My Diary in Serbia: April 1, 1915-Nov. 1, 1915

At the outset of 1915, a small group of determined English women and a handful of staff set out for war‑torn Serbia, bringing sixty tents, three hundred beds, a kitchen, an X‑ray unit and everything needed to run a mobile field hospital. The diary opens with their departure from Euston, crowded farewells, and the tense anticipation of a journey across the Adriatic to Salonica, where they will pitch their canvas wards under the shadow of a raging typhus epidemic.

Once the tents are raised near Kragujevac, the writer, in charge of the kitchen, records the relentless rhythm of preparing meals for patients and staff while nurses tend to fevered soldiers and terrified civilians. Amid the clatter of portable boilers and the hum of makeshift operating theatres, she notes moments of quiet compassion—sharing a hymn in the mess tent, tending a child's fever, and watching the town's weary residents find brief relief at a roadside dispensary. The entries blend practical medical logistics with personal reflections on courage, fatigue, and the surprising bonds forged in a landscape scarred by war.