Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine British War Medal awarded to Chauffeuse Miss Emily R. Duncan, Scottish Women's Hospitals and French Red Cross, who spent two years driving an ambulance in Salonika, much of this time as part of the pioneering 'All Women' Girton and Newnham Unit

British War Medal 1914-20 (E. R. Duncan.) nearly extremely fine £80-£100

Emily Robertson Duncan was born on 5 October 1883 and lived at 20 Queen's Road, Aberdeen. She volunteered for the Scottish Women's Hospitals in the summer of 1917 and served in Salonika as a chauffeuse from 17 July 1917 to 24 November 1917. A contemporary newspaper article written by a Press Association Special Correspondent offers a little more information about the lives of these women volunteers at that time:

‘It is only right to pay a tribute to the bravery and devotion of the chauffeuses of the Scottish Women's Hospital attached to the Serbian Army, who take the ambulances as far as the cars can go along the precipitous paths in order to meet the wounded, and are constantly risking life and limb in this dangerous work, which requires skill as well as nerve. Yet young girls perform the journey sometimes twice daily, and often have to spend the night on the mountain side, as breakdowns are, unfortunately, too frequent in such bad country.’

On 23 March 1918, Duncan was posted to the Girton and Newnham Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. Named after the only two Cambridge colleges to admit women, this all-female establishment og 60 staff was led by the pioneering Dr. Anne Louse McIlroy, a former surgeon in gynaecology, who devoted her time to treating wounded and sick French, Serb, Albanian and Russian servicemen. Reports from this time state that the heat of the Greek summer of 1918 made conditions almost unbearable to work in, with many diseases spreading from the patients to the staff; nevertheless, the staff proved that women were more than capable of running a war hospital and able work in any field of medicine or surgery, including those specialities previously restricted to male doctors. Such pioneering work and endurance was not lost on the local dignitaries. According to a Correspondent working for the Daily News:

'The large corps of the Scottish Women Motor Transport, etc., in the Dobrudja, is earning the great admiration of the Rumanians and Russians alike. The Prefect of Constanza said to me... "It is extraordinary how these women endure hardship. They refuse help, and carry the wounded themselves. They work like navvies. No wonder England is a great country if the women are like that."’

Duncan left Salonika on 1 July 1919 and likely returned home to Scotland. She is later recorded as working at St. George's Hospital in London in 1939, her employment described as 'Late Appeal'. She died in Chelsea on 24 November 1963.