IX—WOLVES LIVING ON CARCASSES IN MOUNTAIN PASSES
In the mountains just before Puka I discovered the first trace of wolves. The carcasses of dead horses, which were now numbered by scores, showed signs of having been torn by them. A part of the French aviation corps, which was preceding us, got lost in the snow and darkness, and had to spend the night in the open without protection. A dozen were frostbitten, but no fatal casualties. After six days we finally reached the Drina again, a swiftly flowing stream.
Thence the march to Scutari may be summed up in the word mud—mud of the deepest and most tenacious kind, sometimes only reaching to the ankles, sometimes to the knees, but it was always there.
The twenty-five miles between the Drina ferry and Scutari represents physical effort of no mean order. It was the finish for scores of unfortunate pack horses. During the last two days they got practically no food. On these days we found dead horses every hundred yards. When at last, at 4 in the afternoon, we came in sight of the towers and minarets of Scutaria every one heaved a sigh of relief. The streets presented a wonderful sight, being thronged with Serbian soldiers, mixed with French aviators, men of the French and Serbian medical staff and scores of the Red Cross unit—British, French, Russian and Greek.
Scutari's normal population of 40,000 had been increased by 100,000 Serbian and other refugees. Food was running scarce, and there were practically no accommodations. The unfortunate diplomatic corps was scattered all over in such lodgings as could be found for it. The headquarters staff took possession of the Hotel De la Ville. I learned the Danube division, which had entered Albania by Montenegro, had performed the miracle of saving part of its field artillery.
The fate of Serbia was worse than that of Belgium, for to King Albert's subjects there always remained France, England and Holland as havens of refuge. For King Peter's people there was none. On the one hand, the inhospitable mountains of Montenegro offered a barrier which the starving people were powerless to cross. On the other was the desolation of the snow-capped peaks of Albania, with a population sullenly hostile to Serbia and everything Serbian.
But even if they had been willing to welcome them with open arms they could not have helped them, as the mountaineers of Albania live themselves all their lives on the ragged edge of starvation. The catastrophe, therefore, was beyond human aid, and Serbia had to drink the cup of bitterness to the dregs and witness the foundering of all that was left of her manhood and national wealth. It was the death agony of one of the bravest nations in Europe, of a people who had for five long years fought four victorious wars for its national existence, and at last succumbed to a combination of forces three times stronger than itself.