WORLD WAR I; MEDICAL.

£3,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A photo album recording the First British Red Cross Serbian Mission during the First World War. An interesting record of British involvement in the south-eastern front, with photographs captured in the field. The British Red Cross arrived in Uskub (now Skopje in North Macedonia) in 1914 and spent the following year treating the wounded and typhus sufferers. The photographs show their journey, the hospitals, doctors, and patients, and the local scenery.The Serbian Campaign was ignited in July 1914 when Austria-Hungary invaded the kingdom. They were defeated by the Serbs in August, considered the first Allied victory of the war. In October 1914, six doctors and twelve St John's Ambulance orderlies were sent to the front line equipped with supplies for a field hospital. Arriving at the front line via Malta and Greece, they were instructed to take charge of four full hospitals in Uskub. Despite the great logistical challenge, they kept the wards functioning and eventually opened a dedicated typhus hospital, before returning in 1915. This mission was recounted by one of the doctors, James Johnston Abraham, in his 1921 autobiography My Balkan Log. Plates IV, VI, XIV, and XV were produced from photographs in this album, and as Abrahams mentions bringing a camera on Page 130, perhaps the album was compiled by him.A number of images show the hospitals and their doctors treating wounded and infected soldiers. Five of the six doctors (Abraham, Banks, Benbow, Higginson, and Kadish) are p

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