We had breakfast at 7.30, then went to see Sir Ralph Paget, then to the bank, which fortunately we found open, then to the Serbian Red Cross.
Several other members of different units arrived from Belgrade during the day.
At 2.30 an enemy aeroplane came over Nish. No bombs were dropped, so they had come to spy. Three French aeroplanes went after it and drove it away; they also fired on it with the aircraft guns. We heard that one of the trains from Belgrade had been fired at by the Germans and that twenty-five civilians had been killed. We had a service at the rest house at 5 o'clock. Two aeroplanes had arrived during the afternoon and were going on to Kragujevatz.
We left by the 8.30 p.m. train for Salonika.
Monday, October 11, 1915.
It was a lovely day and most interesting journey. All along there are camps, wire entanglements and trenches. Some of the camps are amongst the trees and can scarcely be seen, as they are made of sticks and mud. The sentry guards also along the line have curious dug-outs, to which they go down by steps. The haystacks, instead of being on the ground as in England, are fixed up in trees, like huge beehives, as the ground gets so swampy. The Serbs and the Albanians look most picturesque. These must have been the regiments I saw coming along when I was staying at Uskub. We have just seen a wolf chasing a young deer; they passed close by the train. It seems dreadful to leave this glorious country with its brilliant sunshine and bright colours, until we see all the horrors that are going on so near to us.
We arrived at Uskub at 7 o'clock; had breakfast at the station, and a few minutes before our train arrived 170 Bulgarian prisoners had been brought in. They were tied together in batches by ropes. I saw one or two of the nurses from Lady Paget's on the platform; they had been to see some friends off. Our train left again at 7.25; then we passed through wonderful gorges; this of course would make the fighting very difficult.
Our next stop was the frontier Ghevghili(?). Most of the passengers' luggage was examined; it was also weighed, and we had to pay on ours.
We arrived at Salonika at 8.30 p.m. We found the station full of Greek soldiers; many of them were on the ground asleep. We had to leave our large luggage for the night, then we took a carriage and went to the hotel Olympus, where we had wired for rooms. We saw many of our English and French troops as we drove down; this of course cheered us up. We heard there were 25,000 French and 11,000 English, and that they had been detained by the Greeks, as they were expected in Serbia some days before.
On arriving at the hotel we made ourselves tidy, went down to dinner, found the room full of English and French; several of them gave us a hearty welcome as there were no English women in Salonika. One officer told us that an American, sitting at their table had insisted on it that we were Americans, and what a great deal the Americans had been doing in Serbia, and the point had been argued, so there was great excitement to know what nationality we were, and the English officers were delighted to find they were right.