WE GO TO CORFU
We remained near Durazzo for a month, the men resting and recuperating
after their hard time.
There were a lot of young recruits who had been brought through with
the Army from Serbia, but who had not yet been formally sworn in, and
one morning this ceremony took place. The whole regiment was formed
up in a square in the centre of which stood the priest with a table
in front of him, on which were a bowl of holy water, with a bunch of
leaves beside it, a Serbian Bible, and a large brass cross. All the
officers were drawn up in a double line facing the table, and the
recruits behind them again, with the whole regiment forming the other
two sides of the square and the band a little way behind.
The priest read a sort of short service, and then the flag-bearer
carried the regimental flag up to the table while the band played.
After that the priest walked all down the line of officers with the
basin of holy water in his hand, and dipping the bunch of leaves into
it sprinkled them each on the forehead and held up the cross for them
to kiss; when that was over the swearing in of the new recruits began,
and, as I had not yet been sworn in, I was one of them. We all stood at
the salute and repeated the oath all together, sentence by sentence
after the priest, swearing loyalty to Serbia and King Peter, and after
that we marched in single file past the table, removing our caps as we
did so for the priest to sprinkle our foreheads, and then kissed the
cross, the priest’s hand, and, last of all, the regimental flag. It was
a very impressive ceremony, winding up by the band playing the Serbian
National Anthem while we stood at the salute.
All the officers came up and shook hands with me afterwards and
congratulated me on now being properly enrolled as a soldier in the
Serbian Army.
We were getting very tired of the Adriatic coast, and now that we were
feeling rested again we were anxious to be once more on the move and
take the next step towards getting back to Serbia. Speculation was rife
as to where we were going to be sent to be reorganised and refitted; no
one knew for certain, and there were the wildest rumours about Algiers,
France, or Alexandria, but at last the glad news came that we were
really going, and to Corfu.
But there was still a six or seven days’ march to Vallona, where the
regiment was to embark. Doctors came round and every man was medically
examined to see if he was fit for the march, as those who were not were
to be embarked at Durazzo. We had heard that the road to Vallona was
very bad, and in some places knee-deep in mud and water, and nobody was
very anxious for the march if he could go from Durazzo, so one and all
declared that they had rheumatism or else sore feet; but eventually
only a small percentage, among them sixty men from the Fourth Company,
and about half a dozen officers, from the regiment were declared to be
unfit. I was perfectly fit, but, as I was told I might do whichever I
liked, I thought I might as well embark at Durazzo with those from my
own company; so on the 3rd of February we left our camp and went into
Durazzo to wait for the steamer, as it was uncertain which day she
would sail.
I and some of the officers who were not on duty took rooms in the town,
and there we had to wait for four days. We found some difficulty in
feeding ourselves; there seemed to be hardly anything to buy, and what
there was was at famine prices, and our Serbian 10-franc notes were
only worth three and a half Greek or Italian francs. We had to pay
50 francs for a bottle of common red wine, which anywhere else would
have cost a franc. One day some Italian doctors invited us to lunch at
their hospital; they were most excellent hosts, and it was a very large
and merry luncheon party. Hardly any two people could talk the same
language, and English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Serbian got
all mixed up together into a sort of Esperanto of our own.
Every day as regularly as clockwork, between half-past ten and eleven,
we had an Austrian aeroplane raid, and occasionally in the afternoon
as well, and we got so used to them that if we did not hear the first
bomb in time we used to gaze up into the sky and wonder why they were
so late, but the worst raid was when we were actually embarking.
Embarking is always a tedious business, and is always inseparably
connected in my mind with hours of standing about on your own weary
feet, like a flock of tired sheep, in weather that is always either too
hot or too cold, or else raining, patiently waiting for orders.
We were embarked on large flat barges, and sent off to two or three
small Italian steamers in the harbour. The one that I was on was
crammed with men, and we had just got alongside the steamer when an
aeroplane came exactly overhead. We made a fairly big mark with the
large crowded barge alongside the steamer, and it passed over us
three times, dropping bombs all around as if they were shelling peas.
Backwards and forwards it came, columns of water shooting up, now 50
yards to the right, now a little to the left, showing where the bombs
hit the water harmlessly, one of them barely clearing a hospital ship
at anchor. Every moment it seemed as if the next one must drop in the
middle of our barge, but we were pretty well seasoned to anything by
now, and, whatever may have been our inside feelings, we sat still
and stolidly watched sudden death hovering over our heads in the blue
sky, but it didn’t seem somehow like playing the game when we couldn’t
retaliate at all.
The Captain of the Italian steamer got so exasperated that he shouted
that he was not going to have his steamer sunk on our account, and
that we were to sheer off, as he would not take us on board at all;
so our tug towed us back to the pier for further orders, and we were
eventually sent off to another steamer.
I and the two officers I was with in the end found ourselves embarked
on one steamer, with most of the men from our own regiment on another,
and our servants and all our luggage on a third. By that time it was
about 1 o’clock, and, as we had been standing about in the hot sun
since 5 a.m. and had had nothing to eat, we began to feel as if we
should like some breakfast; so we were anything but pleased to be
told upon enquiry that nobody could get anything to eat on that ship,
neither officers nor men.
“Now then, Corporal,” said my company Commander to me,“you talk French;
go and see what you can do.” So I obediently went off to hunt up the
Military Commander of the ship. He first informed me that there was no
food on the boat, and that nobody could get anything until 8 o’clock
that evening, and seemed to be inclined to let the matter go at that,
but I was not going to take that answer back if I could help it; so
told him that I didn’t think much of his way of treating his English
Allies, whereupon, having turned that over in his mind, he said I could
have something alone. Of course that was no use; so after a little
more persuasion I finally got him to order the steward to serve dinner
to the two officers and myself in the saloon in about an hour as soon
as it could be got ready, and while waiting for it we could have some
coffee, if I could get anybody to make it for me. I accordingly went
round to the galley and interviewed the cook, who informed me that the
man who made the coffee was asleep in his bunk and I couldn’t wake him.
“Oh, can’t I?” I said (in the words of the man when told by the steward
that he could not be sick in the saloon), “you’ll see if I can’t.”
“Are you an officer?” he inquired, with that sort of veiled
impertinence that the lower class Italians and Greeks are such
past-masters of.
“No, I am not,” I snapped, “I am a corporal; now which is that
coffee-man’s cabin?” and, on it being pointed out to me, I beat such a
devil’s tattoo on the door with my riding-whip that in half a minute a
very tousled and sleepy head appeared, and enquired what on earth was
the matter. I told him I wanted three cups of coffee in the saloon _at
once_, and he was so astonished that he got up forthwith and made them,
and I went back in triumph to report, and felt rewarded on being told
that I had done very well.
The next morning we were transferred in Vallona harbour on to a big
Italian steamer, a fine boat, where they treated us very well. We
reached Corfu about 1 a.m., and disembarking began there and then. We
hung on till the last, as we had nowhere to spend the night, our tents,
blankets, etc., being on another boat, and I had not even an overcoat
with me and it was very cold, but at 3 a.m. we also had to go.
We had been looking forward to Corfu as a sort of land flowing with
milk and honey, with a magnificent climate and everything that was
good, but our ardour was rather damped when we landed at that hour at
a small quay, feet deep in mud, miles away from the town, and about 8
miles away from our camp, so we were told. We did not know in which
direction our camp was, and, even had we got there, would have been no
better off without a tent or blankets; so we spent the remainder of the
night sitting on a packing-case beside the sentry’s fire, and I was
glad enough to be able to borrow an overcoat from the Serbian officer
in charge of the quay, who was just going off duty.
There was one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen, but
under some circumstances you feel you would most willingly barter the
most gorgeous panorama of scenery for a cup of hot tea.
We had a long, hot walk the next morning till we found our own
division, where the sixty men from our company were camped pending the
arrival of the Commandant of the regiment and the rest who were coming
via Vallona.
Corfu may be a lovely climate and a health resort and everything else
that is delightful at any other time in the year, but it was a bitter
blow to us when it rained for about six weeks without stopping after
our arrival, added to which there was no wood, and camp fires were
forbidden, I suppose for fear that the men might take to cutting down
the olive trees with which the island is covered. There was no hay
at first for us to sleep on, and the incessant wet, combined with the
effects of bully beef, on men whose stomachs were absolutely destroyed
by months of semi-starvation was largely responsible for the terrible
amount of sickness and very high mortality among the troops during the
first month of our stay there. This was especially the case among the
boys and young recruits, who, less hardy than the trained soldiers,
were completely broken down by their late hardships and died by
thousands on the hospital island of Vido. They could not be buried in
the small island, dying as they were at the rate of 150 a day, and the
bodies were taken out to sea. The Serbs are not a maritime nation, and
the idea of a burial at sea is repugnant to them. I heard one touching
story. An old man came to the island to see his son, but he had died
the day before. “Where is his grave?” he asked, “that I may tell my old
wife I saw his last resting-place. We had seven sons; six were killed
in the war, and he was the seventh and youngest.” The kind-hearted
doctor lied bravely and well. “That is it,” he said, pointing to a
little wooden cross among a few others, where some graves had been made
one day when it was too rough for the tug to call. How could he tell
the poor old father that even then his son’s body was lying out on the
wooden jetty waiting to be carried out to his nameless grave in the
blue Ionian Sea?
We found there had been some hitch in the commissariat arrangements,
and there was no food for our sixty men. We bought them some bread
next day, but bread was 3 francs a loaf, and a third of a loaf to a man
with nothing else was not enough to keep them going, while endless red
tape was being unwound before their proper rations came along. They
never made a complaint; but, though we could have bought bread for
ourselves, it nearly choked us with the men standing round silently
watching and wondering what we were going to do for them.
On the second morning, seeing an empty motor-lorry coming along, I had
a sudden inspiration and boarded it, dashing down the steep bank to
the road, telling them that I would be back in the evening from town
with something for them, and taking an orderly with me. It was about
fifteen miles’ drive into the town of Corfu, and I tramped about all
day in the pouring rain from one official to another, from the English
to the French, from the French to the Serbians, and back again to the
French, till I was heartily sick of it, and had I had the money would
have bought the stuff in the town and had done with it. There was
plenty of bread at the bakery, but, of course, they could not give it
to me without a proper requisition, which apparently I could not sign
because I was not authorised to do so. It was getting towards evening,
and I was beginning to despair, and was thinking of doing the best I
could with a hundred francs I had borrowed, when I thought I would have
one more try with the French authorities. I was wet through myself, as
I had had no time to stop for a coat when the lorry came along, and
had been too busy and too worried to get anything to eat all day, but
anyhow this time I managed to pitch them such a pitiful tale of woe
about the sufferings of the men, and the awful time I was having trying
to get them something to eat, that I quite softened their hearts,
and they said they would give me what I wanted without any further
signature, but that I must not make a precedent of this unofficial way
of doing business. I was overjoyed, and sent my orderly off at once to
hunt up a carriage, and we returned to camp in triumph about 9 o’clock
with a whole sackful of bread, another of tinned beef, and two large
earthenware jars of wine, which I bought on the way. There were plenty
of the men waiting, when they heard my carriage arrive, to dash down
to the road and carry the stuff up to the camp, and there was great
rejoicing over the success of my expedition. I was soon warm and dry
and having some supper myself. The men were all right so far, but
another day’s short rations would certainly have seen some of them sick.
The question of transport was fearfully difficult, and the French and
English authorities were working night and day to feed the troops, and,
of course, they could never have got through the work if things had
not been done in order; so I was duly grateful that under the special
circumstances they let me carry out such an unauthorised raid.
About a week later the rest of the company arrived about 10 o’clock one
evening, and a sergeant proudly told me that our Fourth Company were
all very fit and not a man sick or fallen out.
We moved to another camp up in the hills, a nice place, but very far
from anywhere, though I found that I could get about anywhere I wanted
to on the motor-lorries which used to come in with bread. The A.S.C.
drivers of these lorries must have had a hard time at first; the
roads were very bad and the weather shocking, and they were working
sixteen hours a day carrying supplies, but they were full of pity for
the deplorable condition of the Serbian soldiers, and were willingly
working night and day to alleviate it.
One of the English officers gave me a small Italian tent in place
of the little Serbian bivouac one I had been sleeping in. It was a
capital little tent, very light and absolutely waterproof. My orderly
built a foundation of stones about 2 ft. high, with the chinks filled
in with earth, and pitched the tent on the top of that, so that it was
quite high enough to stand up in and also to hold a camp bed and a
rubber bath, and he then made a nice little garden and planted it with
shrubs and flowers, with a little wall all round ornamented with red
bully beef tins with plants in them, and it looked awfully nice.
The thing we missed most was not being able to have any fires to
sit round. One day I came back on a lorry containing a load of wood
intended for somewhere else, but I had got past any scruples about
commandeering anything where my own company was concerned; so I
persuaded the driver to drop a few big logs off on the road at the
nearest point to our camp, and we had at least one small fire for
some time afterwards, and anybody who liked could come and boil his
billy-can and make his tea at that.
The Serbian Relief Fund was short-handed and very busy, and I obtained
permission to leave the camp for a few weeks and take up my quarters
in town to give them a hand. Several shiploads of stuff had just come
in, and everything had to be landed on the quay on lighters and then
removed from there at once, as the quay could not be blocked up, to one
or other of their two store-houses, which were at opposite ends of the
harbour. One of these store-houses had only just been acquired, and,
as it was about 6 in. deep in coal dust, it had all to be scrubbed and
cleaned out for the arrival of fresh bales, and that was my first job.
I got a gang of Serbian soldiers, and we had a strenuous day’s work
with the very inefficient tools at our disposal, but we managed by the
evening to get everything ship-shape and the floors clean, though we
all got rather damp and coal-dusty in the process.
The quay was a most interesting place, though I should have enjoyed the
work more if it had not poured steadily all day and every day, as there
was no cover anywhere. French, English, and Serbians were all working
there together, each trying to be the first to seize upon labour
and transport both by water and land for the particular job he was
responsible for. There were a number of ships in the harbour waiting to
be unloaded, and everyone was working as hard as he could, and things
were considerably complicated by the fact that hardly one of them could
speak the other’s language. It was quite a usual thing to find an
Englishman, who could not speak French, trying to explain to a French
official that he wanted a fatigue party of Serbian soldiers to unload a
certain lighter, and neither of them being able to explain to the said
fatigue party, when they had got them, what it was they wanted them to
do.
There was always a company of Serbian soldiers for work on the quay,
and a fresh relay of men came on at 6 a.m., at midday, and at 6 p.m.,
and you had to be there sharp on time if you wanted your men, or else
you would find they had all been snapped up by someone else. As I could
speak French and enough Serbian to get along very well, most of my work
was on the quay, and I was often called in to act as interpreter. As
I did not want to get down there at 6 a.m., however, I got a friendly
English corporal, who had to be on duty then, to get twice as many men
as he wanted himself, and then give me half of them when I came down.
I was rather afraid of the English Tommies at first, and thought they
would be sure to laugh at a woman corporal, but, on the contrary, there
was nothing they would not do to help me, and the French soldiers were
just the same.
I was superintending the unloading of some goods from a lighter one
day, which all had to be transferred to another lighter, and taken
across to the warehouse that evening. We were all very tired and wet,
and the men were slacking off, and it didn’t seem, at the rate we were
going on, as if we should get through before 9 or 10 o’clock that
night. The Serbian sergeant tried to buck them up, but the men were fed
up and were just doing about as little as they possibly could. It is
worse than useless to bully a Serbian soldier if he doesn’t want to do
anything; so, as I wanted to get back to the hotel to dinner, I went
on quite another tack. I told them I had been working for them all day
since early in the morning, and was tired and hungry, and that if they
were going to spend another three hours over the job I should get no
dinner. The effect was magical. They all at once got terribly worried
on my account, began to work like steam, and in an hour we had the
whole thing done, and they were enquiring in a brotherly manner if it
was all right, and if I would be in time for dinner now.
All these poor fellows working down on the quay had had their uniforms
taken away from them and burnt, and had been provided with a blue
corduroy suit for working in. Their old ones, though dirty, were warm,
and their new ones were very thin, and in most cases they had hardly
any underclothes; so whenever I had a gang of men working under me
down at the warehouse I used to fit them out with warm sweaters, etc.,
of which we had plenty, out of one of the broken bales. I used to
make them work hard for a couple of hours, and then sit down for five
minutes and have a cigarette, and then go on again for another hard
spell. The Serbian sergeants used to be very much amused at my methods,
but I always found they answered very well. They were always keen to be
on my gang, and everyone said I got more work out of them than anyone
else could.
[Illustration: OFFICERS SITTING OUTSIDE MY TENT
Page 220]
[Illustration: COLONEL MILITCH ON DIANA
Page 244]
There were a lot of new English uniforms, but the French authorities
would not issue them unless there were enough underclothes to go
with them, and these they were short of. However, I got a promise of
underclothes from the Serbian Relief Fund, and then my troubles began.
First I had to get a paper signed by the English saying they would
give them if the French approved; then another, signed by the French,
that they did approve and would give the uniforms; then one signed
by the Serbian Minister of War; then back to the French again to be
countersigned; then back to the Minister of War; then to the Serbian
warehouse, who refused to give them because I hadn’t got somebody
else’s signature, and so on and so on. To cut a long story short, it
took three whole days walking round Corfu in the pouring rain before I
could get all those papers sufficiently signed, including three visits
to the Minister of War, and even then the transport remained to be
found, as the motor-lorries were fully occupied carrying bread.
I had airily promised the French that I thought the English authorities
could give me the transport; so I went up to them, and they said they
would see what they could do.
“How much stuff have you?” inquired the officer in charge.
“Three thousand two hundred and fifty uniforms,” I replied, “and the
same number of vests and pants.”
“Well, that doesn’t tell me anything,” he said; “I want to know the
bulk and weight: you’re no good as a corporal if you can’t tell me
that. Let me know exactly by eleven o’clock to-morrow morning, and I’ll
see what I can do.”
Here was a poser, for, though I said at once that I would let him know,
I had not the faintest idea of how to work it out; but fortunately
bethought myself of my sheet anchor, the big English corporal on the
quay, who always seemed to be able to solve any difficulty; and, sure
enough, he did it for me, and I telephoned the required information.
In the end I got the stuff loaded on to a barge and took it myself
to a point about 2 miles from my camp, whence it was carried up by a
company, and we had the proud distinction of being the first regiment
to be fitted out in new, clean English khaki uniforms.
When not on the quay there was plenty to do in the warehouses, sorting
out the bales, or taking them across the harbour in our little tug,
which was quite a journey, but I eventually got a chill and had to lay
off for a bit, as the result of one wetting too many.
I used to go back to camp every Saturday afternoon and Sunday, and I
always managed to take up a couple of cases of something, generally
given me by the Serbian Relief Fund; either things for the ambulance
or condensed milk or golden syrup for the men. Condensed milk was very
much appreciated, as it meant that they each got a big bowl of _café au
lait_ for breakfast for three mornings, whereas, as a rule, they don’t
have anything until lunch.
One day an incident occurred which touched me very greatly. The
non-commissioned officers and men of the Fourth Company formed a
committee among themselves and drew up an address, which they presented
me with, and which a man in the regiment who knew English afterwards
translated for me as literally as possible. An English major, to whom I
once showed it, told me if that were his he should value it more than a
whole string of medals, and as that is how I feel about it, coming as
it did spontaneously from my own men, I put the translation in here:
“To the high-esteemed
“MISS FLORA SANDES,
“CORFU.
“Esteemed Miss Sandes!
“Soldiers of the Fourth Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Inf. Rgmt.,
‘Knjaza Michaila,’ Moravian Division, 1st (Call) Reserves; touched
with your nobleness, wish with this letter to pay their respects--and
thankfulness to you; have chosen a committee to hand to you this
letter of thankfulness.
“Miss Sandes!
“Serbian soldier is proud because in his midst he sees a noble
daughter of England, whose people is an old Serbian friend, and to-day
their armies are arm-in-arm fighting for common idea, and you Miss
Sandes should be proud that you are in position to do a good, to help
a Serbian soldier--Serbian soldier will always respect acts of your
kindness and deep down in his heart will write you kind acts and
remember them for ever.
“Few months have passed since you came among us, and you shared good
and bad with us. During this time you have often helped us to pass
through hardships, buying food for us, and financially.
“Thanking you in the name of all the soldiers, we are greeting you
with exclamation:
“Long life to our ally England,
“Long life to Serbia,
“Long life to their heroic Armies,
“Long life to noble Miss Sandes!
“_Naredniks_ (_Sergeant-Majors_)--
“Milcontije Simitch
“Rangel Miloshevitch
“_Podnaredniks_ (_Sergeants_)--
“Milisav Stamenkovitch
“Yanatchko Todorovitch
“Bozidar Milenkovitch
“_Kaplars_ (_Corporals_)--
“Vladimar Stankovitch
“Milan Jovanovitch
“Dragutin Rangjelovitch
“Aleksa Miloshevitch
“Zaphir Arsitch
“_Vojnitsi_ (_Soldiers_)--
“Milivoye Pavlovitch
“Milorad Taskavitch
“Rangel Mladenovitch
“Dragoljub Milovanovitch
“Alexandar Iwkovitch
“4th Comp., 1st Battl., 2nd Inf. Rgt.
“No. 1024 (Official Stamp).
“To Miss Sandes, Corporal, volunteer of this Comp.--
“Please receive this little, but from heart of my soldiers,
declaration of thankfulness for all (for help) that you have done for
them until now, and in time, when they are far away from dear ones and
loving ones at home.
“To their wishes and declaration I am adding mine and exclaim:
“Long life to our dear ally England,
“Long life to heroic Serbian Army,
“Commander of the Company,
“JANACHKO A. JOVITCH.
“13/26 February, 1916.
“Ipsos (Corfu).”