Four: Staff Nurse Evelyn M. Aubrey, Territorial Force Nursing Service, who was decorated by the Serbian Authorities for valuable service performed aboard a hospital ship in the Mediterranean

1914-15 Star (S/Nurse E. M. Aubrey. T.F.N.S.); British War and Victory Medals (S.Nurse E. M. Aubrey.); Serbia, Kingdom, Cross of Charity, gilt and enamel, reverse dated 1912 at base of central medallion, good very fine (4) £240-£280

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Norman Gooding Collection.

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Approximately 23 Serbian Crosses of Mercy awarded to the T.F.N.S. during the Great War.

Serbian Cross of Mercy London Gazette 7 May 1920.

Evelyn Maud Aubrey was born in 1879 and trained as a nurse at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Dover from 1906 to 1909. Employed at the 4th Southern Hospital in Plymouth, she was called up for duty as a Staff Nurse on 13 August 1914 and posted aboard the Hospital Ship Salta. Chartered by the Admiralty in February 1915, the former liner was painted white with wide green stripes and the insignia of the Red Cross, and was soon employed returning wounded soldiers to England from the Western Front.

Posted abroad in July 1915, Aubrey was briefly taken on strength at No. 21 General Hospital in Alexandria. She was subsequently transferred aboard the Hospital Ship Devanha which assisted with the evacuation of the Serbian Army to Corsica; for this service Aubrey and 13 other nurses from the Devanha were later awarded the Serbian Cross of Mercy.

Returned home to England on 12 October 1916, Aubrey was posted to No. 1 Southern General Hospital at Birmingham. She resigned her post in order to marry on 10 March 1917, but subsequent applications to rejoin the T.F.N.S. were refused as her service had not been totally satisfactory. Undaunted, she then applied to the Scottish Women’s Hospitals without success, reverting instead to service with the British Red Cross Hospital at Netley. Having wed a member of the Colonial Civil Service, she is recorded in 1926 as resident of Bathurst in the Gambia; her husband later retired from the Service, took Holy Orders and became Vicar of Thorverton in Devon.

Sold with copied research and the recipient’s T.F.N.S. cape badge.