Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Hospital Orderly Hilda Woods, Scottish Women’s Hospitals and French Red Cross

British War and Victory Medals (H. Woods.); Serbia, Kingdom, Cross of Charity, 1912 issue, gilt and enamel; Serbian Red Cross Medal 1914-1918, silver and enamel; together with the recipient’s Scottish Women’s Hospitals 1914-18 Service Medal, good very fine (5) £160-£200

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

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Hilda Woods served as an Orderly at the Scottish Women’s Hospital at Ajaccio, Corsica, from 31 May 1916 to 26 May 1917. Headed by Dr. Mary Blair, the hospital was created to help displaced Serbian women and children and established inside the Villia Miot. It also had the unexpected duty of caring for the 14 survivors of the Ellerman Lines passenger ship City of Paris which was torpedoed in the Mediterranean on 4 April 1917, with the loss of 122 lives.

Remaining with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, Woods was posted to the Macedonian theatre of operations in March 1918, serving as Hospital Orderly in the American Unit from 15 March 1918 to 11 May 1919. Funded chiefly by American donors, the unit was situated on the banks of Lake Ostrovo and supported the Serbian Army’s push back into its homeland.

Sold with original envelope and box of transmittal for Great War medals, the former addressed to ‘Miss H. Woods, High Inval, Haslemere, Surrey’; together with a contemporary photograph of the recipient.