Scarce WW1 Medal Trio to Mrs Black Served East Africa.

A rare medal trio of the 1914/15 star, British War and Victory medal all correctly named to J. Black BRC & St J of J.
Mrs Janet Black served with the British Red Cross and the Order of St John of Jerusalem from June 1915 in zone ‘4a’ which is the East African campaign. This fabulous trio comes with this lady’s medal index card, which shows no rank, such as ‘Nurse’ or ‘Sister’ etc, so she must have served in a non-medical role or a possibility she may have been a doctor or a surgeon.
The East African Campaign was a series of battles and guerilla actions which started in German East Africa and spread to portions of Mozambique, Northern Rhodesia, British East Africa, Uganda and the Belgian Congo.
The strategy of the German colonial forces, led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, was to divert forces from the Western Front to Africa. His strategy achieved only mixed results after 1916, when he was driven out of German East Africa and Allied forces became composed almost entirely of South African, Indian, and other colonial troops.
The East African campaign was not a particular bloody one, but the workload of British and commonwealth doctors and nurses was horrific, as disease was rife, in fact British losses in the East African campaign was 3,443 killed in action, 6,558 died of disease; the losses of native carriers and porters was dreadful, in the realm of 90,000

The native carriers impressed by the Germans were rarely paid and food and cattle were stolen from civilians; a famine caused by the consequent food shortage and poor rains in 1917, led to another 300,000 civilian deaths in Ruanda, Urundi and German East Africa. Also the impressment of farm labour in British East Africa, the failure of the rains in early 1918 led to famine and in September of that year Spanish flu reached sub-Saharan Africa. In British East Africa up to 200,000 people died.
The small allied hospitals which were set up to cope with low counts of wounded were having to deal with famine and the worlds flu pandemic, the relatively low numbers of allied professional and voluntary doctors and nurses must have been pushed to their limit as they fought a different war altogether than the one raging in Europe.
This is a Lady needs a lot more research, regarding her service in this little known and rare campaign of the first world war; this is an area for me that I know very little about, so I cannot give this group the attention or justice it deserves.
All three medals come in excellent original condition, it looks as if they were mounted and worn at one time, as there are a few contact marks on the rims, but nothing bad enough that would be considered as damage. They come nicely mounted on a red and black felt covered board, ready for display or framing.
To find any medals awarded for this campaign are rare, but a woman’s trio, I have never come across another one.

Code: 19027