serbia

Samuel H. Hodge

New York Times, July 19, 1915 "Dr. Samuel H. Hodge of Knoxville, Tenn., who went to Serbia last November with Dr. James Donnelly to serve with the American Red Cross, returned yesterday on the White Star liner Cymric from Liverpool for a rest. He left Saloniki with ten American nurses for Marseilles on board Sir Thomas Lipton's steam yacht Erin and called at Malta on the way...." The article goes on to quote Dr. Hodge about typhus in Serbia. The Bain photo looks like it was taken on shipboard.

Bain seems to have had a photographer around to shoot notables arriving and departing New York on ocean liners. The Cymric was sunk the following year by the U-boat that sank the Lusitania in 1915. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Cymric Seems like the original design of this ship contained an actual "cattle class", but the space was redesigned for 3rd Class human accommodations instead.

Wikipedia uses this photo in his entry. Maybe photographed for his wedding in 1913 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Alexis_Karageorgevich

Unlikely, as the photo is dated 2/5/14.

ah well, the NYT did have a story on the wedding, so far I cant find anything of note about him in '14 yet, though clearly he is on an Ocean Liner here, maybe he came to the US for something.

At this time he was no longer the Pretender to the Serbian throne. Born in 1859, he died in 1920. He had to flee Serbia when Germany and Austria attacked following the August, 1914, assassination in Sarajevo of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a mad act that touched off World War I.

true, but he didn't arrive in Rome until Christmas Eve 1915, and this photo was months before the assassination of the Arch Duke, so I don't think this could have been related to that either. There's seems to be this gap in history now with only this photo to record it.

The prisoners are barefoot, and a mixture of very old and very young. It looks like the Serbs were nearly depleted of regular soldiers by this point.

LoC has another copy of this picture at www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2009631748/ Summary: Print shows a large group of Serbian soldiers, most are barefoot, captured at Kreka.

The LoC's other photo has the full caption "Comitadjis serbes faits prisonniers à Kreka près Touzla" (Komitadji Serbs taken prisoner at Kreka near Tuzla). The Komitadjis were guerrilla fighters who fought the Turks in Macedonia and other rivals. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komitadji Tuzla is in Bosnia/Herzogovina, then a part of Austro-Hungary.

Those were not komitdjis, or in Serbian Komite, but they were civilians of whom those eligible of military service were interned into many camps around Austro-Hungary...the only reason was because they were Serbs, many of them Austro-Hungarian citizens!!! But AH were afraid of possible revolts. Unfortunately it was contrary to Hague convention and many of them died in the camps

Miroslav Lazić: Thank you for your comment about this image. It does seem possible that these men are civilians, not combatants, despite the caption from the other version of the image. This article from the International Encyclopedia of the First World War details the internment of Serbians by the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the conflict: encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/prisoners_of_wa... We can add more information when we update.