Typhus fever raged most in Valevo, where the Austrian troops came first and brought it, a worse enemy of Serbia than even the Austrians themselves. A Serbian women's association in Nish held a meeting and consulted a doctor how they could help.
"Don't go to Valevo," advised the doctor. "Whoever enters the hospital over there must die."
The president, a well-known woman, kept
silent, went home, packed her luggage and took the first train for Valevo. After two weeks she was brought home infected by typhus, and died soon afterwards.
A patrician mother fled before the Bulgars with two girls. For several days they had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. As they reached the rocky frontier of Albania, the girls asked the mother:
"And now, whither?"
The mother smiled and said:
"I will give you now the last bit to eat, and then we will go where we will be perfectly safe from enemy and hunger."