After Pirot the country was magnificent: narrow roads wound round and
round, ascending the high mountains, and from view-points on the hills,
we could see behind us, and before us, only interrupted by the curves
of the mountain road, endless columns of the Serbian Army; this was
not visible as soldiers, oxen, guns, and transport, but as the sinuous
movement of a grey serpent winding itself round and round the mountain
passes.
I was surprised at finding that there were to be no outspans. In South
Africa it was the invariable rule to rest the oxen for two hours after
every three hours of trek. But now we were told that we must only halt
when the columns ahead of us halted, and that was very occasionally,
for a quarter of an hour at a time. Meals, therefore, were not a
prominent feature of the day.
When night fell we were still trekking, and from 5 p.m. the roads were
atrocious, and in the pitchy darkness it was impossible to see the
holes into which one's horse must stumble. We reached our goal at 9
o'clock: sixteen hours in the saddle without being tired was a good
beginning. We were directed to our camping site, which was amongst
herds of other convoys; but as the ground was swampy, and there was no
room for tents, and we had to move off again at five next morning, we
didn't unpack the tents, but slept in the cars. One of the chauffeurs
had good luck: he fell into a hole six feet deep, invisible in the
darkness, and didn't break his neck; he only cut his head.
There wasn't much time for sleep; there were many things to arrange,
and I was up again at 3.30 next morning; it was better to make sure
that the men were up, and that fires were lighted, for hot coffee,
and eggs, in case there should be no time to eat during the day. And
our cook, Mrs. Dawn, from that first day to the last, when we reached
Medua, was splendid. She loyally complied with my wish that, as meals
during the day were uncertain, we must always, however early the
start, have hot coffee and porridge before we left. This meant that
she must rise an hour earlier than anybody else--except myself and the
soldiers--and she and I were always in rivalry as to who was up first.
The road ran along narrow passes, between precipitous rocky mountains;
in these were many large caves. Goats were grazing on the hillsides,
and I noticed, away up on the sky-line, on the top of a high mountain,
a solitary man, herding his flock of goats, which had found a patch of
green grass amongst the barren rocks. He belonged to another world.
I don't know why, but I have often thought of that man, and wondered
if he is still up there upon his hill-top, happily detached from the
sordid, worrying, cruel world below.
We heard that day sounds of distant firing, and we were told that our
Army had beaten back 2,000 Austrians in the north-east corner. It
rained all day, and as we had again been told that we were to push on
without halting, we were glad to reach Knasharevatz at 9 p.m. I had
sent the dispenser, who talked German, in advance, to find a camping
site, but when we reached the town he had disappeared. The streets were
in darkness, the rain was merciless, and things were looking rather
gloomy, when an officer in a blue cloak rode up with a message from
Colonel Terzitch, saying that the latter would like to see me.
The Colonel was quartered in a house in the middle of the town; so I
halted the column, and rode on with the officer. When we reached the
house, I was conscious for the first time that the rain was pouring
off my hat-brim like a water-spout, that my gloves were so sodden I
couldn't take them off, and that my general appearance was a little
aqueous. I didn't mind, but I hoped that the Colonel and the P.M.O.
wouldn't feel sorry. They, however, were as usual, splendidly tactful;
they just said enough to let me know that they knew that I knew that
they knew what we were all thinking, and then they told me that they
had arranged for us all to dine at a restaurant, and that we had better
sleep in our cars in the market square; the men and wagons would take
up quarters in a street near by. The P.M.O. came downstairs with me,
and I hoped he wouldn't come out and see me mount; my coat was heavy
with rain, and I had begun to suspect that I might not find it as easy
as usual to spring lightly over the saddle, after a second day of
sixteen hours continuously in the wet. He came; but he didn't discover.
I rode back to the doctors and the others with the good news of a
real dinner ahead of us, and then we ate the real dinner in the
restaurant--the Café de Paris--and went to bed on the stretchers, in
the cars, in the square, much to the interest of the native population,
who were most of them looking at English women for the first time.
We breakfasted early in the café, and at eight the P.M.O. came and
told me confidentially that we should be moving on to-day, and that we
had better buy food and stores to take with us. In the meantime, we
could, he said, go to a little house, with a field adjoining, for the
cars, just outside the town, and have a wash and brush up, and await
the order to move. The unit much appreciated the washing interval,
and when they were installed, and baths and hair brushing and clothes
washing were in full swing, I drove back to the town with cookie, and
bought meal, sardines, coffee, bread, etc. We were much helped in our
purchasing by a Serbian artist friend, Monsieur Bettich, who was with
the Headquarters Staff. We met him in the street, and he told us which
were the best shops, and came with us and bargained for us. He was a
fine artist; I had seen some of his pictures for sale at the Red Cross
depôt at Nish, and I had bought two wonderful scenes of soldier life,
little thinking that I should ever meet the artist. These pictures are
now, alas! in German hands, with many other prized possessions. We
talked to each other in German.
We had now only one interpreter, as the man who had been sent to us
at the last moment at Kragujevatz, because I did not want to deprive
the Stobart Hospital of its tried men, was suffering from phthisis and
tuberculosis, and we had to send him back to Kragujevatz from Pirot.
Before we had quite finished our shopping, our artist friend caught
sight of the cavalry moving from the town in the direction of Nish, so
he suddenly said "Good-bye! The Staff will be off directly. I must go.
You'll be going too. Meet again." I returned at once to the unit, and
all day we waited, expecting orders, but none came. At four o'clock,
the Major in command of the ambulance column, which always immediately
preceded us on the road, came and asked if I had received any orders.
He said that the Headquarters Staff had already started for Nish,
in their carriages, and he couldn't understand why he had not heard
anything. I guessed that we'd been forgotten, so I sent one of the cars
and the interpreter, to follow the Staff, and to ask for orders. At 6
p.m. the messenger came back, with the reply that we were to move at
once towards Nish. The orderly to whom the original message had been
entrusted, had either forgotten it or taken it elsewhere. The P.M.O.
was glad that I had asked for information.
I sent word to the ambulance column, and they, in the absence of their
Major, who was in the town, started off on trek at once; but when
the Major returned, he was annoyed at having been forgotten, and he
recalled them and said he was going to wait till the official order
came. That was his affair; but his wagons were horse-drawn, so I knew
he could catch us up.
I started the column on the road, and went on ahead with the cars to
overtake the Staff and get orders. We had a quick supper in the town at
our café on the way. While we were mustering and about to start, a man
and two women, who said they were members of a Danish hospital unit,
came up and asked questions, to which they received no answers. I was
suspicious of them, because they told us, as though they were pleased,
that Belgrade had been taken by the Germans and Austrians, and that the
Armies of the Allied French and English had arrived at Salonica, but
that they had been refused permission to pass through Greece, though
Nish was beflagged in readiness for their arrival. I didn't at the time
believe them, though I had begun to wonder why we were on the road to
Nish instead of to Sofia.
The road, in the dark, was a trial for the cars--tremendous hills with
hairpin corners--and several times we feared the cars would break down.
But the chauffeurs showed great pluck, and as they kept together, they
helped each other successively. At 10.30 p.m., when we reached the
summit of a place called Vesibaba, we found an encampment all asleep,
and we were told by the guards that this was Staff Headquarters; so
we ran the cars under a shed and went to bed in them. The rest of
the column arrived at two next morning. I rose early to get news of
our next move, and had a talk with a friendly major of a telegraph
section, who was cleaning his teeth outside his tent. I wouldn't allow
him to interrupt such an enjoyment, so he finished the operation, and
when his man had taken away the basin, he insisted on giving me a cup
of coffee, and then we walked up and down the road--no one else was
up--and discussed the political and military situation. Venizelos had
just resigned, and it seemed likely that there would be a reaction on
the part of the people in his favour. An orderly from Headquarters then
came up and presented to me the fateful, white, square envelope--the
order to move on, at 6 a.m., to Malça. Breakfast was now ready, and we
were on the road by six, forming part of the everlasting grey-brown
procession.
The road was downhill, less interesting than hitherto, but better for
the cars, and we reached Malça at five o'clock. The only excitement had
been the appearance of two Bulgarian aeroplanes, which were receiving
attention from the guns at Nish, but they were not hit.