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RED CROSS HEROINE’S OBE AND ITALIAN MEDAL OF VALOUR IN SURREY AUCTION

Mother and sons’ medals recall family’s sacrifices in First Wold War

A family group of First World War medals awarded to two brothers and their mother who received the OBE in recognition of her work with the Red Cross in Italy after one of her sons was killed in action, are to be sold by Surrey fine art auctioneers Ewbank on Thursday March 13.

The redoubtable Nina Hollings risked life and limb crossing enemy lines on the Italian front, often under fire, driving a mobile ambulance X-ray unit which saved countless lives. Exposure to the X-rays over time also affected her health, leaving her severely debilitated when she retuned to England, but her work brought recognition from the King of Italy, who awarded her the Medal of Valour, and acclaim from Italian and British military leaders and the British newspapers.

“It is extremely unusual to find medal groups relating to a mother and her sons,” said auctioneer Chris Ewbank, “but when they belonged to such a remarkable woman as Mrs Hollings and her family, it is impossible to put a price on their value.” The medals recall an amazing story of a family’s sacrifices during the First World War and we anticipate a great deal of interest in them from collectors and historians, both at home and in Italy.”

Mrs Hollings was born Nina Augusta Stracey Smyth in Kent in 1862, and married Winchester-educated Herbert Hollings, a JP and pillar of the society in Frimley, Surrey. The family home was Watchetts in Frimley. A capable horsewoman and intrepid car driver, she enrolled with the Red Cross, prompted by the death of her son, Jack Herbert Butler Hollings, a Lieutenant in the 21st Lancers. He was killed in action aged 29, on October 30 1914 and is remembered at La Brique Military at Ypres.

After locating the equipment required and familiarising herself with how to operate it, Mrs Hollings travelled to Italy in December 1915, with her friend, Countess Helena Gleichen, a great niece of Queen Victoria and a cousin of King George V.

On December 1916, The British Military Journal reported that the Medal for Valour had been conferred on the two women stating “They gave their useful and valuable work for the Italian wounded on the Isonzo front, going willingly wherever called, even crossing zones under artillery fire, and being on several occasions a target for the enemy. They showed courage, intrepidity, and contempt of danger, always accomplishing their duty with equal self-sacrifice, lofty courage, and devotion.”

The British Red Cross Society pamphlet Outposts of Mercy, written by E.V. Lucas and published in 1917 contains a first hand account of their work. It reads: Unit IV consists of two intrepid ladies, a motor-car or so, a soldier servant or so, and a movable X-ray apparatus. For nearly a year, when I met them - and now for more than a year, for they began in December 1915 - these ladies, the Countess Helena Gleichen and Mrs.Nina Hollings, have been passing quickly from field-hospital to field-hospital with their merciful van-load of magic, and thus making possible swift and accurate operations which, but for them, would in many cases either never have been performed at all, or have been dangerously, if not fatally, delayed. I don't know to whom the credit is due for first seeing the possibilities of a mobile installation of this kind, but few thoughts for the amelioration of the soldier's lot can have been happier. Certainly no two practitioners of the mystery can ever have worked with industry more untiring or with greater zeal than these two ladies.

To see Unit IV at work is the very remarkable experience which we had on our second evening. Outside the hospital, in the inevitable darkness, was the motor-carriage containing the dynamo. From this an india rubber pipe wound its way along a passage and so into a little room where people moved like silhouettes against a faint fluorescence, and where there was no sound but the buzzing of the sparks. By degrees one could make out the dramatis persona of this shadowy play. Sitting by the wall, with her hands controlling the current, was Mrs. Hollings. In a corner was one of the orderlies watching the machinery. On a stretcher in the centre was a powerful Italian soldier stripped to the waist, above whose body the other necromancer was passing a luminous square of glass. Beside her stood the two medical officers of the hospital, the captain and the lieutenant. It was Rembrandt again: "The School of Radioscopy."

Leaning by the side of the operator, over the wounded man, I was able to share her field of vision. For some time the bullet, or piece of shrapnel, or whatever object it was, eluded us; and then suddenly with a little shout of exultation she announced its discovery. The next thing was to adjust a moveable plummet immediately over the spot on the square of glass, turn on the ordinary light, slide the glass away, and - for the surgeon's guidance on the morrow - immediately beneath the plummet, now swinging no more, to mark the man's skin with an indelible pencil. This mark would tell the surgeon that somewhere below it a foreign substance was lodged. But it would tell him only that. Necessary also to inform him how deeply he must cut, and for this purpose the man was moved on to his side, and again the search was begun, this being a more prolonged task, since he was a big man and the rays had therefore the greater distance to penetrate. With the marking of the second spot the proceeding was finished, and case No. 3423 on Unit IV's books (not bad for two ladies in a foreign war zone in a little under a year!) was carried back to his bed, and case No. 3424 was brought in. Since this poor fellow was, however, in great pain and the splinter very small, it was decided that he must be photographed - a less interesting proceeding for the spectator.

That night we were the guests of Unit IV, and I looked through the album in which some of their most remarkable photographs are preserved, and heard the story of a recent adventure, told with the utmost simplicity as though quite a matter of course. A shell had fallen among some soldiers beside the road, and the ladies had arrived just in time to comfort one or two who were dying, and carry the others to a hospital. This and similar deeds won for them the Medal for Valour.

Mrs Hollings’ medals include: her O.B.E. hallmarked 1918; British Red Cross medal; St John of Jerusalem medal;’ the bronze Medal for Valour; Italian Medaglia Dell Guerra 1915-1918 (War Medal 1915-1918); Italian Medaglia Della Vittoria Interalleata (Medal of Allied Victory); Medal for the Unification of Italy (Medaglia a Ricordo dell’Unità d’Italia) 1848-1918 with miniature medals plus two miniature medals; 1914- 1918 War Medal and the Great War for Civilisation 1914-1919, also badges and pendants; British Red Cross Society & Order of St John enamelled pendant "Gorzia Zagora Cormons 1915 -1916-1917", the reverse inscribed "Helena Gleichen, Sezione Quarta, Nina Hollings", Pendant with enamelled Red Cross "Gorizia 11/8/1916 Ospedale Da Campo N.144," pendant "Wemyss Hospital Chateau ou Fayel 1915," St John of Jerusalem badge, and a badge engraved "A.P.A . P.C & F.M Violatae Caritatis Repartio".

They will be sold with a group of three medals to her son who was killed in France, comprising the 1914- 1918 War Medal; The Great War for Civilisation Medal and the 1914 Star and a further 1914-1915 Star awarded to her second son, Commander Richard Eustace Hollings R.N.
The collection also comprises associated papers and photographs including Mrs Hollings’ a three-page hand written report dated May 31 1916 containing an account of casualties, operations, and itemised list of the 316 X-rays performed in that month.

A hand written letter to Mrs Hollings from the Hon. Arthur Stanley C.B. M.V.O. M.P. then Chairman of the Joint War Committee, comments on his sadness of her returning to England and his concern "that you and Lady Helena were beginning to suffer from the X-rays".
A typed letter from Mr Stanley congratulates her on her award from the King of Italy, while further letters are from Italian servicemen thanking Mrs Hollings for her care. Other documents include photographs of Mrs Hollings and her colleagues; Italian military commanders, ruins and landscapes and two news cuttings praising Mrs Hollings for her work in Italy.

Elsewhere, the sale includes the usual eclectic mix of silver, ceramics, glass, works of art, collectors’ items, clocks and furniture. Viewing at the Burnt Common auction rooms is on Tuesday March 11 from 10am-5pm and Wednesday March 12 from 10am-8pm. The sale catalogue will be available here approximately six days before the sale.