[eSerbia in eUK] Remembering True British Heroes (Part I)

Day 1,808, 10:05 • Published in United Kingdom Serbia • by dr.doom


In this strange, virtual e-world, eUK and eSerbia are one of the oldest and the most trustworthy allies. Together with stood, sometimes stumbled, even fell but we always stood up back again. Stronger and more determined.

It is because eUK and eSerbia have players who share the same features of those who came before us. Those who faced unthinkable challenges in the past, overcame their fears and became true heroes. Those, British and Serbian who fought and died together as allies and true friends. This month we will remember them.

And we will not remember just great generals and brave politicians but ordinary, remarkable individuals who tend to be forgotten. This month, when we celebrate Armistice Day, the Embassy of eSerbia to the eUK will remind us all of those true British heroes of Serbia.

This is just one of their many stories.




Dr Elsie Inglis was through the crowded streets of London in August 1914. There was only one word on everyone’s lips: war. Great Britain was in it, together with its allies, Russia, France and Serbia. Dr Inglis was on its way to the War Office in Horse Guards Avenue, Whitehall in London and noticed several volunteers who were selling the flags of Serbia. Britain saw Serbia as a David facing the Goliath of Austria-Hungary and Serbian flags were sold on the street to raise money.

She met with an official from the War Office and offered her help as a doctor as she was one of the first women who got her medical degree in 1892 and worked as a surgeon ever since. When the official asked why she came there, she said that she wanted to see how she could help.

His answer was quite clear: “My good lady, go home and sit still”.

If there was one thing Dr Inglis could not do that was to sit still. Active in a suffragette movement, fighting for the right of women to be able to vote, Elsie was a hero before the war. Just weeks after she got this advice, she founded the “Scottish Women’s Hospital” and sending medical supplies to Serbia. Several months later, Dr Inglis arrived herself in war ravaged Serbia that was heroically fighting against the Austrian Empire.

She was treating both army personnel and civilians who were suffering from the typhus epidemic. She came with Dr Elizabeth Ross and a number of other British nurses like Mable Dreamer and Lorna Ferris. Many of them died just after several weeks. This is how Dr Inglis described what she saw:






Situation was getting worse and her Government asked her to come back to the UK. She replie😛 “I will come back but only with my friends from the Serbian army. Not in any other way”.

Relentlessly, she was working day and night in hospitals scattered across warfields of the Balkans. Cold, famine and disease were taking their toll. Dr Inglis was suffering from cancer and as the war was coming to an end, she was finally persuaded to come back home.

As the ship neared Newcastle, Dr Inglis went up on deck to say goodbye to the Serbian officers who had accompanied the party to England.

One of her relatives who came to the ship to meet her, wrote in a letter: “She stood unsupported, her face ashen, drawn like a mask, dressed in her worn Serbian uniform coat with the faded ribbons. As the officers kissed her hand and thanked her, she said a few words to each.”

After this, the end came swiftly. Dr Inglis stayed for two days in a modest hotel room meeting her relatives always enquiring about the news from the front and if Belgrade was liberated. She passed away peacefully on 26 November, 1917.


‘Her people brought her back to the city of her fathers... Over her hung the torn banners of Scotland’s history. On her coffin, as she lay looking to the east in high St Giles’, were placed the flags of Great Britain and Serbia.’ After the funeral service, the coffin was placed on a gun-carriage.

‘Across the water of Leith the long procession wound its way. Within sight of the grave it was granted to her grateful brethren, the representatives of the Serbian nation, Serbian army officers, to carry her coffin, and lower it to the place where the mortal in her was to lie in its last rest.’