But Vooitch, a young Bosnian Serb, spoke French, German, English, and Italian, besides his own Serbian. His position was, for various reasons, not an easy one, but I never saw him out of temper, and by unfailing service to me, night and day, he did much to strengthen weak places elsewhere in the Serbian staff. He was invaluable.
Our secretary, John Greenhalgh, had, owing to the circumstances of our prolonged retreat, not much secretarial work to do; but he acted as honorary treasurer to the British members of the unit, and, in a thousand ways, he was of service to us all. His hobby, in ordinary life, is to help others; in our field hospital he was, therefore, in his element, helping both the wounded and the staff, with kindly, unostentatious, and unsolicited services. I owe him much, for his loyalty to the command of a woman, was a fine example of unselfishness.
The sergeant was not a soldier born; he was, by constitution, weak and lazy, but he meant well. The men had at once summed him up, and they had told me, with charming naïveté, after the first few days of our trek, that he had no influence over them, but that they liked him because he was amiable.
Sandford and Merton were fish out of water; they were not adaptable, but they were invariably courteous and loyal.
Of the Serbian soldiers, drivers, and ambulance men, I cannot speak too highly. I loved them, and I recommended that their services should be given official recognition. They were not perfect; none of us is. While we are waiting for our wings to grow, we must fly by machinery, which is liable to defects. But these men, who had been brought up under Turkish traditions as to the position of women in the world, yielded to their woman commander, a willing obedience and a loyalty which never failed during three months. There was no physical force to back up the commands, and it was conceivable that, under the demoralising conditions of retreat, continuous flight, and privations, discipline might almost excusably have weakened, or even failed. But these men were whole-heartedly loyal from the first day to the last. It should also be remembered that every step these soldiers took, was taking them farther from their families, their homes, their country, but—and this applies also to the thousands of soldiers whom I saw during the three months of retreat—I never heard, or saw, a soldier say, or do, anything that could have given offence to the most fastidious girl, and I am proud if I have been able to render to this Serbian Army, and to the Serbian people, whom I love and respect, even the smallest service.
All, both Serbians and British, performed excellent work under difficult conditions, but the behaviour of the gallant little band who stuck bravely to the column and followed their chief over the mountains at a time when the fate of that column, and of the Army, was uncertain, deserves special recognition.