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WW1 - 1914-1918
" Looks of War photographers "
" Regards de photographes de Guerre"
9000 photos
438 pages
CITIES and VILLAGES
ENJOYMENTS and PAINS
SERBIA
page 6
Serbia
Clothes so worn, torn and dirty that they are literally falling off the bodies they only feebly protect
are the sole raiment of thousands upon thousands of refugees in the devastated Allied countries.
To give these helpless people a better chance for life the A.R.C. is conducting
a nationwide collection of used clothing, shoes and blankets in their behalf
5 March 1919
Photographer : ARC Balkan Commission
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
No Bath, No Food is American Rule in Balkans.
A group of Balkan refugees in the yard of the American Red Cross Hospital at Monastir.
To prevent the spread of Typhus and other diseases the Americans require every one asking aid
of them to take a bath, which is provided in the building in the background.
The food cards which they receive fromo the Red Cross unless the bath mark
upon them has been punched.
This particular group has just made its way back from an internment camp in Bulgaria.
The man at the right in his bare feet has just had a bath, while the others are waiting to be called.
During the bath their clothes are sterilized.
The copper pot on the ground is a precious possession. It has been with this group throughout
their four years of war travel
25 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. France
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Hotel operated by American Red Cross at Skoplje for refugees
March 1919
Photographer : ARC
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Part of the huge bakery at Monastir turned over to the A.R.C. by the French Army.
If formerly supplied the Allied Army of the Orient with 125,000 loaves of bread a day.
Now it is sued to help feed the starving civilian population in this district of the Balkans.
The baskets heaped in the background are used to hold the kneaded dough,
which is placed in the pits drawing heat from the fire-boxes, to rise.
The fires are raked out and the dough is put into the fire-boxes on long planks being baked
by the heat retained in the sontes.
Each loaf baked here weighs three pounds and is in the shape of a fair-sized dish-pan.
A mill where wheat is ground into flour adjoins the bakery and is operated by the A.R.C.
19 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. France
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Red Cross bath house, at which all persons asking help must be washed
before their cards can be presented
August 1919
Photographer : ARC Balkan Commission
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Although the A.R.C. station does not open until eight o'clock these people formed in line at daybreak.
They are refugees and destitute people of the town who call every two weeks.
Each has a Red Cross card showing the amount of food he or she is entitled to.
Each one represents a family.
The station serves 600 people everyday, distributing bread, lard, beans and clothes.
They use sacks, shawls, aprons and even their skirts to carry the food away in
19 November 1919
Photographer : ARC. France
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Market Day, Prizrend.
Photo by the American Red Cross
12 November 1919
Photographer : ARC. Paris Office Lt. P.J.
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Skoplje.
At the Fountain
June 1919
Photographer : ARC. Paris Office Lt. P.J.
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
The child feeding program of the American Red Cross in action in a Balkan village.
Each child brings some sort of a respectable to be filled with a nourishing vegetable and meat soup, prepared by native women under the direction of Red Cross workers
11 December 1919
Photographer : ARC. Paris Office
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
General view of A.R.C. station at Batch during distribution of rations
2 September 1919
Photographer : ARC. Commission to Serbia. Lt. P.J
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Waiting for rations, Batch
17 June 1919
Photographer : ARC. Commission to Serbia. Lt. P.J
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Oasis in Desert of Starvation.
The American Red Cross relief station at Monastir, where 32,000 Serbs were fed, clothed, and cared for.
For miles around destitute people came to receive rations of food.
The station was in charge of Captain Lanning MacFarland of Park Hills, Illinois,
a former Harvard football star
February 1920
Photographer : ARC. Paris Office
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Capt. Lanning Macfarland, A.R.C. Jewish refugee woman
19 February 1919
Photographer : ARC. Commission to Serbia
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Bread distribution, A.R.C. at Vodena
19 February 1919
Photographer : ARC. Commission to Serbia
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Skoplje.
Opanke Seller's Shop
26 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. Commission to Serbia. Lt. P.J
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Where fathers bill are light because women's styles never change.
Every Saturday this colorful scene is enacted at Tetevo in Serbia near the Grecian borded.
It is market day and at three different public squares in the city there are markets selling
women's goods, cattle and this is the women's market.
Note the similarity in dress of all the women in the picture.
Balkan women don't have to bother about individual dress designs or changes in style.
Each village or district has its own original design of dress for women
and the women wear it although it was designed a hundred years ago.
This particular town adopted a dark red and white striped skirt of coarse wool with a jacket
or waist of white material loosely belted and ornamented
with deep red embroidery down the sleeves and the front.
Even when they receive American clothes from the Red Cross they make their dress conform
as much as possible to the village costume.
The house in the background is worthy of mention in as much as it is typical of the country
which up until a few years ago was under Turkish rule.
The front is of white plaster painted with various Turkish designs and colors.
Note the grilled windows, the sign of a harems abode
25 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. Official Red Cross Photo
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
This railroad station at Gjevgjeli in Central Serbia is typical of the railroad conditions
that exist through the Balkans.
All the buildings in the town, including the depot, were blown to bits of shell fire.
The train on the right has just arrived from the South and is the only one of the day.
The major and all the officials as well as most of the populace greet it as
"there might be some notable arrive on it, you know.
" The train always waits an hour at Gjevgjeli to let the time north of the town which is sometime
to catch up with the time south of the town which adopted "daylight saving".
Of course when the train comes back next day it is always an hour late.
But what's an hour between Balkan railroads?
The cars to the left offer a unique contrast as to cargo.
The foremost as loaded with French munitions designed solely for destructive purposes
while the last two cars carry A.R.C. relief supplies bent on reconstruction
24 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. Paris Office
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
This picture won't please the Germans.
It shows some wool that they missed.
Harrassed for years by the Turks with oppressive taxes the Serbs of the country around Tetevo
near the Albanian border proved too clever for the Germans and Austrian military confiscators
when they swept through the country in 1916.
Many drove their little herd of sheep and cattle into the mountains and secreted them in caves
and unknown vales for months.
Some even buried them beneath haystacks.
When the enemy was driven back, they suddenly come forth while supplies of wool
and other raw materials.
The stock was small to be sure, but it brought the fortunate one a very good price.
Here is shown a group of shepherds at Tetevo with the stocks of wool they saved from requisition.
Combined with the American Red Cross clothing distribution it is going far toward relieving
the ragged and destitute condition of the Balkan people
25 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. Official Red Cross Photo
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
At Prizren in Western Serbia, the children went to school without breakfast.
When the A.R.C. arrived it secured a captured German army field range from the French
and set it up in the courtyard of a Turkish Church.
Three times a day the school children of the town gather in this place
and are served food by the Red Cross.
They are polite youngsters and do not crowd one another.
They will sit about for hours watching the preparations of the meals.
Time is no object to them, and Prizre has no truant officer.
Note the small stream of water flowing between the white cobblestones
in the extreme left foreground.
This is a typical sewer in this part of the world
24 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. Paris Office
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
A typical street group in Kavadar, Southern Serbia.
The mountain pony is an attentive listener to this conversation which has been going on
for more than an hour, but as yet has taken no part.
Maybe it's because he's tired having carried his master who holds the halter thirty miles
over the mountains.
The saddle he bears is Home: made with an iron frame and wooden trimmings.
It weighs alomost as much as he does.
But in addition he can carry two hundred pounds of A.R.C. supplies, and often does.
It's the only means the American relief organization has of transporting
its supplies to isolated villages in the mountains.
A convoy of fifty of these animals are used by the R.C. every week
to take supplies from its station in Kavadar to the outlying districts.
The picture was taken in the market at Kavadar
24 July 1919
Photographer : ARC. France
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)
The community washtub.
In some villages of Serbia like this one near Kumanovo, there is only one well so te house wives
form groups and each group does the family wash on separate days all in the same stone tub
before the fountain.
The mothers bring their children and they play in the vicinity.
These people are typical of the thousands that the Red Cross fed,
clothed and treated for illness during the past year
9 December 1919
Photographer : ARC. Paris Office
American National Red Cross photograph collection (Library of Congress)