occupation of Serbian region of Kosovo and Metohija and the diligence with which Britain's rulers are working on its amputation from Serbia only to hand it over to Albanians on a silver platter. Unlike Captain Sandes, the cowards in expensive suits who are playing Monopoly with our history, countries and lives, the faceless, nameless, tasteless mass of gluttons will never fight for what's good and true and right -- they'll just slither around in life, dreaming of an office higher up, of a newer car, bigger lobster, larger mansion... And if no one else but the Albanian drug-cartel will pay for it - so be it! No one will remember them, no one will thank them, no one will think much of them, they'll sink into the world's collective oblivion even before their bodies start getting cold, but at least they had all the caviar and champagne they could gobble down for a brief time while they thought they were alive.