VI—OVER THE MOUNTAIN SIDE WITH GENERAL PUTNIK
This road winds and twists in all sorts of angles, and it was up this that we started in the black darkness, with the sedan chair of General Putnik still heading the procession. Every time it reached a corner it was a matter of endless difficulty to manoeuver it around.
On one occasion we stood for thirty-five minutes in an icy wind listening to the roar of the Drin, invisible in the black gulf 500 feet below. Horses slipped and fell at every instant, and every now and then one would go crashing into the gulf below.
It was 10 o'clock when, tired, hungry and half frozen, we reached bivouac at Spas. Here we found that though dinner had been ready since 3 o'clock it could not be served because all the plates and spoons were on the pack animals, which remained in the village below. Neither had the tents arrived, and as Spas contains only five or six peasant houses accommodation was at a premium. Colonel Mitrovitz, head of the mess, told me I would find room in a farmhouse a quarter of a mile away.
The house really was two hours distant, over fields deep in snow. When I got there at midnight I discovered that there were already nearly a score of occupants; but at least I was able to sleep in some straw near the fireside, instead of in the snow outside.
Next morning I set out at 6 to get ahead of the main body of the headquarters staff. The day was magnificent and we slowly climbed foot by foot to the cloud-capped summits of the mountains. Up and up we went, thousands and thousands of feet.
Every few hundred yards we came on bodies of men frozen or starved to death. At one point there were four in a heap. They were convicts from Prisrend penitentiary, who had been sent in chains across the mountains. They had been shot either for insubordination or because they were unable to proceed. Two other nearly naked bodies were evidently those of Serbian soldiers murdered by Albanians.