2018 marks the end of the WWI Centenary. This war gave Australia and New Zealand the story of Gallipoli, but Australian and New Zealand volunteers were already in Serbia, treating wounded Serbians, before the ANZACs landed. Finally, after several years of research and writing, this story has now been told in a book recently published by Australian Scholarly Publishing.
A team of researchers has been assisting the author Bojan Pajic to trace and contact descendants and relatives of Australians and New Zealanders who served in Serbia or alongside the Serbian Army on the Salonika Front and nearby seas in World War One. Over 100 have been identified and contacted.
The book "Our Forgoten Volunteers - Australians and New Zealanders with Serbs in WWI" was launched by Emeritus Professor David Horner AM at the Australian War Memorial on the 15 September 2018.
Australian and New Zealand volunteers were already in Serbia, treating wounded Serbian soldiers and fighting a typhus epidemic, before ANZACs landed at Gallipoli in 1915. The Gallipoli Campaign sealed Serbia's fate, however, as Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria moved to secure a land supply corridor to Turkey through Serbia. Australians and New Zealanders accompanied the Serbian Army on a deadly retreat over wintry mountains to the Adriatic coast. When the fighting shifted to the Salonika or 'Macedonian' Front, many served there with the British Army, The royal Flying Corps. two AIF units and six Royal Australian Navy destroyers in the Adriatic Seas. some died in action, others from disease. Several hundred doctors, nurses and orderlies treated the wounded and sick in an Australian-led volunteer hospital and in British and New Zealand Army hospitals. The Author Miles Franklin was a medical orderly supporting the Serbian Army; her little known memoir is quoted extensively in this book . Fifteen hundred Australians and New Zealanders served on this little known yet crucial battlefront. Now for the first time we have an engaging and comprehensive account of what they experienced and achieved in the Great War.
There was a commemorative presentation about the service of these Australians in WW1 and a launch of a book about them – at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra 15 September.
