Miss Emily Simmonds - one of the most noted nurses of the American Red cross

Miss Emily Simmonds, one of the most noted nurses of the American Red cross, at lunch with 2 soldiers assigned to protect her. Location – village Brod, Macedonia

Мис Емили Симондс од Американскиот Црвен Крст, на ручек заедно со 2 војници назначени за нејзина заштита во село Брод.
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AMERICAN NURSE FED THE STARVING AT BROD

When the Serbians took the town they found several hundred of the people still there. There was no food. The village was under constant bombardment. Each Macedonian peasant is a potential spy, for lineage and allegiance are too mixed for either side to place reliance in his loyalty. The people of Brod were moved out to the last man and baby. The Serbs searched the houses one by one, and looked under the caving bank of the Cerner and hunted over the bare hillside. There was none left. The village headman swore it.

Yet a little later, when the Serbs had given place to the Italians, the mired and filthy streets of Brood suddenly became alive with children. Children were everywhere; starving children, impossibly dirty children, children that were verminous and pallid and so ragged that the snow struck against bare flesh through the holes in their garments. No men and few women were seen at this time. The Italian soldiers fed these little outcasts with the scraps of their rations. A military ration is scientifically adjusted to the needs of the soldier. There is no excess to be devoted to charity.

Miss Emily Simmonds, of the American Red Cross, relieved this situation. Miss Simmonds secured an assignment as nurse in a near-by hospital and while there learned of the children's famine at Brod. She moved in one night without a pass, without a guard, and equipped only with a small tent that was so imperfect a shelter that the constant rains rotted the mattress of her bed. She took a census of the starving ones.

By this time there were 40 women and 200 children, and there was not a bite to eat, nor a stick of fuel nor a blanket. They lived in that defiance of natural law which seems the rule of the destitute in the Balkans. Most of the time they were starving. They slept in heaps, like animals, in order to keep from freezing.

"Send food," Miss Simmonds telegraphed, "especially beans.""
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Excerpt from the article "ON THE MONASTIR ROAD" published in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE - May 1917 Author: Herbert Corney.

Извадок од статијата „ON THE MONASTIR ROAD“ објавена во NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE - Мај 1917 г. Автор: Herbert Corney.