We arrived at Nish at eight o’clock in the evening. It was dark; the station was sparsely lighted; the buffet, to which we had been looking forward all day, was as crowded as a sardine-box and apparently devoid of anything suggesting food. Wounded soldiers, reservists, officers filled the waiting-room and the platform. The Servian officer dived into the crowd and returned presently, bringing his sheaves with him in the shape of three plates of hot chicken.
Nish seemed an unfit-like meeting-place for triumphant soldiers; it resembled rather the scene of a conspiracy in a melodrama, where tired conspirators were plotting nothing at all. One felt cut off from all news. In London, one knew, in every sitting-room people were marking off the movements of the battles with paper flags on inaccurate maps. Here at Nish, in the middle of a crowd of men who either had fought or were going to fight, one knew less about the war than in Fleet Street. One bought a newspaper, but it dealt with everything except war news.
A man came into the refreshment-room—the name was in this case ironical—and said, “I have had nothing to eat, not a piece of bread and not a drop of water, for twenty-four hours,” and then, before anybody could suggest a remedy—for food there was none—he went away. Afterwards I saw him with a chicken in his hand. One man was carrying a small live pig, which squealed. In the corner of the platform two men, with crutches and bandages, dressed in the clothes of the country, were sitting down, looking as if they were tired of life. I offered them a piece of cold sausage, which they were too tired to accept; only at the sight of a cigarette one of them made a gesture, and, being given one, smoked and smoked and smoked. I knew the feeling. Suddenly, in the darkness, a sleeping-car appeared, to the intense surprise of everyone—an International sleeping-car, with sheets, and plenty of room in it. My travelling companion and myself started for Sofia, where we arrived the next morning.
At Sofia the scene on the platform was different. The place was full of bustle; the platform crowded with Red Cross men, nurses, and soldiers, in tidy, practical uniforms. The refreshment-room, too, was crowded with doctors. You heard fragments of many languages: the scene might have been Mukden, 1904, or, indeed, any railway station in any war anywhere. An exceedingly capable porter got me my luggage with dispatch, and I drove to the hotel in a “phaeton,” but not with the coursers of the sun. The horses here had all gone to the war. At the hotel I was first given—the only room said to be vacant—a room which was an annex to the café. For furniture it had six old card-tables and nothing else.
Full of Manchurian memories, I was about to think this luxurious, when the offending Adam in me quite suddenly revolted, and I demanded and obtained instead a luxurious upper chamber. I stayed about a week at Sofia, and made unavailing efforts to get to the front. I was then told I would find it easier to get to the front where the Servian Army was fighting. So, laden with papers and passports, I started for Uskub.
I travelled from Sofia to Nish in the still existing comfortable sleeping-cars; but when I arrived once more at the junction of Nish I learnt a lesson which I thought I had mastered many years ago, and that is, take in a war as much luggage as you possibly can to your civilised base, but once you start for the front or anywhere near it, take nothing at all except a tea-basket and a small bottle of brandy. I had only a small trunk with me, but the stationmaster refused to let it proceed. War goes to the heads of stationmasters like wine. This particular stationmaster had no right whatsoever to stop my small trunk on the grounds that it was full of contraband goods, and he could perfectly well have had it examined then and there; instead of which he said it would have to be taken to the Custom House Office in the town, which would involve a journey of two hours and the missing of my train. I was obliged to leave my trunk at the station, nor cast one longing, lingering look behind. The only reason I mention this episode, which has no sort of interest in itself, is to illustrate something which I will come to later. At Nish I got into a slow train. The railway carriage was full of people. There was in it a Servian poet, who had temporarily exchanged the lyre for the lancet, and enrolled himself in the Medical Service. His name was Dr. Milan Curçin—pronounced Churchin. He showed me the utmost kindness. Like all modern poets, he was intensely practical, and an admirable man of business, and he promised to get me back my trunk and either to bring it to Uskub himself, as he was continually travelling backwards and forwards between Uskub and Nish, or to have it sent wherever I wished. He spoke several languages, and we discussed the war. He said the Servians resented the abuse which had been levelled against them by Pierre Loti. Pierre Loti, he said, accused them of being barbarians and of attacking Turkey without reason.
“We,” said the poet, “hate war as much as anyone. What does Pierre Loti know of our history? What does he know of Turkish rule in Servia? He knows Stamboul; ‘but what does he know of Turkey who only Stamboul knows?’ Besides, if Pierre Loti’s knowledge of Turkey was anything like his knowledge of Japan, as reflected in that pretty book called Madame Chrysanthème—a book which made all serious scholars of Japan rabid with rage—it is not worth much.” He had no wish to deny the Turks their qualities. That was not the point. The point was Turkish rule in Servia in the past, and that was unspeakable. The poet was obliged to get out at the first station we stopped at, and after his departure I moved into another compartment, in which there were a wounded soldier, a young Russian volunteer, who was studying at the Military Academy at Moscow, two men of business who were now soldiers, and a gendarme who had been standing up all night, and who stood up all day. I offered these people some tea, having a tea-basket with me. They accepted it gratefully, and after a little time one of them asked me if I were an Austrian. I said no; I was an Englishman. They said: “We thought it extremely odd that an Austrian should offer us tea.” The wounded soldier, thinking I was a doctor, asked me if I could do anything to his wound. As he spoke Servian I could only understand a little of what he said. It seemed heart-breaking, just as one began to get on more or less in Bulgarian, to have to shift one’s language to one which, although the same in essentials, is superficially utterly different in accent, intonation, and in most of the common words of everyday life! Servian and Bulgarian are the same language at root, but Servian is more like Polish, Bulgarian more like Russian. Servian is a great literary language, with a mass of poetry and a beautiful store of folk songs and folk epics. Bulgarian compared with it is more or less of a patois; it is like Russian with all the inflections left out. With the help of the Russian student I gathered that the soldier had been wounded at the battle of Kumanovo, that his wound had been dressed and bandaged by a doctor, but that subsequently he had gone to a wise woman, who had put some balm on it, and that the effect of the balm had been disastrous. I strongly recommended him to consult a doctor on the first possible occasion. It is travelling under such circumstances, in war-time especially, that one really gets beneath the crust of a country. Every man who travels in an International sleeping-car becomes more or less international; and it is not in hotels or embassies that you get face to face with a people, however excellent your recommendations. But travel third-class in a full railway carriage, in times of war, and you get to the heart of the country through which you are travelling. The qualities of the people are stripped naked—their good qualities and their bad qualities; and this is why I mentioned the episode of the trunk, in order to call attention to the extreme kindness shown to me by the Servian poet, Dr. Curçin, who rescued the trunk for me at great personal inconvenience. I hoped that the “Georgian” poets would do the same for a Servian war correspondent, supposing there were a war in England and they were to come across one.
After many hours we came to a stop where it was necessary to change, at Vranja; and then began one of those long war waits which are so exasperating. The station was full to overflowing with troops; there was no room to sit down in the waiting-room. We waited there for two hours, and then, at last, the train was formed which was bound for Uskub. There were several members of the Servian Parliament who had reserved places in this train, and in a moment, it appeared to be quite full, and there seemed to be no chance of getting a place in it. I was handicapped also by carrying a saddle and a bridle, which blocked up the narrow corridor of the railway carriage. But I got a place in the train, and room was found for the saddle owing to the kindness of an aviator called Alexander Maritch. He was one of those extremely unselfish people who seem to spend their life in doing nothing but extremely tiresome things for other people. He carried my saddle in his hands for half an hour, and at last managed to find room for it where it would not be in the way of all the other passengers. He was an astonishingly capable man with his hands and his fingers. There appeared to be nothing he could not do. He uncoupled the railway carriages; he mended during the journey a quantity of broken objects, and he spent the whole of the time in making himself useful in one way or another.
Towards nightfall we arrived at the station of Kumanovo, and got out to have a look at the battlefield. It was quite dark and the ground was covered with snow. Drawn up near the station were a lot of guns and ammunition carts which had been taken from the Turks. Here were some Maxim guns whose screens were perforated by balls, which shows that they could not have been made of good material; and indeed at Uskub I was told that there were no doubt cases where the Turkish material was bad; but another and more potent cause of the disorganisation in the Turkish Army was the manner in which the Turks handled, or rather mishandled, their weapons. They forgot to unscrew the shells; they jammed the rifles. This is not surprising to anyone who has ever seen a Turk handle an umbrella. He carries it straight in front of him, pointing towards him in the air, if it is shut, and sideways and beyond his head, if it is open.
We arrived at Uskub about half-past eight. The snow was thawing. The aspect was desolate. The aviator found me a room in the Hôtel de la Liberté; but the window in it was broken, and there was no fuel. It was as damp as a vault. We had dinner. I happened to mention that it would be nice to smoke a cigarette, but I had not got any more. At once the aviator darted out of the room and disappeared. “He won’t come back,” said one of his friends, “till he has found you some cigarettes, you may be sure of that.” In an hour’s time he returned with three cigarettes, having scoured the town for them, the shops, of course, being shut.