Newport Historical & Archaeological Society talk

Newport Historical & Archaeological Society’s first talk of the new season takes place on Wednesday, November 8, in O'Sullivan’s lounge, Newport at 8pm.

The title of the talk is ‘Experiences of American Red Cross Nurses in Serbia, 1914-’15’ and the speaker is Dr Gavin Wilk, who is an independent historian, associated with the University of Limerick. He is the author of Transatlantic Defiance: The Militant Irish Republican Movement in America, 1923-’45. ‘There was no time during the first six months that some of the guns were not fired.’: Experiences of American Red Cross Nurses in Serbia, 1914-’15.

In early September 1914, an American Red Cross Unit of 12 nurses and three doctors departed from New York aboard a Greek ship bound for southwest Europe. This American Red Cross Unit No 1 eventually arrived in Belgrade, Serbia. Here, they endured some of the most difficult conditions imaginable in a theatre of war including sieges, constant shelling, caring for seriously wounded patients of all conditions, and an outbreak of typhoid, which caused rampant sickness and took the life of a relief doctor.  This presentation will provide a revealing glimpse into the nursing activities of the American Red Cross in Serbia during the early stage of the First World War.

It will also shed light on the work and ordeals faced by an Irish nurse who was in the unit.