Is it a wonder that good understanding prevailed between Serbians and English? Misunderstandings arise from words. In Serbia there only was one word—"Dobro"; and I'm longing for the day—"Der Tag"—when we can go back to Serbia and find that all is indeed once more "Dobro, dobro."
When we first arrived in Serbia, we were much interested in the sight of many thousands of Austrian prisoners of war, working in every department of life, and living in apparent freedom. Those who were officers were often employed in hospitals. In Dr. Protitch's hospital, one of the prisoners had been Professor of Mathematics, at the University of Prague. His work now was to count the dirty linen, and he did it very badly. I suppose even the Professor's mathematics couldn't make ninety nightshirts that came back from the wash, equal to one hundred that went out.
We had no commissioned officers in our hospital, but forty Austrian so-called prisoners helped us in the rough work of the camp, as trench diggers, stretcher bearers and ward orderlies, etc. These men were working in a camp hospital controlled by women; they were working for the enemies of their country, yet they were quite unguarded, and slept at night, in tents, like the rest of us. But after the first wonder had evaporated, thoughts of the possible mischief they might do, never entered our minds. It showed the artificiality of war. These men—forty thousand or more—were told that by the rules of the game, they were prisoners, and therefore must keep off Tom Tiddler's ground, and they obeyed the rules with scarcely any supervision.
There were Serbian Austrians, and Austrian Austrians. The latter spoke only German, and were less to be trusted politically than the former, who talked only Serbian. The Serbian Austrians were to all intents Serbians, and dreaded nothing so much as the prospect of being retaken by the Austrians—their former masters.
The main distinction between the two is that of religion, Croats or Serbian Austrians are Catholics, whereas the others belong to the Greek Church. But all alike were excellent workers, and very happy in their work. Both they and we grieved terribly when later, owing to political causes, all our Catholic prisoners were removed from their positions of freedom, and happy work in our hospital, and were sent, under strict escort, to dig tunnels on the railway to Roumania, or to other work in which supervision was feasible.
Amongst these orderlies working for us, was a funny old man called Jan. He had a wife and children somewhere in Serbia, and he developed a chronic habit of coming to ask for leave to go and see them. On one occasion when he came to say good-bye to "Maika" (mother), I noticed that he was hugging two bottles, which were carefully wrapped in paper. I asked him what he was carrying, and he answered proudly, "Medicine for my little ones." "Dear! dear! are they ill?" I asked with some concern; "I am sorry." "Oh! no. They're not ill. I am only taking them the medicine as a treat." He had apparently explained his idea to our dispenser, and she had given him something harmless to satisfy his fatherly instinct of giving joy. A side-light on the scarcity of medicines.
Our hospital received several visits from German and Austrian aeroplanes. Kragujevatz was one of their main objectives, on account of the arsenal and the Crown Prince.
We, and the town authorities were unprepared for the first Taube arrival. The day after Sir Thomas Lipton's visit, I went to bed with typhoid. I had been in bed a week, when one morning, as I lay in my tent awake, looking out at the camp, I heard a sound—familiar from memories of Antwerp. In the air above, a whirring of machinery, then a noise like a chariot of fire cleaving the air, followed by a crash, as though all the glass-houses of the earth were smashed. Typhoid or no typhoid, I jumped out of bed to see what had happened, and to take any measures possible for the safety of the unit, and I saw clouds of smoke and débris rising from the town.
The unit, who were then getting up, rushed from their tents in their pyjamas, and watched with interest whilst three biplanes, two German and one Austrian, dropped bombs in quick succession on the town, evidently in futile effort to destroy the arsenal and the Crown Prince's house.