THE “SLAVA DAY” OF THE SECOND
REGIMENT
The companies used to take turns at working at the ports for about three weeks, and when our turn came the men were very pleased, as they much preferred it to doing drill, and they were able to occasionally get into the town also. We were camped about a mile and a half outside the town, but I thought it was the nastiest camp that I had ever been in—a very small crowded piece of ground with no shade, so that when the weather was hot we were perfectly roasted, and when it was wet, when you tried to climb up the narrow steep path to it, you slipped back two steps for one you went up, in the thick slippery mud.
I gave up my room in town, as our camp was close enough to walk to. I could make myself understood pretty well in Serbian by now, though, of course, I made awful mistakes, as it is by far the most difficult language I have ever come across to learn, there being no books to help one. One can only pick it up by ear; so it is no wonder if I was occasionally misunderstood.
One day I told my orderly to go and fetch my thick coat, which he would find on a chair in my room, and bring it to me in camp. He duly arrived back about an hour afterwards with the coat and the chair, which he had carried all through the town, and was much discomfited at the howls of laughter with which we all greeted him. I asked him what the land-lady had said to his removing her furniture like that, and he confessed that she had made a few remarks, but, as she spoke nothing but Italian and he nothing but Serbian, they passed lightly over his head, and he triumphantly carried out what he had taken to be my orders. He was a capital orderly, always cheerful and willing. One day he told me, in answer to some remark of mine, that as my orderly he would not have to fight. “Will you fight with us going back to Serbia, like you did in Albania?” he asked. “Why, of course I shall, Dragoutini,” I said. His face beamed. “Then I shall go with you and fight beside you,” he declared emphatically.
We went back to our camp in the hills when our three weeks were up, and to our great joy we heard that we were to embark almost immediately for Salonica.
They let us stay a day longer than was intended in order to celebrate the regimental “Slava day,” which is a great festival, and the whole regiment was en fête for the whole day. The Crown Prince Alexander himself came, and a great many French and English officers and a few ladies.
It was held in a beautiful big, flat glade, just below the camp, with huge big spreading trees. There was a large marquee decorated with all the different flags of the Allies, and everybody had been busy for the last week making paths and generally beautifying the place, and practising for the big march past of the regiment.
We had a variety of talent in our regiment; among others a young student of sculpture. Building four high pillars of clayey mud flanking the path leading to the marquee, he carved on each a beautiful bas-relief. The first one represented a haggard, weary, beaten Serbian soldier going into exile; the next a Serbian soldier re-equipped, holding his new rifle in his hand, his expression full of fierce determination, standing in a striking attitude with his face to the foe again; while on a third was the head of a woman with a look of patient expectancy on her beautiful face, representing the women who were waiting in Serbia for the return of their sons and husbands to deliver them from the bondage of the hated Austrian-Bulgarian oppressors. They were most striking figures, and some day that young Serbian soldier will become known as a very great sculptor.
It was an ideal spot for a fête, and we hoped anxiously that the weather, which had looked rather threatening, would hold up. The whole regiment was astir very early, and we were all drawn up under the trees before the guests arrived.
I was talking to the Colonel, when he suddenly asked me where my company was drawn up.