Next morning, November 15th, we moved, at five o'clock, for Marzovatz,
where we arrived at 8 a.m. We were lucky in finding a delightful
camping-place, in an orchard, surrounded by fine mountains. Our oxen
were getting exhausted, so I sent the corporal to try and find others,
also additional wagons, as the animals could no longer pull their full
loads.
We now heard, to our regret, that our division, which had all this time
borne the brunt of the fighting, was to have a rest, and the Drinske
division was to take the first line. This would probably mean fewer
wounded for us, and our doctors and nurses would grow restive.
At 9.30 that evening, Monday, November 15th, the order came to go on
to Podyevo, some distance beyond Kurshumlya. We were away by 10 p.m.
The night was fine, but very cold. Kurshumlya, as we passed through,
was in darkness, and deserted except for the usual groups of refugees,
huddled round camp fires, in the streets. One of the cars broke down in
the town, and we had to leave the car with a Serbian soldier-chauffeur
who had turned up and had offered his services. He was to repair it, or
find oxen, and bring it on as soon as possible. If the Germans overtook
him before he had done his work, he must destroy the car and follow
us. But we never saw the car again. The man mended it, and was on his
way to join us, when, on a steep and narrow road, it stuck, and some
officers, who were following, blew it up with gunpowder and set fire to
it, to prevent it from falling into the enemy's hands.
Our way lay through a narrow gorge, and the road was atrocious, and,
in the dark, dangerous; and as the chauffeurs were exhausted, with the
constant strain, and lack of sleep, we decided at 3 a.m. to call a halt
till dawn at 5.30. After that came a steep hill up to Prepolatz, the
old Turkish frontier.
At the base of this hill lay Banya, and a long stretch of flat muddy
road, which was blocked, from end to end, with a solid phalanx of
wagons, all motionless, as if they were carved in stone. Round the far
corner the hill began, and what was happening there, no one could see.
I was waiting on my weary horse for our turn to move, when a young
captain of a commissariat column came up, and in excellent English,
invited me to come and drink a glass of tea with him in his camp by
the side of the road. He recognised me because he had visited our
Kragujevatz hospital in the old days. He was encamped with his large
column in a sea of mud, and we sat round his fire on little stools
which sank deep into the slush; but I enjoyed the tea, which helped to
keep me awake during a weary halt.
It was sometimes a little difficult to discriminate between times
when it was right that we should be shunted out of the line by a more
important column, and times when we must hold our own. For artillery
columns, of course, we always gave way, but sometimes extra officious
under-officers, in control of columns, would try and bounce us out of
the line illegitimately, and that required the fierce-eye business.
Serbian officers were invariably courteous, and though I refused to
take undue advantage of sex, they often smuggled us into the line when
we might otherwise have had long to wait.
At Banya, our Artillery Major's double, who was also an artillery
officer, appeared, and he immediately arranged that our column should
follow his convoy, and others had to stand aside. Soon after that, the
Major arrived, and rode with me for a little while on his way again to
place his guns. He introduced me to another officer who had lately been
embarrassed by the arrival from Berlin of his German wife and seven
children, who were all now travelling with the convoy.
The cars, as usual, took the hill wonderfully, and went on and waited
for the column at Prepolatz, near the old Turkish fort. This was the
boundary of Old Serbia, the entrance to the newer Serbia of recent
conquests, and my heart ached for our Serbian comrades, who must
now say good-bye to the best-loved and most-prized portion of their
country, and leave it, with all that was most precious to them, in the
enemy's hands; knowing that the enemy would now eat bread from corn
which they had not sown, and drink wine from vineyards which they had
not planted; whilst the sowers and the planters, the owners of this
fertile soil, were fleeing, a spectral nation to a spectral land,
without clothes, without money, without food; but, all honour to them,
never without hope, because they were never without an ideal. Will the
day ever come, I wondered, when "the arrogance of the proud shall cease
and the haughtiness of the terrible be laid low?"
The Major and I were glad to rejoin the cars which carried the food,
and to eat a hurried sandwich. I had had nothing since the captain's
glass of tea in the early morning; the Major never seemed to eat.
We reached Dubnitz at 9.30 p.m.--a twenty-four hours' trek. Our
field-kitchen oxen had broken down, and we had to send others to help
bring the field kitchen in. It arrived next morning after we had left
for Dole Luzhan, and it followed us.
We left at 8 o'clock, on a twelve hours' trek. A snow blizzard, with
intense cold, made the conditions unpleasant for us, and deadly for the
beasts. Continued cold, exhaustion from forced marches, and increasing
lack of food, made the track a shambles. The well-aimed ball of death
was knocking down oxen and horses, like ninepins, all along the road.
One of our riding horses died also to-day from cold and exhaustion. It
was bad enough to see these poor beasts dead along the road, but it was
still worse to see them dying, and to know that all they needed for
restoration to life, was warmth and rest and food. I thought of the
Blue Cross Society, but even they could have done nothing, as there was
no time; enemies on three sides were always close behind us.
When we arrived at the village we found that the cars, which had gone
on in advance, were standing in two feet of water. The chauffeurs and
the staff had gone into a cottage to dry their clothes, and in the
meantime, a stream which ran across the road had expanded into a lake.
The cottage was also surrounded by the flood, and the doctors and
nurses were carried out by the gallant chauffeurs, who then waded up to
their knees and rescued the cars.
We found camping-ground for the column in an Arnaut (Albanian) village,
and we ourselves slept in the cars upon the road; the snow was too deep
for tent pitching.