One Woman At War: Letters of Olive King 1915-1920

(Paperback)

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Fascinating letters of Sergeant Olive King, ambulance driver during World War I. Olive King was born in Sydney in 1885. She offered her services as an ambulance driver soon after war broke out in 1914. She joined a small private organization early in 1915 and went to Belgium. In May 1915 she joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals and her letters, until now unpublished, date from that time. She joined the Serbian Army in 1916 and subsequently rose to the rank of sergeant. Driving on hazardous roads to the Front and to the Adriatic coast, she was often in danger. She was awarded a Serbian silver medal for bravery, and later a gold medal. Her letters not only give a picture of daily life under wartime conditions and in the immediate post-war years. They also show how a woman of the time regarded herself and her place in society.

Author Bio

Hazel King was a member of the Order of Australia and holds a D.Phil. from Oxford University. She was a Fellow of the Royal Australian Historical Society. From 1965 she was co-editor of the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, and was a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sydney until 1974. She contributed to numerous articles to the Australian Dictionary of Biography and to historical periodicals, and has published a number of books, including Richard Bourke (1971) and Elizabeth Macarthur and her World (1980).