THE FLIGHT OF SERBIA
The men were up before three-thirty to strike the tents, having slept but little. Breakfast was prepared and waiting at five-thirty in the big hospital bedroom; but the women ate of it alone.
Jo sallied forth to the camp, anxious to know what had happened. She found a testy little company. For two hours they had been struggling in the dark with tents and waiting for the carts and for a policeman, as all the riff-raff of the town was gathering to loot our leavings.
At last the carts were run to earth standing outside the hospital in a line—ten little springless carts in charge of a stupid-looking corporal who had misunderstood his orders. He moreover refused to move, saying he "had his orders."
The indefatigable Churchin was found, and sent him off with a flea in his ear. When he arrived at the camp we found a woman and household luggage in one of the carts. He said it was his wife, and objected to our putting anything into that cart. We told him he would have to lump it, and he got sulky; as each extra package was put on a cart he said that it would break to pieces. Certainly the tents were very heavy, but we had been ordered to take them. When the carts were loaded up to the last degree they moved slowly through the mud and drew up at the hospital. We were sadly overladen. Our party consisted of Mawson, West, Cutting, Rogerson, Willett, Blease, Angelo, Whatmough, Elmer, Owen, and Hilder—the last four being our friends of the railway journey from Nish. We were thirteen. Temporarily with us also were the two little Austro-Serbian boys. The other four carriages were occupied by a doctor and three members of the Stobart unit, two "Scottish Women," their orderly and a Russian medical student who had been a political prisoner.
Leaving the town was a slow business, as it was being evacuated. Our little procession proceeded very slowly. Most of us walked. Jo drove with two of the Stobarts, watching from a seat of vantage the packed masses of people who wormed their way in and out between the ox carts. The road was blocked by some gigantic baking ovens on wheels. Hundreds of boys, big seventeen-year-old boys with guns, and little limping fellows from thirteen to sixteen, wearing bright rugs rolled over their shoulders, were dragging along in single file. Their faces were white, and their noses red, sergeants were beating the backward ones along with a ramrod. One of them said—
"I have eaten nothing for three days—give me bread." We had no bread, but we discovered some Petit-Beurre biscuits, and left him turning them over and over.
The whole town buzzed: motor cars, surrounded by curses, insinuated their way through the crammed streets; whips were cracking, men were quarrelling but all had their faces turned towards the road to Rashka, which we realized would be as full as at straphanging time in the Tube. The boys passed us, then we passed them. They passed us again. Hundreds of Austrian prisoners were being hurried along, goodness knows where. Neat young clerks, suit case in hand, elbowed their way through the crowd. Young staff officers were walking, jostled by beggars. Jo called to an old man who was driving a cart full of modern furniture, his face drawn into wrinkles of misery—
"Where are you going?"
"Ne snam," he answered, staring hopelessly before him.
Wounded men were everywhere, tottering and hobbling along, for none wanted to be taken prisoners. Some had ship's biscuit, which they tried to soften in the dirty ditch water, others were lapping like dogs out of the puddles. Sometimes a motor far ahead stuck in the mud, and we had to wait often half an hour until it could be induced to move. Gipsies passed, better mounted and worse clad than other folk, some of them half naked. Many soldiers had walked through their opankies and their feet were bound up with rag. Why in this country of awful mud has the opankie been invented? It is a sole turned up at the edges and held on by a series of straps and plaited ornamentations useless in mud or wet, which penetrates through it in all directions.
We arrived at an open space and halted for lunch. Water had to be fetched. It trickled from a wooden spout out of the hill and before our cooking pot was filled we were surrounded by thirsty soldiers, who were consigning us to the hottest of places for our slowness. Cutting displayed a hitherto buried talent for building fires. We unpacked the food and soon a gorgeous curry was bubbling in an empty biscuit tin with Angelo, Sir Ralph Paget's chef, at the spoon. A leviathan motor car lurched by containing all that was left of the Stobart unit. Another monster passed, piled with Russian nurses and doctors. A face was peeping out at the back, eyes rolled upwards, moustaches bristling. Was it? Yes, it was—"Quel Pays"—but he did not recognize us.
The baking ovens appeared again, and we felt we had stayed long enough. Some of our party were very fagged after their various adventures since leaving Nish, so they climbed on to the carriages wherever there was a downhill. The road wound up a narrow stony valley down which was flowing a muddy stream. The trees on our side of the river were still green, on the other bank they were bright orange, blood red and all the tints of a Serbian autumn. The road full of moving people was like another river, flowing only more sluggishly then the Ebar itself. For us in future, the autumn will always hold a sinister aspect. These trees seemed to have put on their gayest robes to mock at the dreary processions. At intervals by the roadside sat an ox dead beat and forsaken by its owner as useless.
Dusk came, bringing depression; the travellers on the curly road looked like mere shades. Coat collars went up and hands were pocketed. Little camp fires began to twinkle here and there on the hillsides. We came to a large open space where many fires blazed, respectfully encircling a French aeroplane section. Opposite was a high peak topped by a Turkish castle. There we wished to halt, but the corporal said we must push on, as he wished to get food for the horses. After we had passed the castle the dusk grew rapidly darker and the road narrower and more muddy. Although camp fires twinkled from every level space, the never ending stream of fugitives seemed to grow no less. Darkness only added to the tragic mystery of the flight. The bullock carts poured along, the soldiers crowded by.
A horse went down, the owner stripped the saddle off, flung it into a cart and cursing stumbled on into the darkness. The carts following took no notice of the poor horse but drove over it, the wheel lifting as they rolled across its body. We shouted to the owner; but he was gone, so we turned one or two of the carts off, and made them go round. But we could not stay there all night. The horse was too done, and too much injured by the cruel passage to move, so Jan reluctantly pulled out his "automatic" and, standing clear of its hoofs, put two bullets through its brain. It shuddered, lifted two hoofs and beat the air and sank into a heap.
On we went progressing for mile after mile in the mire, but never a house did we see, nor a spot to camp on. At last the corporal gave up the quest for hay, and we were faced with the problem of spending the night on a narrow road bounded on one side by cliffs beneath which ran the Ebar, and on the other by an almost perpendicular bank. The night was black, the mud a foot deep, and a stream ran across the road. The carriages drew up in single file and we discussed the sleeping problem, while Cutting cooked bovril on an ill-behaved Primus stove. Our drivers had to sleep on the carts. The women also had carts to sleep in; and the Scottish women offered Jo a place in their already well-filled carriage. The men were fitted somehow into the rest of the carts, while Jo, Jan, and Blease found a ledge below the road, and though it was very squelchy, they spread a mackintosh sheet and rolled up on it in their rugs.
No sooner were they really settled and sleeping than a voice said, "You'll have to get up: an officer says the carriages must move on—the King is coming." It was West. We sat up. Between us and the dim lights of the carts the black shadows of the crowds passed without end.
"I'll go and talk to them," said Jo; and unrolled herself, struggled and fumbled with her boots and floundered into the blackness, where a mounted officer was delivering orders. Shouts could be heard, lights waved, horses whinnied, splashing their feet in the puddles as they were being violently pulled here and there, and our poor little carts were moving ahead into obscurity. Jo told him they were a Red Cross party—that the carts were small, and couldn't they stay where they were? The officer inspected the poor little carts, made his best bow, and said, "Yes, they can stay."
But the corporal did not listen to Jo's orders. He belonged to a country which rates women and cattle together, and the carts moved relentlessly on. With difficulty Jo found the ledge again on which Jan was sitting with the rugs, talking to the scenery in a manner which was not pretty.
Blease came up, and the three of us shouldered the things and stumbled off to find the vanished carriages, which were half a mile down the road. Jan flung his baggage on to somebody and soundly boxed the corporal's ears, calling him a "gloop." Instantly the corporal felt that "here was a man he could really understand," and from that moment became a devoted adherent, studying our slightest whim, and at intervals humbly laying walnuts before us.
A man came up to Jan.
"I believe that man is drunk," said he; "I said that your carts might stand."
"Who are you?" said Jan.
"I was once the conductor of the Crown Prince's orchestra," he said; "now I am traffic superintendent. It is difficult. I had a horse, a jolly little brown horse, but he gave out and I had to leave him behind on the road." There were tears in the man's voice. "He was a good horse, but it was too hard for him. Now I have to walk."
"I shot your horse," said Jan. "They were driving over its body."
"He was a nice horse," said the man again, "a nice horse, and now I have to walk. Well, good-bye, you can rest here."
He splashed away in the mud.
Our new sleeping place was worse: the mud was deeper, the road narrower. Jo tried to escape the mud and made for the roadside, but the ground moved under her and some muttered curses arose. She was walking not on grass but on crowds of sleeping boys, and very nearly trod on a face. We settled down again on our mackintosh sheet but did not sleep. Some soldiers were firing off guns and throwing bombs into the river all night. Near us lay Owen, who coughed for a couple of hours, after which he gave up the spot as being too wet, and lay in a cart on Whatmough's face.
It rained, Jo had the fidgets, and Jan expostulated. The mackintosh was too small for us and we got gloriously wet. It is a curious feeling—the rain pattering on one's face when trying to sleep. By the time one becomes accustomed to the monotony of the tiny drops—splash a big drop from a tree. Water collects in folds of hat or rug, and suddenly cascades down one's neck.
At four in the morning the corporal crept up submissively to ask if we might move on, as the horses were cold and hungry. Only too glad, dark as it was, we rolled up our damp bundles and put them in the waggons with the sleeping people, who awoke, pink-eyed and puzzled at the sudden progress forward of their uncomfortable beds. Whatmough, who was convinced that the bombs and gunshots of the night before were spent Austrian shells sailing over the hill, said—
"That's the first time I've ever liked a fellow sleeping on my face."
One of the Stobart nurses, who had used the remains of the hay as a pillow, had been awake all night trying to prevent a hungry horse from eating her hair along with the hay. With determination she had donned a Balaklava helmet and trudged along all day in it, even later when the sun came out. Blease, too, started the chillsome dawn in a Balaklava wearing shawlwise a rug that had been made of bits of various coloured woollen scarfs. Jan used as a protection from the rain Jo's white mackintosh apron filleted round his head with a bit of string and dangling behind with a profusion of tapes and fasteners.
Under his khaki great-coat and about a foot longer he wore a white jaconet hospital coat. Jo had a pair of roomy ski boots into which she had fitted two pairs of stockings; one had been knitted for her by a Serbian girl, and they were so thick and hard that no suspender would hold them up, so they stood, concertinawise, over the boots. One of our drivers, a witch-faced old man, had a dark red cloak with a peaked hood; and West having lost his hat had donned a Serbian soldier's cap, which he was taking away as a curiosity. His arm was giving him pain. It was very red and inflamed and no one knew what was the matter with it.
We travelled for an hour or so, and then everything on the road came to a standstill—something was in the way. Half an hour passed, nothing was done. Several miles of drivers were talking, gesticulating, and blaspheming; so Jan took on the job of traffic superintendent, and after a time, with a little backing here and twisting there, the problem was solved and we moved on. Still no hay stations could be found, and we were also hungry, having had no breakfast. We passed a mound covered with thousands of Austrian prisoners waking up in the twilight. Another hill was black with boys. Still no station. Then we saw some haystacks being taken to pieces by various drivers. Our ten coachmen ran to the stacks and came back with loads of hay which they packed in the carts. In five minutes the haystacks existed no more.
"Better not leave that good hay for the Swobs," said the corporal, as he whipped up the horses. We passed a dressing-station. It was a sort of laager of ox carts over which flew the red cross. Wounded soldiers were sitting and lying on the grass everywhere, while doctors and nurses were hurrying to and fro with bandages and lint.
Water was difficult to find. At last we stopped at the top of a hill in a furious wind. The water which we got from a stream looked filthy, but we boiled it thoroughly in a biscuit tin, and Angelo again presided over a magnificent curry filled with bully beef, while we hit our toes on the ground to keep warm. A wounded soldier was brought up by a friend. He had not been attended to for days, and we did the best we could for him.
A carriage passed laden with two tiny boxes—a policeman on either side. Although the boxes were small the carriage seemed so heavy that the horses could scarcely drag it, and two well-dressed men who were riding on the carriage often had to get out and push. We wondered if the boxes were filled with gold. The dreary processions of starving boys shuffled up again; some were crying, some helping others along, one had an English jam tin hanging round his neck. Sir Ralph Paget appeared in a motor car, loaded with packages and three other people. We stopped him, and he told Jan that at Novi Bazar he could get no information of the path which Jan suggested, and added that he advised us to come to Mitrovitza. The Scottish women were to give up the idea of a dressing-station in Novi Bazar and to stop at Rashka. The Serbs had told him that there was a good chance of Uskub being retaken, in which case we could all go comfortably to Salonika by rail. In the other case, there were three roads out of the country from Mitrovitza, which he thought better than trusting to one road, if it existed.
Jan told him that the carriages were giving way under the strain of the tents, two of the axle struts having broken; and he suggested that if we did not jettison the tents, some of the carriages would probably never get as far as Rashka. Sir Ralph told him to do what he thought best.
So we pitched the two heavy tops and the long bamboo poles overboard, keeping the sides.
"Oh, what are you doing with our tents?" said one of the Scottish nurses.
This was complicated! We understood the tents were Sir Ralph's.
All the men swore they were Sir Ralph's tents, they had seen them at Nish. The "Scottish Woman" said she knew the tents well, and they had cost £50 each. The men from Nish still claimed the tents, and said that war was war and they had left thousands of pounds' worth of stores, tents, etc., and had been obliged to discard even motor cars.
"And very extravagant it was of you," she said.
Jan pointed out that if we did not leave the tents we should very shortly have to discard both tents and carts, which would be even more extravagant.
She reluctantly cheered up, and we drove away in the sunshine. Before we turned the corner we could see an excited mass of soldiers, peasants, and boys rushing to the tents with their clasp knives. Perhaps, as coverings, they saved many people's lives on the cold nights to come.
More and more exhausted oxen were to be seen lying by the roadside. A huge cart drove over one. We all arose in our seats, horrified—but the old ox was all right, still chewing the cud. Over the cliff lay the smashed remains of a cart—its owners were flaying the dead horse. A peasant with bowed head led his cart past us. Drawing it was one ox—its partner was in the cart, lifting its head spasmodically—finished. Quantities of carts passed us filled with furniture, baths, and luggage. A smartly dressed family was picnicking by the roadside, sitting on deck-chairs. Colonel P—— and Admiral T—— slipped by in a shabby little red motor. They stopped and told us they were going to Rashka. It was good to see English faces again. A familiar figure went by. It was the brave young officer from Uzhitze. We gave a lift to a footsore lieutenant, who laughed as we trudged in the mud.
"Ah, English and sport," he said.
Crowds were congregated round a man who was carrying over his shoulder a whole sheep on a spit and chopping bits off for buyers. On a hillside a woman was handing out rakia. We thought she was selling it, but were told that it was a funeral and she was giving rakia to all who wanted it. Starving Austrian prisoners rushed for a glass and were not refused. The Crown Prince passed, touching his hat to fifty kilometres of his people. This time we were not going to be caught by the darkness, so we stopped near a village at half-past three. The sides of the two tents made good shelters for us. They were set up, looking like two long card-houses, and we used bits of canvas for flooring, very necessary, as it was so wet. Our fires were quickly made with superfluous tent pegs, and the rice bag was again drawn forth. A groaning soldier with bloodstained bandage asked us to help him. His arm had not been dressed for some time. The doctor with us at first thought he had better not be tampered with; but finally agreed to look at his wound, which was bleeding violently.
She tore up a towel and bound him up tightly. He said he was going to Studenitza, a long day's walk, though he was nearly fainting.
On the hill opposite was a huge encampment of boys. As the darkness grew all disappeared but the light of the fires. It looked like an ancient battleship with the portholes on fire. We slept, the women fairly comfortably, but the men were overcrowded.
Heavy rain came on and poured through the top of the card houses.
"Now I know what the men suffer in the trenches," said a very young girl, when she awoke in a pool of water.
"Guess you don't—they'd call this clover," said a sleepy voice.
Looking our oddest we trudged off in the gloom and wet of next morning, leaping across rivulets of water which hurtled down the roads. West's arm was worse, Willett was recovering from a bad chill, Mawson had not yet got a decent night's rest for a week—every one longed for a house.
"Dobra Dan," said a voice. It was the friend of the wounded man we had bound up the first day.
"Where is your friend?" we asked.
"I lost him," he answered.
We climbed for three hours then waited, blocked. A military motor had stuck deeply in the mud and the wheels were buzzing round uselessly, so we helped to dig her out. Every one's inside cried for breakfast, and when at last we found a swampy plain, Whatmough and Cutting flung themselves upon an old tree trunk and cut it up for firewood.
We always had "company" to these picnic meals, hungry soldiers, mere ragbags held together by bones, crept around us and learnt for the first time the joys of curry and cocoa.
As we came round the corner into sight of the town a large block of temporary encampments stretched away beyond the river to our left. Beyond them was a flat plain on which was a large tent with a red cross painted over it. High behind the town towered a grey hill on which was a white Turkish blockhouse, for though where we were driving had always been Serbia, Rashka lay just on the boundary. We drove into a narrow street, presently coming to a stop where two motor cars blocked the way.
The Commandant from Kragujevatz, who had promised transport to all English hospitals, was standing on the road. He seemed very flustered and bothered lest we should want him to do something for us. We assured him we wanted nothing except bread, for neither we nor our drivers had had bread for three days. The colonel shrugged his shoulders and made a face.
"You might get it perhaps at the hospital."
Another officer, in a long black staff coat, laughed. He pulled a hard biscuit out of each pocket, looked at them fondly and pushed them back again.
"I've got mine anyway," he said. "Bread is ten shillings a loaf if you can buy it."
Annoyed by the colonel's manner Jo began to mount her high horse and became blunt. He was instantly suave.
He seemed dismayed at our idea (to which we still held) of going to Novi Bazar before Mitrovitza to see if really no route existed there.
"Impossible," said he; "bridges are broken between Rashka and Novi Bazar, and there is no route through the mountains from there."
We remembered that the country had been under Turkish rule there years before, and guessed that probably the Serbs had not yet been able to exploit new and lonely routes. At every side in the streets were faces we knew, the head medical this and the chief military that.
Our personal carts went off in charge of the corporal, who was looking for bread from the Government, for of course all bread shops were shut permanently.
The Scottish sisters had not found a refuge, and messengers kept on coming back saying this place was full and that place had no room.
Colonel G—— became even less likable. It seemed as though there were no organisation of any kind in the town. At last, when dark had well fallen, a man said a room had been cleared for them in the hospital. The motor cars moved slowly off and we told the rest of our carts to follow, as Colonel G——said we might get bread at the same place. We stumbled after them through pitch black streets, so uneven that one did not know if one were in the ditch or on the road itself; one lost all sense of direction and only tried not to lose sight of the flickering lights of the carts. Jo at last climbed into one, and the carts rumbled over a wooden bridge and began to go up a steep hill. We came suddenly to a rambling wooden house and our carts dived into a deep ditch. Jo leapt off just in time to save hers from turning right over. Crowds of wounded Serbians were standing at the foot of a rickety outside staircase. Above was a dressing-station, and a dark smelly room with no beds, which was to be the sisters' home. We could get no bread and so went out once more into the dark. We did not know where our carts had gone, but some one said if we went in "that" direction we should find them. On we went uphill, losing our way in a maize field. In front of us were hundreds of camp fires. At the first we asked if they had seen the English. They shrugged their shoulders in negative. We asked at the next; same result. We had the awful thought that we should have to search every camp fire before we found our people, but luckily almost fell over Mawson, who had been fetching water. We were going in quite the wrong direction and but for this lucky meeting might have wandered for hours.
A good fire was blazing in front of the tents. An Austrian prisoner cut wood for us in exchange for a meal. He came from a large encampment whose fires were blazing near by. Dr. Holmes and a sister emerged through the smoke; they had at last got a cart and horse. With them was an Austrian subject flying for his life. He had lived for years in Serbia, his sympathies and ancestry were Serbian, but if the Austrians got him he would be hanged. We wondered if it was the husband of the frantic woman at Kralievo, but did not ask.
One went early to bed these nights. The men spread out into two card-houses while Jo was hospitably given a real camp-bedstead in a corner of the Stobarts' kitchen, on the floor of which slept their men and also West, whose arm was getting worse.
