Mrs Olive M Aldridge

Organising Secretary 1904 – 1915

After leaving the employment of the Council she went to Serbia in July 1915 as a member of 3rd Serbian Relief Unit to work in a village dispensary in Vitanovatz. On October Serbia was invaded by the Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian armies and Olive worked in a field hospital in Kragujevarz. She was evacuated with the defeated Serbian army , which retreated to the Albanian coast along with tens of thousands of civilians. Olive

Olive finally reached London on 23rd December and the following year wrote a book about her experiences, The Retreat From Serbia Through Montenegro and Albania, which can be read here https://archive.org/details/retreatfromserbi00aldriala

She was friends with the Australian novelist, Stella Miles Franklin, author of My Brilliant Career. Olive died in 1950.