Into the land of Montenegro, the land of the Black Mountains, which
already threatened precipitously to bar our way, we must now force an
entrance. Our first path, about two feet wide, ran through a thick
wood; I went first, and led my horse, for, though there were plenty of
men to lead it, I guessed that I should better be able to sympathise
with the difficulties of the road, if I had to overcome them first
myself; and I wished to choose the route. Colson, Jordan, Vooitch,
George, and Ilia also each led a pony, and the Serbian men led the
others, and the oxen. Our skeleton column was followed by other
skeleton columns, and during all that day we tramped and splashed, and
slipped, and scrambled, over rocks, and through scrub, in mud, and over
slopes of ice and snow--a route impossible for carts.
Roads had now ceased, and even the tracks were only those which had
been trampled by the multitudes in front of us; over passes 5,000
feet high; between mountains 8,000 feet high; through snow, ice,
boulders, unbroken forest, mud-holes, bridgeless rivers. And always
those pitiless mountains glaring at the tragedy; mountains with steep,
snow-covered slopes, or mountains of grey, bare rock, precipitous,
shutting out, for thousands, all hope of return to home and nationhood.
It would be impossible now to trek at night, and at dusk, I noticed
ahead of us, a mountain slope covered with trees, which would give us
partial shelter from the cold wind. Only another half hour's scramble,
down a steep incline, in a thick wood, and rest, and fire, and supper
would reward us. The last 100 yards of descent were precipitous, and
at the top, my horse and I slipped on the ice, and we rolled together
to the bottom. We picked ourselves up, shook ourselves, looked at each
other--I was still holding the reins--and walked on. There was no one
to say "Poor dear, are you hurt?" so it wasn't worth while to be hurt.
Men who were passing, passed; they took no notice. Why should they? A
broken leg, even a broken neck, more or less, of what consequence would
such trifles be in the general havoc? During war, new values--are they
better values?--are found for many things.
We were now in a narrow valley, with steep mountains close upon either
side of us. We scrambled a little way up the slope on our left, and
found that the whole mountain side was becamped, and we secured a small
level space for our fires, with difficulty. We scraped away the snow
and made a fire, with wood, of which there was, fortunately, plenty,
collected some clean snow for tea water, warmed some tinned food, and
had supper. Except from snow, there was no water available during
the next three days. No hay was procurable for the animals, and all
we could give them to eat was dead beech leaves, which we unburied
from the snow. We slept round the fire, and prevented ourselves from
slipping down the mountain side, by logs of wood placed at our feet.
The men, with their fires, and the horses and the oxen, were close to
us. And then I noticed that not only was our own hillside ablaze with
camp fires, but that the lights amongst the trees upon the mountain
opposite, from which we were only divided by two hundred yards of
valley, were also camp fires, and not, as I had fancied, stars. Where
did camp fires end and stars begin? Were there still such things as
stars? Or was heaven quite shut out by earth? There was only a small
piece of sky visible between the towering and overhanging mountains,
and, in the darkness, heaven and earth seemed merged in a huge
amphitheatre which was outlined by myriads of flickering lights. During
the precious moments just before sleep--the only moments, in these
times, available for thought--stars and camp fires, earth and heaven,
became hopelessly mixed. I couldn't sort them, and I went to sleep,
convinced that stars were the camp fires of the heavenly host, which is
now out in mortal combat against the hosts of evil on our earth.
It took us, at first, a long time to pack the ponies, but we were away
by dawn (Monday, December 6th), climbing up the mountain, through the
fir trees, over slippery ice, and rocks which were half hidden in snow.
There was no longer a defined way; the whole earth was now an untrodden
track, from or to perdition. Whichever way you looked, oxen, horses,
and human beings were struggling, and rolling, and stumbling, all day
long, in ice and snow. Soon after we started, I saw a long column
ascending a steep hillside; near the top, a horse slipped, and knocked
down the man who was leading it; they both fell, and as they rolled
down the slope, they knocked down all the other men and horses in the
line, and these all fell like ninepins, one after the other, all the
way down the mountain side.
As the physical difficulties of the route increased, the difficulty,
for all the columns, of securing bread for men, and hay for oxen, and
for horses, increased also, with the result that the track became more
and more thickly lined, with the dead bodies of oxen, and of horses,
and worse still--of men. Men by the hundred lay dead: dead from cold
and hunger by the roadside, their eyes staring at the irresponsive sky;
and no one could stop to bury them. But, worse still, men lay dying
by the roadside, dying from cold and hunger, and no one could stay to
tend them. The whole scene was a combination of mental and physical
misery, difficult to describe in words. No one knows, or will ever
know accurately, how many people perished, but it is believed that not
less than 10,000 human beings lie sepulchred in those mountains. The
route of escape, which led through Monastir to Durazzo, was even more
disastrous. From amongst the army reserve of 30,000, composed of boys
below, and of men above military age, 10,000 only reached Durazzo.
Many of the fugitive women, when they saw the mountains, and were
faced with death from cold, fatigue, and starvation for themselves and
children, went back to their Germanised villages in Serbia. Poor souls!
They were between the devil and the deep sea, and they chose--the
devil! The wife and two children--two boys--of one of our drivers, who
had trekked with us, in one of our wagons, since Palanka, also turned
back when we came to the mountains, and for their sakes I was thankful.
Except from time to time, the congestion this day was not so great,
because the mass of columns was now outspread over the mountains,
and the commanders chose their own tracks; but this was in some ways
worse, for it meant that the responsibility for route lay now with me.
Gaolbird had no sense of topography, and it was all he could do to drag
his poor lame leg along; he was too heavy, in every sense, to be of
use. A false track might lead to disaster, and we only vaguely knew the
direction of our goal. But why should anyone fear responsibilities that
come in the course of work? We can only act according to our lights.
Life is a sequence of choices during every moment of existence. Even if
we choose not to choose, that is equally a choice; and I risked prompt
decisions to scale or descend this, that, or the other height, with
audacious confidence. Progress was slow, the ponies often fell, and
their loads had to be readjusted. My horse and I had many a stumble,
but that served as useful warning to the others behind. I shall never
cease to wonder at the pluck and endurance of our British staff, none
of them accustomed to work of this sort. Specially, perhaps, was it
wonderful how the two nurses, and the cook, and the honorary secretary,
held out, for physically they were not as strong as the rest of us.
They did not lead ponies, but they were always at hand, to help with
the packs or to prepare food, light fires, and make others generally
as comfortable as possible. If they had grumbled, or grown weary, they
could have made unpleasant, conditions which were only difficult.
As the day wore on, the way became steeper, and more and more slippery,
both up and down the mountain sides. In the afternoon, when we were
half-way up a steep hill, which was covered with snow--a foot, and
sometimes two or three feet deep--we reached a space which was a
solid block of oxen, men and horses, all jumbled together in chaotic
confusion. Evidently there was only a narrow outlet into the thick
forest of pines and beeches, which covered the valley to which we must
descend. To avoid the block, some columns were climbing higher up the
mountain, in order to make the descent at a farther point. The majority
were trying to join a track which entered the wood on the south side,
and, like sheep through a gate, they were all tumbling over each
other, in the scramble for places in the narrow line. We had not heard
close-range guns of late, and we were now surprised to hear again loud,
continuous, and near firing. We were soon told, in explanation, that a
party of Arnauts, or Albanians, had entrapped, for loot, some convoys
which were close behind us, in a narrow gorge, and that they were now
murdering the members of the convoy. I have since heard that the wife
and eight children of the Commissariat Major, including the two boys
in uniform, who had walked with me one night, were all murdered that
day, with many others, by these Arnauts.
We should have had to wait for hours, perhaps all night, before our
turn came to get into the main line of entrance to the wood, therefore,
as the further climb up the mountain, must be avoided if possible, an
alternative route into the wood must be found. "Vooitch! come here."
"Yes, madame." "How deep is that snow? Try it with your stick." "Two
feet, madame." "Oh! That's all right. Tell the others to follow at
once." And we plunged down the snow slope, on a track of our own, and
forced an entrance of our own into the wood.
But the wood was as bad as anything we had yet met--steep, slippery,
with rocks, and stones, tree trunks across the track, and low branches
overhead hitting you in the face. It was enough to make even a woman
swear, and no woman would have been human if she had not said, just now
and then, a quiet "damn." The wood was interminable, and it seemed as
if we should never reach the end, and touch the valley bottom, but we
must get out of it before night. Besides, we could not stop; we were
in the narrow line of columns. To my surprise, just before dusk, the
sergeant, who always stayed with the oxen party, as there was less work
to do, came up and asked if he should lead my horse for a while. It
was nice of him, and, in order not to discourage him, I gave him the
reins and walked ahead, selecting, as usual, the route to be followed
by the others. Soon we came to a point from which the descent, for a
couple of hundred yards, was sheer, and slippery with snow and ice,
to the end of the track and of the valley, and the temporary end, as
we believed, of trouble. For though no road was visible, and the hill
rose abruptly on the other side of a small river-bed, now dry, we
heard that the river-bed ended in a road, a little further on to the
left. The sergeant, during his brief spell of work, was troubled by the
constant slipping of the saddle, and this with other difficulties at
the end of an exhausting day, was too much for his temper. When he saw
this steep descent in front of us, he stopped; on our right there was a
precipice. "Come along, Narednik" (sergeant), "only another two hundred
yards, and our troubles are over for the day." But he refused to move,
and he was holding up the rest of our column, and all the thousands
who were pressing on our heels. He said the ponies couldn't do it.
"But they must; they can't fly. Look! Only that tiny distance. Quick!
We can't spend the rest of our lives here, and remember the Arnauts;
give me the pony." I took the reins. To my horror, the man gave the
pony a shove, and it fell on the edge of the precipice. I dragged at
the reins, and saved the pony from falling over. I have never felt so
angry, and "Damn!" saved me from bursting. I needed no interpreter. I
swore, the one word I knew, and was not ashamed. I repeated it in loud
tones all the way down the hill, and it took me and the pony safely to
the bottom. If I had not been so angry, I couldn't have done so well.
The sergeant was afterwards penitent, but I never let him lead the pony
again.
It was now dark, and we must wait for stragglers who had got cut off
in the wood. I stood on a rock, blowing the whistle continuously. But
it was more dangerous waiting than moving. I heard a shout from one
of our men, and I jumped aside, as two oxen and a horse, rolled down
the hill on to the spot where I had stood. I sent some of the party
a few yards up the river gully, to light a fire and make tea, whilst
Vooitch and I waited for those who had been cut off. Then, when these
had collected, we went on another two or three miles up the river-bed
of mud and rocks, which opened into a narrow road of mud, with a thick
wood on either side. With thousands of others, we bivouacked for the
night, at eleven o'clock, sleeping on the ground, round a fire, amongst
the trees, near the road. The snow was deep, and the ground sloping. I
left my overcoat for a minute in the place where I had been sitting at
supper, and when I came back, I found that it had rolled into the fire,
and was making a cheerful blaze, but we fished it out, and, though full
of holes, it was still wearable.
[Illustration: RESCUING FALLEN PACK PONY IN BRIDGELESS RIVER NEAR
JABUKA]
[Illustration: ALBANIAN MOUNTAIN TRACK OF ROCKS AND MUD HOLES
Dead Horse in foreground]