The next day the Commandant took me with him for his usual ride up into the positions. The hills were very rough and steep, but our plucky horses managed it all right. We stopped at one Albanian village on the way which was invested by some of our troops. These Albanian villages were a perfect picture of squalor and filth. I don’t know what the people subsist on, but they seem to live like animals. I had always pictured the Albanian peasants as a very fine picturesque race of men wearing spotless native costume, and slung about with fascinating looking daggers and curious weapons of all kinds, but the great majority of those I saw, more especially in the small towns, were a very degenerate looking race indeed.
We had intended going up to some positions which the Fourteenth Regiment were holding, and where a battle was then in progress, but before we got up there we got word that they had had to retreat, and saw them coming back down the mountain side; so we had to stop where the field telephone was rigged up, and the Commandant was very busy for a long time giving orders, etc. He was away for some time, and I lay down and went to sleep on the grass. With their usual charming manners a couple of soldiers came up, telling me they had a fire over there, and one of them fetched his blanket and spread it by the fire for me to lie on, while the other one rolled up his overcoat for a pillow. The Serbian peasant’s manners are not an acquired thing, depending upon whether they have been well or badly brought up, but seem to be natural and part of themselves, and as such are always to be depended upon. People who do not know anything about them have sometimes asked me if I was not afraid to go about among what they imagine to be a race of wild savages, but quite the opposite is the case. I cannot imagine anything more unlikely than to be insulted by a Serbian soldier. I should feel safer walking through any town or village in Serbia at any hour of the night than I should in most English or Continental towns.
Coming back in the dark, Diana fell on to her head in a ditch, and I rolled off out of the way, as I did not want her to lie down on top of me, but I got unmercifully chipped for “falling off.” I was tired, and had besides a splitting headache; so I went and lay down in my tent when we got in. My orderly came and tucked me up, made me some tea, and told the men near not to make a noise, and altogether made up for any shortcomings he might have by being exceedingly sympathetic. I had not intended going in to supper, but he was so persuasive about it, telling me there was, as he expressed it, such a “fine supper,” and was so anxious for me to have some, that I finally went in. About 9.30 p.m. we packed up again and rode for a couple of hours to another little house, where we found some officers, who turned out of their beds—which they invited us to sit on while they entertained us with tea—after which the Commandant, Captain, Adjutant and myself turned in thankfully, not for very long, as we had to start at 3 a.m. the next morning.
We rode till daylight, and then camped on a hill near the ambulance. There was no house here, so the staff borrowed one of the ambulance tents, and I pitched my little one alongside of it. The Second Regiment were camped on the same hillside, and the next morning the Commander of the First Battalion, Captain Stoyadinovitch, came in to see the Colonel before going with his battalion to take up the positions. I asked if I might go with him, and he said I might; so I rode off with him at the head of the battalion, little thinking how long it would be before I saw the Commandant and his staff again, and that was how I came afterwards to be attached properly to a company, and became an ordinary soldier.
CHAPTER VI
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
We rode all that morning, and as the Commander of the battalion, Captain Stoyadinovitch, did not speak anything but Serbian, nor did any other of the officers or men, it looked as if I should soon pick it up. The staff had also shifted their quarters at the same time, and while we were riding up a very steep hill where Captain S—— had to go for orders Diana’s saddle slipped round, and by the time some of the soldiers had fixed it again for me I found he had got his orders and disappeared. I asked some of the soldiers which way he had gone, and they pointed across some fields; so I went after him as fast as Diana could gallop. I met three officers that I knew, also running in the same direction, and all the men seemed to be going the same way too. The officers hesitated about letting me come, and said, “Certainly not on Diana,” who was white and would make an easy mark for the enemy; so I jumped off and threw my reins to a soldier.
“Well, can you run fast?” they said.
“What, away from the Bulgars!” I exclaimed in surprise.
“No, towards them.”