Until BBC war correspondent Kate Adie published her latest book, the name of Flora Sandes had been virtually forgotten. Yet hers is a remarkable tale of a York woman who ignored convention to fight at the front line.

WAR heroes such as Flora Sandes are hard to come by. Fighting in both world wars, she battled on after being injured by a bomb and even escaped from her German captors.

As Flora was a vicar's daughter from Poppleton, near York, her story seems all the more extraordinary.

Kate Adie devotes four pages of her latest book, Corsets To Camouflage, written to accompany the Imperial War Museum's Women And War exhibition, which runs until April 18, 2004, to Flora's life.

Flora was the only British woman to be officially enrolled as a soldier in the First World War and a holder of the Order of Karageorge, the Serbian equivalent of the Victoria Cross. So it is surprising that this courageous Yorkshire woman is not a household name in her native county.

Adie herself did not learn of Flora's escapades until the early Nineties. She was first told about Flora by a Serb interpreter as she sat wedged under a kitchen table in a Croat village while covering the conflict in Bosnia for the BBC.

The interpreter was astonished that such an experienced and well-read war reporter had not heard of Flora, who had the status of a military legend in Serbia.

She said: "Several shells and much mayhem followed, so I was saved from parading my ignorance."

Intrigued by the idea of a British woman achieving such feats at a time when women were expected to stay at home looking after children, Adie made it her mission to discover more about the York nurse turned Serbian hero.

Flora came from conventionally humble beginnings, never imagining that one day she would play a vital part in Eastern European history. This ninth child of an Irish vicar had a fairly ordinary upbringing in Poppleton.

However, Flora was never comfortable being confined to a woman's role. As a child, she would pray that one night she would go to sleep and wake up as a boy.

Although she yearned to be part of the world of men, she never intended to become a soldier. She began by gaining nursing expertise with St John Ambulance and a group known as the FANY, made up of women who would rescue battlefield casualties and carry them to safety on horseback.

But Flora was never an ordinary woman. Adventurous, spirited and a little eccentric, she once cycled through Central America to visit her brother, who was helping build the Panama Canal. She rescued her baby nephew, Dick, whose mother had recently died, by cycling back through the jungle, carrying the baby in her bicycle basket.

Flora fully came into her own after she was invited to join the Red Cross as a nurse and travel to Serbia in the First World War. In 18 months, she had swapped her bandages and medication for a rifle.

Flora wrote: "I seem to have just drifted, by successive stages, from a nurse into a soldier."

Flora was respected in Serbia as she represented much-needed support from the Allies. Much like Adie herself, she began to be recognised for her abilities rather than her gender. Able to shoot, ride, drive and speak four languages, Flora could more than compete with most men.

"She had found a true vocation in the army," says Adie.

Brave and fearless, Flora killed men and in turn was wounded several times. Her efforts on the battlefield were rewarded as she quickly rose to the position of sergeant-major and later captain.

Along the way, the fact she was a woman was not ignored altogether. Flora became the subject of gossip among soldiers and the women back in England, and also had to fed off the sexual advances of the men she slept alongside.

"Her method was to cut a figure as a proper serving soldier, trusted by her comrades-in-arms," says Adie.

Despite this, Flora was labelled by some as a "trollop in uniform" and told to go back to being a nurse.

Flora said: "It's a hard world where half the people say you should not dress as a man and the other half want to punish you for dressing as a woman."

In 1916, she was badly injured by a bomb, which left her with disabilities for life. As she recovered, she was given the Order of Karageorge for her outstanding acts of bravery.

Undeterred by her injuries, Flora remained in the Serbian Army until 1922.

She assumed the role of wife as well as soldier when she married a Russian emigre officer, but marriage did not change her. She still spent most of her time shunning female attire and dressing mainly in male military clothes.

Remarkably, Flora was called up to serve in the Second World War despite her disabilities and her age - she was 64 when war broke out.

She was captured by Germans and taken to a military prison hospital, where she was able to use her gender to her advantage. The Germans were accustomed to seeing her in uniform, so did not recognise her when she put on for women's clothes and strolled out of the jail. It took several weeks for the Germans to track her down and re-arrest her.

When the war ended, Flora faced her biggest challenge yet - leaving the life of a soldier to retire to Suffolk.

She said: "Turning from a woman to a private soldier was nothing compared with turning back from soldier to ordinary woman."

Flora is in good company in Adie's book, which wittily recounts examples of plucky women who abandoned their normal lives to help the war effort.

From the traditional nurses, land girls and munitions workers to 17th century women who disguised themselves as men to get in on the action, the essential efforts of women everywhere are recognised in this thorough and compelling military history.

Corsets To Camouflage by Kate Adie, Hodder and Stoughton, £20.

Updated: 09:10 Monday, December 29, 2003