The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere

by M. A. Stobart

Suddenly we heard a still louder crash close to us, and we saw that one hundred and fifty yards away, a bomb had fallen just outside our camp, to the east—close to the wireless station. Another whirr through the air, and a second crash, and a bomb fell near the wireless on the other side, a few yards from the last. Some of the shrapnel fell upon our tents, but no harm was done to us. Our four guards, stationed at the four corners of our camp, to keep off undesirable visitors, bravely fired their pop-guns at the machine hawks, but that was all the attention the Taubes received, and they sailed triumphantly away into the blue. I then went back to bed to go on with my typhoid. I ought to have died, but I don't do the things that I ought.

I realised the damage that might be wrought if further Taubes chose to mistake us for a military camp, and hurl their bombs upon our patients, and I immediately organised a scheme for the quick evacuation of the hospital on any future occasion, and sent the new rules to the mess tent and to all the wards. Five people had been killed and eighteen wounded as a result of this first attack.

One woman had been on her way to market at Kragujevatz, but when she heard the bombs, she was frightened, and turned to go home, without fulfilling her purpose. She was on her way back, and was just outside our camp, when the bomb near the wireless station fell, and she was hit. Two of our doctors, and some nurses who had run to look at the big hole made by the bomb, and to pick up relics, found her staggering by the hole—bleeding profusely in one arm. The doctors took her into hospital, and found that she had shrapnel in the lung, as well as a shattered arm. Moral: had she continued her work, and not turned back, she would not have been hit.

A few minutes later another woman was brought to us with a smashed leg. She had with her a tiny baby three months old. It had not been hurt, but it was a miserable specimen. The mother, by some curious freak of Nature, disliked the child, and had neglected it. We hoped the mother's misfortune might be the baby's opportunity of life, and Ginger, the red-haired nurse in whose charge it was given, made for it a cradle out of an old packing case, and devoted herself to the baby heart and soul. (The same nurse, who at Antwerp during the bombardment, had carried her soldier patients on her back, down steep cellar stairs, to a place of safety. Later, when our Kragujevatz hospital was evacuated, and those members of the staff who had not gone with me to the front, were on their way to the coast, she was shot accidently. The bullet entered both lungs; she became dangerously ill, and could not be moved from Mitrovitza; two of our doctors, Iles and Macmillan, Nurse Bainbridge, and the Rev. J. Rogers, stayed to look after her. They were all made prisoners, but all—including Ginger, who recovered by a miracle—returned safely to England in February.)

But even Ginger's devotion could not save the poor mite of a baby who had been too long neglected. It died, and Ginger cried her eyes out. The mother remained indifferent, and talked of nothing but her own leg, and her elder child at home.

We had not long to wait before we had an opportunity of a dress rehearsal of the scheme of evacuating the hospital. I received one morning early, a telephone message saying that enemy aeroplanes were on their way towards us. We waited till we saw them in the distance; then, owing to the admirable way in which instructions were carried out, the hospital was cleared of patients and of staff, within a quarter of an hour of sighting the first aeroplane. Our motor ambulances with stretchers and ox-wagons, and the two carts which had been generously presented to the unit by Messrs. Derry and Toms, and which were always now—when not in use—in readiness, conveyed the wounded soldier patients, also the women and children patients, from the wards to a safe distance along the western road; nurses and orderlies went with them, and brought the patients all back when the aeroplanes departed. Only the doctors and I and a few members of the staff remained to look after the camp. We felt a fine sense of security, knowing that our patients were out of harm's way.

Bombs were as usual dropped upon the town, also upon the new barracks—a building close to the camp which had been given by the authorities to us for a winter hospital. Here we kept some of our newly arrived stores and tents, etc., and these were damaged, and some of the staff had narrow escapes. Another bomb fell in the camp, but buried itself in the soft ground, and did not explode. But, certainly in future, tents should be green or khaki, not white. Our camp must have been an easy target.

We had one or two other similar alarms, but no great harm was done, and no serious harm was done to the town. A few shop windows were broken, and pavements destroyed, and the ground around the arsenal was ploughed up, but the arsenal itself remained uninjured.

The town was not caught napping twice, but after the first surprise visit, it arranged a welcome of anti-aircraft guns. On the first two or three occasions, however, these were ineffective. But one day Kragujevatz had its revenge. A Taube arrived, as other Taubes had arrived, full of confidence and bombs. The guns at once fired at her from all directions, and we watched the woolly clouds puffing behind, in front, and all round the biplane. Suddenly we saw a burst of flame in the middle of the machine; we all shouted with excitement, and we watched the Taube turn upside down, and fall to earth like a torn umbrella. It had fallen at the entrance to the town; and an officer dashed up in his car and asked some of us if we should like to see it at close quarters. By the time we arrived, the townspeople had surrounded the wreckage, but I photographed as much as could be seen. I had the misfortune to see also the two aviators, German and Austrian officers, who were smashed to pulp.