It was a lovely day and most interesting journey. All along there are
camps, wire entanglements and trenches. Some of the camps are amongst
the trees and can scarcely be seen, as they are made of sticks and
mud. The sentry guards also along the line have curious dug-outs, to
which they go down by steps. The haystacks, instead of being on the
ground as in England, are fixed up in trees, like huge beehives, as
the ground gets so swampy. The Serbs and the Albanians look most
picturesque. These must have been the regiments I saw coming along
when I was staying at Uskub. We have just seen a wolf chasing a young
deer; they passed close by the train. It seems dreadful to leave this
glorious country with its brilliant sunshine and bright colours, until
we see all the horrors that are going on so near to us.
We arrived at Uskub at 7 o'clock; had breakfast at the station, and a
few minutes before our train arrived 170 Bulgarian prisoners had been
brought in. They were tied together in batches by ropes. I saw one or
two of the nurses from Lady Paget's on the platform; they had been to
see some friends off. Our train left again at 7.25; then we passed
through wonderful gorges; this of course would make the fighting very
difficult.
Our next stop was the frontier Ghevghili(?). Most of the passengers'
luggage was examined; it was also weighed, and we had to pay on ours.
We arrived at Salonika at 8.30 p.m. We found the station full of Greek
soldiers; many of them were on the ground asleep. We had to leave our
large luggage for the night, then we took a carriage and went to the
hotel _Olympus_, where we had wired for rooms. We saw many of our
English and French troops as we drove down; this of course cheered us
up. We heard there were 25,000 French and 11,000 English, and that
they had been detained by the Greeks, as they were expected in Serbia
some days before.
On arriving at the hotel we made ourselves tidy, went down to dinner,
found the room full of English and French; several of them gave us a
hearty welcome as there were no English women in Salonika. One officer
told us that an American, sitting at their table had insisted on it
that we were Americans, and what a great deal the Americans had been
doing in Serbia, and the point had been argued, so there was great
excitement to know what nationality we were, and the English officers
were delighted to find they were right.
We are all hoping that the Greeks will join us, and that they will all
be going up to Serbia in a day or so.