Decision Time: Evacuation or Entrenchment?


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This airplane is likely an allied plane. After the Bulgarian invasion, relief workers heard rumor of a possible allied counter-attack. It never came. (MSS 97 Item 56, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware. , Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.)

In early October, Lady Paget gathered her staff (including the American Red Cross workers) for a meeting at which they decided as a unit that they would continue their mission. Lady Paget outlined her basic beliefs and her reasons for staying in Skoplje. First of which was that if Skoplje fell to Bulgaria, it would very soon be retaken by the allies, after which, Lady Paget’s mission could continue. Secondly, Lady Paget wrote, “I had solid grounds for my confidence that, so far as the regular Bulgarian army was concerned, we should not be ill-treated. In the first place, the Bulgarians. . . would wish to be given credit by the British for waging war in a civilized manner.” She continued that she and the aid workers had a bargaining chip, “Ours was the only properly equipped base hospital in Macedonia. I was quite willing that we should render services to Bulgarian as well as to Serbian wounded, and I did not doubt that to secure those services they would allow us to work unmolested.” Though the initial inclination of the male members of the Relief Fund was to send the women to safety, the nurses rallied, declaring that they would not be forced to leave their mission, and that they would take refuge in the city and continue their work if sent from the Hospital. Only then did the Relief Fund agree that it would be best if all members stayed during the occupation. Though Lady Paget and the Relief Fund worried about the intermediate phase between Serbian and Bulgarian occupations, they were unwilling to leave the wounded and sick with no one to care for them, and sought to assist in the transitional period for the city.

 

 

 

Safety in Skoplje?                                                                                                Preparing for Invasion


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