Introduction
Last month’s Hixnews recounted how Hicksville nurse Mary Keller, who would later serve in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War I, crossed the Atlantic in September 1914. Bound for Belgrade, then under bombardment, she was part of a medical team that would create an American Red Cross Hospital to treat wartime casualties. Developments in Europe interrupted their journey, and as October began, the team found itself shipless in Athens.
Anchors Aweigh, Again
Given the wartime conditions, new travel arrangements would not congeal immediately. Meanwhile, the nurses and doctors shopped for flea powder and other niceties, and they toured the Acropolis together. On the evening of October 6, they were able to board a ship bound for Thessaloniki/Salonica. Apparently, the ship was better than the last one, as the diary of Team Leader Mary Gladwin scarcely says anything about it.
Sailing north, its prime objective was to not attract the attention of Austro-Hungarian warships in the Aegean Sea. Wartime boarding parties might be tempted to not respect Red Cross neutrality; they might seize medical supplies, or even a doctor or nurse. Thus, the medical team’s ship would follow an arduous route - please see the annotated 1914 map in this article - hoping to avoid warships’ notice by not sailing in the middle of the Aegean.
Today, we think of Austria as landlocked and mountainous, but its past empire had extended to the Adriatic Sea, from which Austrian frigates fought battles against those of other European powers to keep the Mediterranean open to Austrian shipping.
Looking at the map, we see that the route went from A (Athens) to T (Thessaloniki), first via the Euborean Gulf - more a strait than a gulf - a natural inland waterway, with entry points too narrow to permit large warships from using it. The gulf was safe, in that ships traveling in it could not be seen from the Aegean, but it is infamous for its dangerous currents, which change direction abruptly and batter ships. Mary Gladwin wrote that she was horribly seasick on this leg of the trip. After exiting the gulf, the ship probably hugged the shore the rest of the way. Distant warships were seen, but they did not bother to approach it. Thessaloniki was reached without incident on October 9; the rest of the journey would be made overland: mostly by rail, sometimes by horse-drawn carriage, and once even by ox cart!
Destination Somewhat Unknown
Belgrade lies on the Sava River, which in 1914 was Serbia’s northern boundary with Austro-Hungarian territory. The bombardment had first come from the river, not from the other side. The Empire had a flotilla of river-sized warships, with firepower roughly equivalent to that of some modern tanks.
SMS Bodrog being refueled; this is the ship that fired the first salvo of World War I
The bombardments hit not only military or government targets. Shells seemed to strike anywhere: shops, streets, homes, offices, hospitals, etc. As time went by, mortars and howitzers were set up inland, several miles north of the river. These guns would thereafter carry the burden of the attack, sending bigger, more destructive shells into Belgrade. In response, the Serbian government relocated further south, primarily to the city of Nish, and it also distributed some of its functions among smaller cities and towns. Even as Mary Keller and her peers worked their way north, the government in Nish was reevaluating the decision to put the new hospital in Belgrade.
At Nish, the Americans left the train and traveled around the region for four days, conferring with a number of officials of the Serbian Red Cross and government in their new locations. Talking with them, seeing rural Serbs in their traditional dress and centuries-old homes, and partaking of some of the local customs, the nurses and doctors began to gain an understanding of Serbs as a people. Once the hospital was functioning, that understanding would remind them that their patients were not truly anonymous. They might differ from Americans, but the patients were simply people, much like the good people they had met on this trip, but people who had been drawn into the Great War.
The Crown Prince
On October 14, they continued on to Valjevo (V on the map), where they were formally presented at a reception to the dashing Crown Prince Alexander, regent and de facto leader of Serbia. They also met his elderly father, King Peter, who because of his age had recused himself from wartime duties, but who occasionally still made ceremonial appearances.
At the reception, Alexander raised the possibility of the Americans setting up their hospital somewhere safer than Belgrade, but the Red Cross group declined his offer, saying that they all had resolved to face the dangers before sailing from New York. Showing only a little surprise, the Prince accepted their decision, and he authorized their use of a complex in Belgrade that had been erected c.1908 for use as a military hospital. Its nine buildings were suitable, although not furnished with a full complement of modern medical equipment. Hypothetically, this was a shortcoming, but even if it was, it was irrelevant. There was no electric power anywhere in Belgrade, thanks to the continuing bombardment, so new electrically powered equipment would be useless.
And so, the following morning, the Americans emerged from their overnight train, five full weeks after departing from New York, but they were not quite in Belgrade. The main railway station, and the rails leading to it, had been rendered unusable by artillery shells. To make things worse, it was raining, as it had rained for the eight preceding days. As their wagons slogged several miles through the mud, the newcomers faced an oncoming swell of refugees who were fleeing Belgrade; the people they saw carried wooden chairs, cradles, and other poignant remnants of their forsaken homes.
The Hospital is Born, Forcibly Adopted, and Returned to Its Parents
Per the plans made before departure, Mary Gladwin continued to lead as Hospital Supervisor, with young Dr. Edward W. Ryan aiding her as Chief Surgeon. The nurses were each allocated responsibility for certain wards. Given the anticipated number of casualties, wards were set up not only in the buildings, but also in the open pavilions that connected them. Mary Keller became Night Supervisor for the entire hospital.
Healing and saving people in a city under constant attack proved to be as demanding as imagined. The hospital was for everyone, whether civilian or military. During November, Austro-Hungarian forces advanced, and wounded men from both armies were brought to the hospital. Later in November, things looked so grim for Serbia that it ordered Belgrade evacuated. It was expected that invaders might single out wealthy and high-ranking enemy civilians and their families, so the British and Serbian hospital administrators left-but before going, they appointed Dr. Ryan as Chief Surgeon for all the hospitals in Belgrade.
On December 2, Austria-Hungary officially took control of the city, including the American Red Cross Hospital. Its doctors brought their own instruments and regimens with them, but things went surprisingly well despite their also bringing with them a backlog of thousands of Austro-Hungarian casualties. The hospital was crowded, which was good: a great many people in need were being helped.
Less than two weeks later, Mary Keller was on night duty when all “The Austrians” (as the Americans called the new doctors) arrived unexpectedly. They had come to collect their medical instruments and personal items, because Austria-Hungary was abandoning Belgrade! Keller awoke Mary Gladwin to alert her. The vast Empire had overextended itself, stretching its armies unsustainably thin. Typhus (not treatable, often fatal) was spreading among the starving troops. The armies would retreat; the doctors would flee Belgrade before the Serbs could capture them.
On December 15, beloved King Peter made a triumphant return to the city, cheered by many returning Serbs. This “Return of the King” scene was spoiled only by the unspoken thought that the artillery barrages might resume later.
Mary Frances Keller in her domain, with wounded patients, fellow nurses, aides,
orderlies, and perhaps a priest and a doctor or two
During one prolonged break in the shelling, Mary Gladwin wrote that the silence was as unsettling as the shelling. She envied “Nurse Keller,” who said that she fell asleep more easily during the shelling than the pauses. I don’t know whether this picture was taken during such a pause, or after “the Austrians” had left, but it does not reflect any of the terror which all these people must have experienced during the barrages. They all look just happy to be alive. People are resilient.
When Red Cross Dr. Edward Ryan finally left Belgrade, he took with him some souvenirs of his stay, including a "dud" incoming artillery shell. His next project was in Hungary; when moving his luggage through the main Budapest railway station, the luggage cart toppled over, and his souvenir shall detonated, causing much damage. He was uninjured, but he was angrily interrogated for quite a while.
Typhus
As the winter of 1914-1915 deepened, typhus spread across Serbia, especially in the ranks of the armies. The daily caseload at the American Red Cross Hospital surpassed 9,000 patients. Patients sometimes had to share beds. In early Spring, some patients were bundled up and put in beds in the open courtyard, the hospital thereby learning that the courtyard had a capacity of 3,000 patients. With the advent of warm weather, the epidemic finally receded.
It is no surprise that a number of staff at the hospital contracted typhus. Two of the original American nurses got it, as did Dr. Ryan. More nurses had arrived from America, and some of them caught it. Two nurses reportedly died from it, although this has proved hard to confirm. While Dr. Ryan was trying to fight it off, he was replaced as Chief Surgeon by Dr. Ernest Magruder, who had been sent from the U.S. to Serbia to study the epidemic. Ironically, soon after stepping into Ryan’s role, Magruder himself died of typhus, becoming the second American Red Cross surgeon to die of it in Serbia.
Dr. Ryan eventually made a full recovery. He continued to work in Serbia well into 1916, and went on to serve until his early death with the American Red Cross abroad. In 2018, a Serbian postage stamp commemorated his service to the country:
BTW, in the background photo on the stamp, Ryan is sporting a bow tie, and the high-foreheaded nurse standing behind his left shoulder is Mary Gladwin.
A June Departure with Plenty of Tea
Keller appears to have left Belgrade in June 1915; she had remained on duty there longer than her intended six-month term. Agnes Gardner, another of the original nurses, wrote that the ten American nurses who left that June traveled together:
“We joined Sir Thomas Lipton's yacht, the Erin, at Salonique [sic], making a delightful trip to Naples; from there we took an Italian steamer homeward, after many months spent in a country among people who love the American sisters and will long remember our efforts to alleviate their sufferings.”
Once back in Hicksville, Nurse Keller encouraged people to support the Red Cross, speaking to the high school’s students about her experiences in Serbia. She later agreed to be drafted from the Red Cross into the Army Nurse Corps, from which she returned to Hicksville in 1919, just in time for the July 4th post-War celebrations.
Mary Frances Keller packed a lot of service and accomplishment into one life, a life which I am not yet prepared to say that I have finished researching. I will not be surprised by anything more that I learn about this amazing person.
Sources
Images, etc. in Part 1
The article’s “Title Block” contains a photo of Mary Keller that was digitally extracted and reworked from a family portrait in the Keller Family Collection, found online in the Hicksville Public Library’s digital images. For the image of the ship Ioaninna, see below.
“Miss Keller to Accompany Servian Unit” appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for September 4, 1914.
The picture of St. Mary’s Hospital is from the digital collection of the Brooklyn Public Library.
The image of Woman’s Hospital, New York is from Ebay; the original postcard was published c.1906 by Albertype Company.
This photo of S.S. Ioaninna is from uboat-net, a website that commemorates the careers of German submarine officers, tracking how and where they sank ships, how many lives were lost, etc. I don’t think I want to understand why someone would maintain such a website, but from it one learns that the Ioaninna was sunk in the eastern Atlantic in 1917 by a uboat. I’ll not risk perpetuating the submarine’s fame, nor that of its captain, by naming them here. Presumably all of those then aboard the Ioaninna perished. May they rest in peace.
The photo of HMS Glory comes from the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.
The postcard of the Corinth Canal is from ebay; the publisher is unknown.
Pages from Mary Gladwin’s diary can be found in various locations online, often not in correct sequence, or automatically scanned with uncorrected errors. Excellent images of the original can be found in the “World War I in Ohio Collection” of the Ohio History Connection, starting at ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll51/id/3402
Images, etc. in Part 2
Two “Title Block” images need credits. The Keller Family Collection in the Hicksville Public Library’s digital images is the source of a tattered picture-only one piece of which is used here-of Mary Keller with Scottish yachtsman, philanthropist, and tea merchant Sir Thomas Lipton. He spent a lot of time in Serbia during the War, visiting hospitals to bring medical supplies, and poor villages to provide food when it was scarce. The “background” for the block is from Wikipedia; it shows some of the Austro-Hungarian fleet that the Red Cross team managed to evade.
The map of the southern Balkan region and Greece is extracted and annotated from an excellent 1914 map preserved digitally at World War I Today (wwitoday.com)
The picture of SMS Bodrog is from www.warhistoryonline.com
The portrait of Crown Prince Alexander is from “The Story of a Red Cross Unit in Serbia” by Berry, Dickinson, and Blease, et al, 1916; accessed from the Internet Archive.
The group photo outside the hospital is also from The Keller Family Collection within the Hicksville Public Library’s digital images.
The Serbian postage stamp is from Wikimedia Commons.
The quotation from Nurse Gardner is from her article “American Red Cross Work in Serbia” in The American Journal of Nursing for October 1915, available online at JSTOR.
