We left there soon after midnight, and rode all night and most of the next day. The Commandant and his Staff Captain drove in a wagon, the same one that the Kid and I had driven in on the first night of the retreat. They asked me whether I would rather come in the wagon with them or ride, as the roads were simply terrible, but I elected to ride and chance Diana going on her head, which she did not do, however, as the Commandant, with his usual thoughtfulness, had had her roughed for me a few days before. We rode very, very slowly, always through crowds of soldiers, pack-horses and donkeys, halting about every hour at little camp fires along the roadside made by our front guard, where we sat and warmed our feet for about a quarter of an hour till the tired soldiers could catch us up, there being frequent halts for them to rest for a few minutes. I rode alongside the Adjutant and another officer, and was very glad that my orderly had filled my thermos flask with hot tea, with a good dash of cognac in it, which the three of us consumed while riding along. The roads were really fearful, one solid sheet of ice, and the Adjutant’s horse came down so often that eventually he had to walk and lead it. Occasionally we all used to get down and walk for a bit to warm our feet, which became like blocks of ice, but the going was so hard that we were glad to mount again. I say “mount,” but in reality, what between wearing a heavy fur coat and getting colder and stiffer and wearier, it was more a sort of crawl up Diana’s side that I did; fortunately she was a patient animal, and used to stand still. It soothed my feelings to see that I was not the only one, several of the others having nearly as much difficulty in mounting. They were all so friendly, and I had more than one “Good luck to you” shouted after me. It was not really such a hard ride as we had expected, though, as stopping at the little camp fires and chatting with the men round them made a nice break.

About daybreak we arrived at a hahn, where we found the ambulance again, and the Commandant and the Captain got their horses there, and we all walked, and later on rode, up and up a winding road, up a mountain. It was bitterly cold, and every few yards we passed horrible looking corpses of bullocks, donkeys and ponies, with the hides and some of the flesh stripped from them; sometimes there were packs, ammunition and rifles thrown away by the roadside, but very, very few of the latter; a soldier is very far gone indeed before he will part with that. Of course everywhere swarmed with spies, and we stopped a man and a boy in civilian clothes carrying baskets; they protested that they were going down to do some marketing or something of that sort, but whatever it was they wanted to do they were told they could not do it, and gently but firmly turned back.

At the very top we stopped at the ruins of a filthy little hut, where a halt was called and the field telephone rigged up. We built a fire outside—it was too dirty to go inside—under the wall, and had some coffee, and tried, very unsuccessfully, to get out of the howling, bitter wind. The soldiers sat about and rested, and we stayed there until late in the afternoon. We were to spend the night at Resan, some way down the other side, and about 3 o’clock the doctor said he was going down there, and I might as well come down with him and look for a room. Wily young man, he was petrified with cold himself and didn’t like to say so, so had previously told the Staff Captain that I was cold and wanted to go into the town, and that, as I could not go by myself, hadn’t he better escort me? He let this out afterwards, and I was very indignant with him, but he was quite unabashed. He used to love teasing me, calling me “Napoleon” because I rode a white horse, and we were constantly sparring. My orderly, after a long search, found me quite a decent little room in a house close to the Caserne, where the staff were to be quartered. The family consisted of two old ladies and a girl, who all fell on my neck and hugged me, rather to my embarrassment. One of the old ladies explained volubly that she had once had something—I never could quite make out whether it was a husband or a cat—and had lost it, and I was now to take its place in the family circle.

We all sat round the stove in my little room, which seemed quite a luxurious palace to me now, and I made them real English tea with my little tea-basket, and the poor old things seemed quite enchanted, as they had neither tea nor sugar in the house, and they fussed over me, and could not do enough for me.

The next morning I stayed in bed till nearly eight, and, after dressing leisurely, went up to see the Commandant and staff, who said they had begun to think they had lost me. About five o’clock my orderly came in in a great state of excitement and wrath, declaring that he did not know what to do with my things as the wagon had been taken for something else, and that the Commandant and staff were all gone. He was an excitable person, and used to get these panics occasionally, and, as I knew perfectly well that whatever happened they would not leave me behind, I told him not to be such an ass, but to go and get my horse and I would go and find out for myself, as I could not get any sense out of him. I happened to meet the Commandant in the street, and, as I fully expected, we had supper quietly, and did not stir till 9 p.m. We nearly always did ride at night. We left very quietly, and walked the first bit of the way through the mud, and then rode up a beautiful serpentine road, which had originally been made by the Turks, through what looked as if it might be beautiful country if you could only see it. All the way along there were soldiers and camp fires, which looked so pretty twinkling all over the hills through the fir trees, and we made frequent halts while the Commandant gave his orders.

I thought we were going to ride all night, and it was a pleasant surprise when we turned off the road, and put our horses at a steep muddy bit of mound at the top of which was an old block-house, one of the many built by the Turks and dotted all over that part of the country. The telephone was rigged up there, and it was full of officers and soldiers; the ground all round was a perfect sea of mud, and there were soldiers everywhere. I had not the faintest idea whether we were going to stop there half an hour or for the rest of the night, and I don’t suppose anybody else had either, except, perhaps, the Commandant. I sat by the stove for some time, and finally lay down on the floor on some straw that looked not quite so dirty as the rest, though that is not saying much, but when I woke up some hours later I got the impression that I had strayed into a new version of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The whole floor was absolutely covered so thickly with sleeping men that you could not put your feet down without treading on them. I counted up to twenty-nine and then gave it up because I saw several more come in afterwards, though where they managed to wedge themselves in I do not know. The Commandant had left the telephone and was sleeping peacefully among the others; the only person awake was a very big, good-looking gendarme, who was keeping the stove stoked up, although it was already suffocatingly hot. The Serbians laugh at me because I declare that they always pick their gendarmes for their good looks; they are certainly a magnificent set of men. This one inquired if I wanted anything, as soon as he saw that I was awake, and I asked him if he would fetch me my thermos flask full of tea, which he would find in Diana’s saddle-bag. He had never seen a thermos flask before, and when he brought it back and I shared the tea with him he was perfectly thunderstruck to find it still hot. He couldn’t make it out at all, and seemed to think that in some extraordinary way Diana must have had something to do with it, and I shouldn’t be surprised if next day he put a bottle of tea in his own saddle-bag to see if his horse would be equally clever.

About 5 a.m., while it was still dark, I woke up again so boiling hot that I could not stand it any longer, and crawled out cautiously over the sleeping men, treading on a good many, I am afraid, though they did not seem to object, and took a walk round; but, as it was raining and the mud appalling, I did not stay outside long. There was one camp fire still going, and what I took to be a large bundle covered over with a sack beside it. Here’s luck, I thought, something to sit on beside the fire, and down I plumped, but got up again quickly when it gave a protesting grunt and a heave, and I found I had sat down on a man. After that I sat on a tin can in the cold passage for some time and waited for daybreak.

CHAPTER V

WE SAY GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA AND TAKE TO
THE ALBANIAN MOUNTAINS

The next morning we rode on and camped at another block-house. The field telephone was going all the time here, and evidently the news was anything but satisfactory. I did so heartily wish that I knew more Serbian and could understand more of what was going on. I was so keenly interested in what was happening and where the various companies were and how they were getting on, and it was maddening when breathless despatch riders used to come in from the trenches, and I could only gather a little bit of what they were saying, and generally miss the vital point. The Commandant and his Staff Captain used to pore over maps at the table, and, although they would not have minded my knowing anything, of course I could not bother them with questions. Sometimes if Commandant Militch was not busy he used to show me the various positions on the map, and tell me where he was moving the men to. It was such a frightfully anxious time for him, he had to hold the threads of everything in his hands; everything depended on him, the lives and safety of all the men, and despatch riders and telephone calls gave him very little rest.