CHAPTER IX
Meantime, Nurse Ferriss, also ill with typhoid, became worse, and, to the great sorrow of all the camp, on Sunday, July 4th, heart weakness proved fatal, and she died. She, almost alone of all the nurses, had not been content with the "Dobro" dumb show language, but had troubled to learn Serbian, and had made excellent progress. She was engaged to be married, as soon as her work in Serbia was ended. How little we guessed that it was not an earthly marriage which would await her at the end of her camp life.
During the afternoon of her death, a violent thunderstorm, with torrential rain, fell upon us—the worst of many storms we had experienced. The heavens seemed to corroborate our sense of tragedy. The whole sky became black like night, and over the eastern hills, messages were flashed in hieroglyphics of zig-zag lightning, up and down the blackness. In the west, blood-red clouds spread themselves crudely over a dark grey sky; and on the northern side, in curious opportuneness, a rainbow—in the mythology of our Scandinavian ancestors, the bridge which led heroes, fallen in battle, to their heavenly Valhalla—shone, as an inspiration of the Life beyond.
I was glad of the fierceness of the storm, because it distracted the attention of the Unit; they were obliged to watch carefully their tautened tent ropes, if they did not want to see their tents whirled across the plain. Tent ropes are awkward customers when rain and wind are combined, for until you get used to such conundrums, it is difficult to see how you can simultaneously obey the rule—to loosen them during rain, and tighten them during wind.
Nurse Ferriss had died in a large ward tent in which other nurses, her friends, were also lying ill. From them it was necessary to keep the news that she was dead. We told them that we had moved her to a quieter tent. Quite true. On the funeral day, at the time when most of the members of the Unit were collecting, to join the procession, a member of another unit, who chanced to be staying with us for a couple of nights, thoughtfully suggested that he should keep the ears and eyes of the patients occupied, by singing and playing to them on his banjo. For ten minutes before I started, as chief mourner, I sat on Nurse Ferriss's empty bed and listened, with outward ears, to nonsense about a cat that wouldn't come home at night, and a needle in a hay stack that wouldn't let itself be found. Then, when the time came for the procession to start, I said I was busy, and left the banjo party sitting up in their beds, shouting with laughter at the latest caprices of the cat.
I then marched with our Unit, to the little chapel attached to Major Protitch's hospital, for here our dead was lying.
The Kragujevatz authorities, to show their sympathy, had decided to give a public military funeral, and though I think that funerals and marriages are occasions which should be sacred to the chief mourners, it was impossible not to appreciate this testimony of a very real public sympathy. Colonels Guentchitch, and Popovitch, and Major Protitch, and Colonel Harrison went with us to the chapel. There were already assembled the British, French, Italian and Russian Attachés, medical and military officials, and representatives of the Crown Prince and of the town, members of other units, and friends of the hospital, etc. The brass band of the Crown Prince played funeral music as the coffin was brought from the chapel, and placed for a few minutes on trestles whilst Dr. Dearmer said a short prayer. Then appeared a hearse-carriage, drawn by a pair of terribly lean bay horses. More music whilst the coffin and many beautiful wreaths were placed in the carriage; and the procession started, to slow music—the same melancholy bars played over and over again—for the cathedral.
First walked a Serbian soldier carrying a cross, on which was written the name of the dead, also a wreath, with flaring pink ribbons; then Dr. Dearmer, carrying his Prayer Book in one hand, and a brown, lighted candle—given him by a Serbian official—in the other. Candles play an important part in Serbian death ceremonies. Next I followed as chief mourner, and our British Military Attaché, who kindly offered to stay by me, Dr. Coxon, who had attended Nurse Ferriss, then the other doctors, and Captain Yovannovitch, the Unit, officers, representatives of the town and general sympathisers.