Ross, Ishobel (1890–1965)

Scottish nurse. Born on the Isle of Skye on February 18, 1890; died in 1965; daughter of James Ross (who is credited with the development of the famous liquor, Drambuie); attended Edinburgh Ladies College; married; children: daughter Jess Dixon.

Born on the Isle of Skye in 1890, Ishobel Ross attended Edinburgh Ladies College and then worked as a teacher at Atholl Crescent School. In 1914, soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Ross attended a lecture byElsie Inglis about the Scottish Women's Hospital Unit. Ross eventually volunteered to accompany Inglis to Serbia, where a hospital unit was being established, arriving in nearby Salonika, Greece, on August 22, 1916. She would remain on the Balkan front until July 1917. Ross kept a diary of her experiences. "The bombardment has begun," she wrote on September 12, 1916:

The guns started at 5 a.m. this morning and have gone steadily ever since. The noise is quite deafening and seems much nearer than it really is. A Serbian officer told us that we are only 5 miles from the fighting. It is awful to think that every boom means so many lives lost. They say the bombardment will continue for four or five days. Some of us went to the top of the hill tonight and saw the flashes from the guns. What a gorgeous night too, with the moon shining and the hills looking so lovely. The thought of so much killing and chaos so near to all this beauty made me feel very sad.

Ross died in 1965. Her daughter Jess Dixon brought the diary to the attention of the Aberdeen University Press; it was published in 1988 as Little Grey Partridge: First World War Diary of Ishobel Ross Who Served with the Scottish Women's Hospitals in Serbia.