By noon (Tuesday, the 19th) our wounded were all evacuated. This was fortunate, as at one o'clock came the order to move on at once. News from the front was bad; the Germans were pressing on, and were now close behind us. The guns sounded very near. We had not far to go, only to Uvidno, a two hours' trek. It was difficult to find a camp site; the whole country near the roadside was mud swamp from the continued rain. We pitched the hospital tent between the road and a wood, and three tents, one for the doctors, one for the men, and one for the women, were pitched in the shelter of the wood. The cars stayed on the road. There were not many wounded that afternoon—that was a bad sign. It meant that the enemy were giving no time for collecting them from the field; they were also firing on the ambulance parties, and only the least severely wounded came straggling in, as best they could, by themselves. We evacuated them when their wounds were dressed, from our own and also from Major A.'s hospital, which was on the other side of the road.
CHAPTER XXII
The news grew more and more serious. The Bulgars had taken Vranya, the Germans were at Valievo, and also at Michaelovatz, close behind us. The Serbs had been badly beaten in the morning. An unending stream of refugees passed along the road, and whole families of women and children, babies in arms, infants that could just toddle, boys and young girls, all sheltered at night near us in the wood, constructing as best they could, rough arbours of branches, for protection from rain and wind. We had no time for practical sympathy with these forlorn people, who would, in all probability, never see their homes or their menfolk again. All this was another horrible side-light on the "glories" of war.
The situation was growing hourly worse. Where were the French and English troops? We received marching orders, and were off again by 6 a.m. (October 20th) for Gliebovatz, two miles to the north of Palanka. It was again difficult, owing to mud, and rain, and wind, and no shelter, to find suitable ground for tents, oxen, and the men's bivouacs. Major A., who had, from the first been pessimistic as to the military situation, was now much depressed. He told us that the Bulgars were already near to Nish; that they had cut the line; that the Serbian Government had left Nish; and that the Germans were only three kilometres behind us. The French doctors, however, were always delightfully optimistic, and they and we made a point of trying to laugh the Major out of his forebodings.
On the 20th we received no wounded—again a bad sign, though there was not much firing. We expected marching orders every minute, and we did not put up all the tents. Most of the staff slept in the cars.
On Thursday, October 21st, at 9 a.m., we received the order to go to Palanka, and to establish our dressing-station in the Casino, opposite to the Hotel Serbia, in which Major A.'s column was placed. Rooms for the staff were found in the Hotel Central. I slept in the car, as usual. The cars were drawn up in the yard of a private house. There was a small veranda and a kitchen belonging to the house, and here we cooked and ate our food.
Palanka, when we entered it, was already evacuated in readiness for the Germans. The houses were deserted, the shops shuttered, the mud churned by thousands of oxen, horses, and wagons, into gelatinous paste, was a foot deep. Heavy rain was falling. In the main street a continuous stream of fugitives—old men, women and children—were splashing through the mud, carrying their bundles of household treasures on their backs, and driving hurriedly before them their precious pigs, and goats and little flocks of sheep.
The news from the front, which was, alas! behind us, continued to be bad. Work, therefore, for doctors and nurses was slack; there is never time, in a retreat, to collect all the wounded. At this point we were troubled to know how to carry the benzine for the cars. It was too heavy for the wagons, and we optimistically decided to send some of it by train to Lapovo, to await us there. I stopped a refugee woman with her cart and commandeered her, against payment, to take some barrels to the station. The barrels left for Lapovo, but we never saw them again, because Lapovo was in the enemy's hands before we reached it.