SERBIAN ARMY TRUDGING ALONG
CHAPTER IV
I MEET THE FOURTH COMPANY—A COLD
NIGHT RIDE
We were all up at daybreak next morning as usual; no good Serbian sleeps after the first streak of light. It was still snowing fearfully hard, making it impossible to go out, though the Commandant and his Staff Captain rode out somewhere all the morning. We had sundry cups of tea and coffee during the morning and a pretty substantial snack of bread and eggs and cold pig about ten. I protested that I was not hungry, and that we should have lunch when the Commandant came in, but they reminded me of what had happened to me yesterday in the matter of meals, and might possibly happen again to-morrow, and advised me to eat and sleep whenever I got a chance. They were old soldiers and spoke from experience, and I subsequently found it to be very good advice.
It was a long day, as we had nothing to do. In the afternoon the doctor started to teach me some Serbian verbs, and afterwards we all played “Fox and Goose,” and I initiated them into the mysteries of “drawing a pig with your eyes shut,” and any other games we could think of with pencil and paper to while away the time.
About dusk we set forth again to a small village, Orizir, close to Bitol. It was pitch dark as we splashed across a field and a couple of streams to another little house which we occupied. It consisted of two tiny rooms, up a sort of ladder, with a fair-sized balcony in front. The balcony was quite sheltered with a big pile of straw at one end, and I elected to sleep there, though they were fearfully worried about it, and declared I should die of cold, in spite of my protestations that English people always sleep much better in the open air than in a hot room with all the windows shut. Foreigners always look upon English people as more than half mad on the subject of fresh air, especially at night. The next day my orderly, who was in a great state of mind, and seemed to think that I would lose caste with his fellow orderlies if I persisted in sleeping on the balcony, told me that he had found another room for me in a hahn by the roadside, where I accordingly slept the next night, and subsequently we all moved down there. I actually got my long-sought-for bath that day, my resourceful man borrowing a sort of stable for me for an hour and fixing it up for me. As all old campaigners know, a certain kind of live stock, and plenty of them, is the inevitable accompaniment to this sort of life, and is one of its greatest trials, though you do get more or less used even to that. I burnt a hole in my vest cremating some of them, but judging by the look of my bathroom, where the soldiers had been sleeping, I am not at all sure that I did not carry more away with me than I got rid of. While I was engaged in this interesting occupation my orderly called out that the English Consul was there and wished to see me, so I hastily dressed and went out to interview him. He had come in a car to take me back to Salonica with him if I wanted to go, which of course I did not; so he just drove me into town to pick up a large case of cigarettes which I had previously ordered from Salonica for myself and the soldiers and anyone else who ran short of them, and he also gave me a case of tins of jam and one of warm woollen helmets, which were very much appreciated by the men. He said he thought I was quite right to stop, and we parted warm friends.
When I got back I found the Staff Captain, who was the Commandant’s right hand, just going out for another cold ride. He had had fever for the last two or three days, and looked so fearfully ill that I begged him not to go, as, however much he might, and did, boss everybody when he was well, he might let himself be looked after a little bit when he was ill. Rather to my surprise he submitted quite meekly, and let me dose him with quinine, and tuck him up in his blankets by the stove, and as he was shivering violently I told his orderly to make him some hot tea and stand outside the door to see that no one came in to disturb him. As the tea did not seem to be forthcoming, I went out presently to see what was up, and found him with several of his fellow orderlies sitting in the snow round the camp fire having a meal of some kind. He said he had made the tea, but had not any sugar; so I asked some of the others.
“Now, don’t you say ‘Néma’ to me,” I said, before he had time to speak, “but go and find some, because I know perfectly well you have got it.” It is a Serbian peculiarity, which I had found out long ago, that whenever you first ask for a thing they invariably say “Néma” (“There isn’t any”). I have frequently been told that in a shop with the thing lying there under my eyes, because the man was too lazy to get up and get it. They thought it a great joke, and of course produced it, and “Don’t say ‘Néma’ to me” became a sort of laughing byword amongst some of the men afterwards whenever I asked for anything. They have a keen sense of humour, and are always ready for a laugh and a joke, and their gaiety and high spirits bubble up even under the most adverse circumstances.
The rest of the Staff and I then made a fire in the other little room, and sat there and played chess and auction bridge, and were making a terrific noise over the latter, when the Commandant came back. If you really want an amusing occupation, likely to give rise to any amount of discussion and argument, try teaching auction bridge to three men who have never seen it played before, in a language your knowledge of which is so slight that you can only ask for the simplest things in the fewest possible words. You’ll find the result is a very queer and original game.