We leave this afternoon at 3 o'clock. This morning I went shopping,
bought a lot of handkerchiefs and some Serbian pots. At 2.30 the
carriage came to take the two nurses, who had come over to fetch me,
and myself to the station. Nurse Newhall came with us, and Mrs.
Berry's sister, Miss Dickinson. We had three miles' drive to the
station; we arrived at 3.20 and the train was expected at 4.15 but it
never arrived till 5.10. This is the usual thing in Serbia; we only
have sixty miles to go. We arrived at 9; the train stopped at every
station from 15 to 20 minutes, so the people get out of the train and
sit by the side of the railways. It makes the journey quite enjoyable
when one is not pressed for time. Our train was going on to Belgrade.
We had two French people, and all the rest were Serbians in our
carriage. The train was full of soldiers going to Belgrade. The
soldiers all travel in trucks, the officers in the ordinary way. I
wonder how our Tommies would like this. We were to spend the night at
a little cottage rented by Dr. Banks for the Red Cross at Stellatch. A
boy at the station insisted on saying there was no such place; the
railway officials wanted us to remain at the station, but we insisted
on our little cottage and we soon found it in the dark. A very nice
woman lived at this cottage, and her two children, a girl and a boy.
We were put into this room with two stretchers. A nice Serbian who
could talk French at the station said there were only two stretchers,
so he sent up a third. We had a few sandwiches which we brought with
us, then tucked ourselves up for the night on the stretchers, but it
was impossible to sleep for fleas and mosquitoes. We heard that the
train for Kragujevatz left at 7 o'clock, so we got up soon after 5. It
was very quaint on the way seeing little boys and girls driving along
the roads flocks of sheep, pigs and chickens. All the children here
seem quite grown up; the schools are all closed and they have to help
in the fields with their mothers. The girls are very neat looking;
they all part their hair at the side and have a neat plait at the
back or wound round their head, and they have a handkerchief tied on
their head. The middle-aged women part their hair in the middle and
the hair always covers the ears. It is dreadfully hot. On arriving at
the station we were told that the train would not leave till 1.30. We
have been trying to shade ourselves under a tree all day as it is too
hot to walk. It is now 12.45 and our train is appearing in the
station; our porter had just rushed up the hill to fetch us; it is not
often one gets a train leaving fifty minutes before the time. We got
to Kragujevatz at 7 o'clock, after a most tedious journey. It was so
funny. Half an hour before getting to Kragujevatz I discovered that
Miss Vera Holmes and Mrs. Haverfield were in the same train. It was so
nice to see them; they were going to the Scotch Hospital, so they have
asked me to go to tea with them to-morrow. On arriving at Kragujevatz
we could not get a cab, so we had to telephone for one of the motors
to fetch us.