Serbian Ambassador to Denmark Jasmina Mitrovic Marić, together with the Serbian Diaspora from Odense and the Vicar of the Church in Vissenberg Peter Lindholt Jensen, visited, on 9 November, the birthplace of the Danish volunteer William Theodor Melgard, a physician of military medical team of the Serbian Royal Army in World War I, and laid a wreath and flowers on the family tomb.

Doctor William Teodor Melgard (1888-1920) was born to a respectable Danish family related to the royal house on his mother's side who was the Baroness, and part of the Danish academic community on his father's side who was the Priest and University Professor. Doctor Melgard graduated from the Medical School in Odense, but humanity and love kept him in Serbia.

As a young doctor he arrived in Serbia in 1915, where, as a member of the Danish medical mission, he shared the fate and suffering of the Serbian people during the occupation in WWI, but also after the war of his own choice. He married a Serbian woman, Vida Riznic, and following the liberation of the country he became the manager of County Hospital in Kursumlija, although the Serbian government offered him postings in larger cities, from Belgrade to Niš. Humane and dedicated, he chose to work in places with worst conditions and where he was most needed. He died in Kursumlija, only two years after the end of the war.


In his 1918 letter to Dr. Milan Jevremovic, the Minister of the Interior who approved his request to stay, Dr. Melgard explained why he chose Serbia for his new homeland: "In the time that has elapsed since 1915, I have learned to speak Serbian and I married into a good Serbian family, and because of that, because I feel good among the Serbs, I request to stay in Serbia, at your disposal.


A memorial plaque was placed on the building of the first hospital in Kursumlija, in 1995, in gratitude to Dr. William Melgard. The Monument was erected at the cemetery in Kursumlija to Dr. Melgard and his son Knut Melgard. Also, one street in Kursumlija is named after him, while his picture is kept in the Serbian Museum of Medicine, in the first Pasteur Institute in the Balkans, in the town of Niš.