CHAPTER XVIII
THE FLIGHT OF SERBIA
The men were up before three-thirty to strike the tents, having slept but little. Breakfast was prepared and waiting at five-thirty in the big hospital bedroom; but the women ate of it alone.
Jo sallied forth to the camp, anxious to know what had happened. She found a testy little company. For two hours they had been struggling in the dark with tents and waiting for the carts and for a policeman, as all the riff-raff of the town was gathering to loot our leavings.
At last the carts were run to earth standing outside the hospital in a line—ten little springless carts in charge of a stupid-looking corporal who had misunderstood his orders. He moreover refused to move, saying he "had his orders."
The indefatigable Churchin was found, and sent him off with a flea in his ear. When he arrived at the camp we found a woman and household luggage in one of the carts. He said it was his wife, and objected to our putting anything into that cart. We told him he would have to lump it, and he got sulky; as each extra package was put on a cart he said that it would break to pieces. Certainly the tents were very heavy, but we had been ordered to take them. When the carts were loaded up to the last degree they moved slowly through the mud and drew up at the hospital. We were sadly overladen. Our party consisted of Mawson, West, Cutting, Rogerson, Willett, Blease, Angelo, Whatmough, Elmer, Owen, and Hilder—the last four being our friends of the railway journey from Nish. We were thirteen. Temporarily with us also were the two little Austro-Serbian boys. The other four carriages were occupied by a doctor and three members of the Stobart unit, two "Scottish Women," their orderly and a Russian medical student who had been a political prisoner.
Leaving the town was a slow business, as it was being evacuated. Our little procession proceeded very slowly. Most of us walked. Jo drove with two of the Stobarts, watching from a seat of vantage the packed masses of people who wormed their way in and out between the ox carts. The road was blocked by some gigantic baking ovens on wheels. Hundreds of boys, big seventeen-year-old boys with guns, and little limping fellows from thirteen to sixteen, wearing bright rugs rolled over their shoulders, were dragging along in single file. Their faces were white, and their noses red, sergeants were beating the backward ones along with a ramrod. One of them said—
"I have eaten nothing for three days—give me bread." We had no bread, but we discovered some Petit-Beurre biscuits, and left him turning them over and over.
The whole town buzzed: motor cars, surrounded by curses, insinuated their way through the crammed streets; whips were cracking, men were quarrelling but all had their faces turned towards the road to Rashka, which we realized would be as full as at straphanging time in the Tube. The boys passed us, then we passed them. They passed us again. Hundreds of Austrian prisoners were being hurried along, goodness knows where. Neat young clerks, suit case in hand, elbowed their way through the crowd. Young staff officers were walking, jostled by beggars. Jo called to an old man who was driving a cart full of modern furniture, his face drawn into wrinkles of misery—