Thursday, July 21, 2016

Olive King joins the Serbian Army

Olive King in her Serbian army uniform
Australian War Memorial


"Back in Salonika, where the Allied armies were regrouping, the [Scottish Women's Hospitals] staff set up another hospital in the midst of a very wet, muddy winter. Olive was very busy but in a mundane sort of way. She wrote to her father that her real dream was to be "in the thick of things." She was also growing tired of how the matron seemed more interested in rule enforcement than in making the workers feel appreciated. And Olive's new romance with a Serbian officer -- Captain Milan Yovitchitch -- was beginning to clash with the SWH's close supervision of its off-duty employees. So in the summer of 1916 Olive quit the SWH and joined the Serbian army as an ambulance driver attached to medical headquarters. She moved into an apartment with two other female ambulance drivers who had also just left the SWH."

Excerpt from: "Olive King: Adventurous Ambulance Driver" from Women Heroes of World War I. 

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