SOME PAGES FROM MR. GORDON'S DIARY
October 2nd. Got a wire from Kragujevatz to say that the motor hood is ready and that we must go over to get it fitted. We cleaned and oiled the car, and at two ran it down the hill, but it would not start. Found two sparking plugs cracked and the magneto very weak. When we had fixed it up it was too late. Four a.m. to-morrow morning.
October 3rd. Started in the dark, Mr. Berry, Sister Hammond, Sava, I, and a female relation of some minister or other who wanted to go to Kralievo. The motor working badly, as it is impossible to get the proper spare parts. Three young owls were sitting in the middle of the road scared by our headlights; we hit one, the other two flew away. Sava and I stopped and tinkered at the old machine for about an hour, changed all the sparking plugs again, after which she went better. We reached Kralievo without incident, where we cast loose the female relation. From Kralievo passed over the Morava, which was pretty floody and had knocked the road about a bit. The road led right through the Shumadia country, where the first revolts of the Serbian nation against their Turkish oppressors were engendered. We passed the old Serbian churchyard. I never passed by without going in. These queer old tombstones all painted in days when pure decoration had a religious appeal, these tattered red and white and black banners lend such a gay air to death; these swords and pistols and medals carved into the stone seem almost carrying a bombast to heaven. On one side of each tombstone is the name of its owner, preceded by the legend, "Here lies the slave of God." Do slaves love their masters?
When we passed this road in the winter, black funeral flags hung from almost every hut, and even now the rags still flap in the breeze. A Serbian boy, clad in dirty cottons, shouted to us, making gesticulations. We slowed down and stopped.
"Bombe," he cried. "Aeropla-ane. Pet," he held up five fingers, "y jedan je bili slomile. Vidite shrapnel."
He pointed. We saw a quiet, early autumn landscape, the blue sky slightly flecked with thin horizontal streaks of cloud. Any scene less warlike could not have been imagined.
"Vidite tamo," he cried once more.
Straining our eyes one could just see, between the lowest strata of cloud, a series of small white round clouds floating.
"Shrapnel," said Sava, pointing.
"They hit one," said Mr. Berry.
I let in the clutch, we sped on once more. Bang! a tire burst.
Motor driving in Serbia is not a profession, it is an art. We were on another of these first-class Serbian roads. Presently we came to a long downhill.
"That is the place," said Mr. Berry to Sister Hammond, "where we spent the night last winter when the motor stuck in the mud. There, beneath that tree."
We shrugged our way down the hill, and presently came into the gipsy environments of Kragujevatz.
A man stopped us, holding up a hand.
"Bombe," he said.
We got out. In the soft earth at the side of the road was a neat hole, four inches in diameter. Peering down we could see the steel handle of the unburst bomb. We next passed a smashed paling, in the garden behind a crowd were searching for relics. An old woman had been killed, they said. We turned into the main street and plunged into a large crowd. The pavement had been torn up, and people were grubbing in the mud; pieces of charred wood were passed from hand to hand.
"That's a bit of propeller," said one. "No; it's a bit of the frame," said another. A girl proudly held up a large piece of map scorched all round the edges.
"And the men?" we asked.
"Nemachke (Germans)," answered the crowd; "both dead; one here, one over there," pointing to the middle of the road.
We came into the Stobarts' camp, pitched up on the hill behind the Kragujevatz pleasure ground.
"Did you see the aeroplanes?" they cried, running towards us.
"No," we answered; "but we saw the shrapnel."
"One was hit—it was wonderful. They were flying just over here, and a shrapnel burst quite close; and then one saw a thin stream of smoke come from the plane; then a little flicker. It seemed to fall so slowly. Then it burst into flames and came down like a great comet."
"D——n!" we said: "if only that machine had been working right yesterday."
We took our car down to the arsenal, and I left Sava to take it to bits and get it opened out, for there had been a bit of a knock in the crank case. The remains of the smashed aeroplane were piled in the yard, and from the way it had twisted up without breaking one could see from what beautiful metal the machinery was made. Some of the French experts denied that the guns had hit it—giving as their reason that one of its own bombs had exploded. But one of the engineers put his hand into a big hole which was beneath the crank case and drew out a shrapnel ball. I thought that would settle it, but the Frenchmen were not convinced. The shells were bursting fifty metres too low, they said. Fifteen bombs had fallen about the arsenal, and one man, a non-commissioned officer, had been killed.
Met Hardinge and Mawson: they both saw the aeroplane fall, and were not fifty yards from the place where it struck.
Walked back to the Stobarts' camp for lunch. A French aeroplane had come over from Belgrade too late; now it rose slowly in the air and sailed off. Saw the two dead aviators; both had evidently been killed at once, for they were charred, not blistered.
Colonel Phillips, ex-Governor of Scutari, and English military attaché, came up with the Italian attaché. A bomb had fallen just before the colonel's house and missed his servant by a hair's-breadth. The Italian was in a room opposite the Crown Prince's palace; he thought that the falling machine was going to crash through the roof, but it fell in the street not ten yards away. The camp itself was packing hard, for Mrs. Stobart had just decided to form a "flying field ambulance."
Mr. Berry and I had a tent assigned to us.
October 4th. Awoke to sounds like some one hitting a board with a mallet. Ran outside. One found the aeroplane from the little clouds of shrapnel, for it was flying very high, and was like a speck. Clouds of smoke were rolling from one quarter of the town, and we thought that a big fire was beginning, but it was extinguished. Another aeroplane came later. The guns began long before it could be seen. It dropped two bombs over the powder factory, and two in the town. Mrs. Stobart ordered everybody from the camp; but nobody left except the patients, who were driven a mile out and dumped in a wood. A long procession of townsfolk filed continuously by, running from the danger. The aeroplane dropped two more bombs in the town, and came back flying right over the camp. It was a queer feeling, staring right up at the plane, and wondering if another bomb were not falling silently towards one.
I went down to the arsenal to see about the car; and Mr. Berry and Miss Hammond went off to see the anti-aircraft guns. Mrs. Stobart had asked me to go out on the Rudnik road to see a car which had broken down, and had promised to send a motor to fetch me. Before we could leave, news was brought that another aeroplane had been telephoned. Presently we could hear the guns beginning. Hardinge turned up, and we looked out for the machine. We saw the aeroplane coming straight towards us; everybody rushed for the cellars, but I wanted to stay outside for the last moment. Hardinge was with me. Suddenly I lost sight of the plane. I ran farther out to look for it, and suddenly there was a report, and a great column of smoke just outside the arsenal. There was another behind the rifle shops, and another behind the boiler sheds. Now the aeroplane was overhead. I heard a noise like tearing silk, and lay flat upon the ground shouting to Hardinge—
"Lie flat, d——n you!"
It seemed ages before it burst. Dust and bits flew everywhere; the windows all sprang out into the yard. I looked for Hardinge, but he was unharmed. I had expected to be terrified, but I was feeling so bothered about Hardinge that I had no time to think about myself.
We heard a shrill crying, "Oh—h! oh—h!"
I ran forward, crying to Hardinge, "A man's hurt!" He answered, "Is he?" The dust was so thick I could not see at first, but as it cleared I found a workman lying on back and elbows, his knees drawn up as though he were trussed; his head waved from side to side, and he was uttering spasmodic cries. I said to him, "Where? where?" and he placed a hand to his stomach.
The man had been struck just below the ribs by a large piece of bomb, blood was welling from the wound, so I pushed his shirt into it, and ran back to the office. Mrs. Stobart's car had been brought by a lady and a youth named Boon, who had both taken cover in the cellar; so I dug up the girl, whose name I have forgotten, as I hoped she knew "first aid." Together we ran to the man, leaving Boon to bring the ambulance. "Bandages," we demanded. "Haven't any," answered the few Serbs who had gathered round; "the first aid house has been blown to pieces." We crammed our handkerchiefs into the place, and a cotton-wool arm pad which was brought, and we then took off the man's own puttees and tied him up with them. As we were doing this somebody cried—
"Aeroplanes returning."
Immediately every Serb and Austrian fled. The girl, Hardinge, and I were left alone. It was a false alarm. With the returning crowd came a large man, who was weeping.
"Oh, my poor brother! oh, my poor brother! What have they done to thee? Why should this evil have befallen thee?"
As we finished tying him up, Hardinge said, "Is it any good lying down?"
I answered, "If this poor chap had been lying down he would not have been hurt."
There was no stretcher, so we lifted the wounded man on a blanket into the ambulance, which Boon had now brought. The girl and the brother climbed within. I took the steering wheel. Boon wound up the engine, and swung alongside me. The driving was a difficult problem. Whether to drive fast and get to the hospital, or whether to go slow and spare the wounded man as much pain as was possible? The road was awful: once it had been laid with stone pavement, but many of the stones were missing, and in so bad a condition was it that although several bombs had fallen in the streets, one could not distinguish the bomb craters from the ordinary holes in the road. At last I decided that as it was not a fracture I would go as quickly as I dared. Above the clatter of the machinery I could hear the weeping of the brother and the intermittent cries of the wounded man, "Water, water."
"I think he's going," said the girl through the curtains.
At last we reached the hospital. We laid the man on the ground and the doctors did all they could. But it was useless, the piece of shell had cut in directly beneath the heart. In ten minutes he was dead. I turned to the brother and laying both hands upon his shoulders said—
"Your poor brother was too badly hit. We could not save him."
He stared at me for a moment, not understanding. Then he turned and flung himself down upon the body, weeping more bitterly than before.
I went to the ambulance and took it back to its place.
The aeroplane returning from the arsenal had flung three gratuitous bombs at the camp itself, one had fallen in the Serbian hospital yard, and had killed an Austrian prisoner; one had fallen in the top corner of the camp field, but had not exploded. The third had missed, only by a little, the room in which the two dead German aeroplanists were lying, had plunged into the Stobarts' storeroom, and had burst in the last case of marmalade which they possessed. It was an awful mess. Had it fallen three yards to the left it would have killed the chief cook, who was just on the other side of the wall.
I went back to the arsenal. None of the bombs had struck any important part, almost all had fallen in open places, though one had burst on the roof of the woodshed, only a few yards from the petrol store. Two cans of petrol had been punctured by bits of shell, and Austrian prisoners were hurriedly pumping them out. Almost half the work of the arsenal was done by Austrian prisoners. Another bomb had fallen in the horseshoe store, and inside horseshoes were everywhere, some even sticking in the beams like great staples. I had no idea before that the bombs had such force. Sava said he had been standing in a doorway and a bomb had exploded quite close, a piece had whizzed by his nose and had torn down the name board over his head. When he turned round to go on with the work the aide had fled and never appeared again.
I met Dr. Churchin. He is one of the best Serbs I have yet met, a philosopher. He was looking after the English units in Kragujevatz and I learnt did it excellently, and with a devotion to his duties altogether unusual. He told me that I had been nominated an honorary captain; but I am under the impression that it is an honour I cannot by national law accept.
We went in the afternoon in the car towards Rudnik to examine the one which had broken down. I soon saw that nothing could be done on the spot, and ordered it to continue its "bullocky" progress to the camp. In the evening went off to the Government motor school, where I found my old friend Ristich and Colonel Derrock; both these men are first-class Serbs—jolly, keen and friendly.
October 5th. Our car not being finished, Mr. Berry and Sister Hammond went back to Vrntze in a car lent by Colonel Derrock. I was to stay till all the repairs were completed on ours. There was another scare of aeroplanes, and the whole town emptied itself, families pouring by en route for the country; but the planes did not come. I went down to the arsenal and got on with the repairs. Dr. May lent me her camera and I got some photos. Mrs. Stobart went off with her "flying field force," taking with her nearly all the men and almost all the cars: if the hospital get many serious cases I imagined that they would be dreadfully shorthanded.
In the night the two German aeroplanists were buried without military honours. The Serbs said that they were assassins and deserved nothing. Still, Kragujevatz is an arsenal.
October 6th. Another aeroplane scare; town emptied itself once more. Dr. MacLaren and I rushed off to the anti-aircraft guns, hoping to get some photos; but nothing occurred. Got the Rudnik car running by taking Mr. McBlack's useless car to pieces. In the evening two sisters went to Uskub. One of the sisters went to get her bag, and I took what I thought to be a short cut to help her. I passed between the tents, and was striding along, when—Plop! I found myself swimming in a deep tank of water. The sister heard me fall, and ran back to the camp crying out—
"Help, help! The stranger is drowning in the bath-water sewage tank."
I clambered out, and hastily fled to my tent, where kindly souls brought me an indiarubber bath and hot water. I also got some refugee pyjamas, in which I wandered about for the rest of the evening. My clothes were taken to the kitchen and hung over the big stove.
October 7th. Went to the arsenal in borrowed refugee clothes miles too large. Worried the car till it worked. At lunch clothes dry. Got away by three, Hardinge coming with us. Night came on before we got home. Our car is a beastly nuisance in the dark, the lamps, electric and worked from the magneto, only giving light when going at full speed, which is impossible on these roads. I was just boasting to Harding that I had never run into anything except the owl, when I hit a cow. Figures appeared cursing from the darkness; we cursed back for allowing the animal to stray; other figures appeared cursing on our side. The motor was pushed back, the cow got up and walked off, and on we went. Found Jo on night shift. Got some supper, fixed up a bed for Hardinge, and so self to bed.
