Woman's Convoy WW1 - Mrs. St. Clair Stobart

liverpool annie · Jan 29, 2009

Seems to me .... Mrs. St. Clair Stobart was quite a woman !!

New York Times December 7, 1917, Friday Page 13

Mrs. St. Clair Stobart of England told of her work with the Woman's Convoy, which she organized on the various war fronts ........

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A0DE2DC1E3AE433A25754C0A9649D946696D6CF

Major St.Clair Stobart took part in the famous Albanian Golgatha retreat of the Serbian Army, with its epidemics of smallpox, typhus, diptheria, scarlet fever, marching on stony rugged cliffs and mountains over 8,000 ft. high!)

http://outofbattle.blogspot.com/2007/07/mrs-st-claire-stobart-antwerp-1914.html

http://www.archive.org/details/warwomenfromexpe00stobrich

liverpool annie · Nov 27, 2009

My friend Tony came across these medals being sold ......

Pair of British War and Victory Medals awarded to the Revd. Canon J A Little for his service with the Royal Army Chaplain's Department together with his Army Chaplains black stole and RAChD badge but who had previously been a volunteer ambulance driver in the Serbian campaign in 1915.

The Revd Canon J A Little (1885-1970)

James Armstrong Little was born on the 16th March 1885 in Wigton, Cumberland (present day Cumbria). He went to Dulwich College and was a graduate of Cambridge University (BA 1907, MA 1911) where he attended Gonville & Caius College and thereafter Ely Theological College.

He was ordained Deacon in 1908 and Priest in 1912 (Diocese of Chester). He served a rather lengthy curacy in the Diocese of Durham from 1908 -1925 which included positions as Curate at Tarporley from 1908 to 1910, Easington from 1910 to 1918 and Winlanton (as Curate in charge of St. Patrick’s) from 1920 to 1925.

From early March 1915 through to December 1915 he acted as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Stobart Field Hospital (Serbian Relief Fund Unit 3) in Kragujevatz, Serbia and for the temporary regional dispensaries placed around Kragujevatz by the unit. He was also the personal chauffeur for Mrs. St.Clair Stobart (the Director of the unit) for much of the time whilst he was there. A full account of the Stobart Hospital Unit’s work and their subsequent involvement as the ‘First Serbian-English Field Hospital’ in the Serbian Army’s advance against the combined armies of Germany, Austria and Bulgaria and then the famous Albanian Golgotha retreat to safety at Scutari can be read in “The Flaming Sword of Serbia” by Mrs. M. A. St.Clair Stobart (1862-1954) where Little is mentioned personally over half a dozen times. There were only six ambulance drivers selected for the frontline Field Hospital, one of which was Little, and at the end of her book, Mrs. St.Clair Stobart says “The chauffeurs (five men and one woman) performed miracles with the cars, and showed pluck and endurance such as is not often exacted from ambulance drivers. To have brought those Ford cars over those unique roads, from Barchinatz, in the north of Serbia, to Fetch, near the Montenegrin frontier, with only one accident to one car, was a wonderful feat, and their work of evacuating wounded from our own, and from other field hospitals, was of inestimable value.”

He returned to England in the early part of 1916 and went back to his parish. However, in June 1918 he was interviewed by the Chaplain General – Bishop John Taylor Smith – for a two year overseas position and temporary commission in the Royal Army Chaplains Department. His appointment was confirmed in the Army List 1918 on the 6th August 1918 as 4th Class (Temporary) Chaplain to the Forces and he landed in France the day after. He was based at Boulogne and remained in France for two years from 1918 to 1920 and although it is not known what he was doing during this time it is possible that he may have been involved with the exhumation and reburial of war dead as part of the Graves Registration Unit. On leaving the Army was made a Hon. Chaplain to the Forces.

He returned to the Curacy of Winlanton in 1920 and in 1925 became Vicar of Monkshesleden. In this instance he was following in his fathers’ footsteps who had also been vicar at the church of St.John’s back in 1901 so he would have known the vicarage and the parish intimately from his childhood days.

He went on to be the Vicar of Ryhope, Sunderland from 1934-1946 and during his time at Ryhope was appointed to the position of Chaplain to Sunderland Borough Mental Hospital, a position he didn’t relinquish until he left Ryhope in 1946. From 1941 to 1946 he was also a Hon. Canon of Durham Cathedral.

In 1946 he moved further north and became Vicar of Norham-on-Tweed on the England/Scotland border and was also chaplain in charge of Duddo which was about 8 miles from Norham. His duties were later expanded when he was made a Rural Dean of Norham from 1952 to 1957. He relinquished his chaplaincy at Duddo in 1953, his duties as a rural dean in 1957 and retired from his Norham parish in 1961 at the age of 76. He was a Hon. Canon of Newcastle-on-Tyne Cathedral Church from 1960 to 1963.

He retired from an active involvement in the Church in 1963 and moved to Liss, Hampshire and soon thereafter to Manormead, Hindhead, Surrey (a retirement home for Church of England clergymen) where he died on the 28th March 1970 aged 85.
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Woman's Convoy WW1 - Mrs. St. Clair Stobart

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