These Yugoslav troops had been detached from the left wing of the
Salonica forces and had come overland in order to deal with the
situation in Montenegro. The Austrians had been in a woeful plight; it
was regarded as a punishment to serve in Montenegro and Albania, not
only because of the lack of amenities and the unruly spirit of the
people, but also for the reason that the officers who came there--many
managed to avoid it--were too often causes of dissatisfaction. More
complaints had gone up from this front than from any other. The supplies
allotted by the High Command in Austria were ample, as the Rieka depots
testified, but a great deal did not reach its proper destination. Some
officers took down their wives or other ladies, loading up the army
motor-cars with luxuries of food and grand pianos, while the men were
forced to tramp enormous distances; if anyone fell out, the natives in
Albania would emerge from where they had been hiding and would deprive
the wretched man of his equipment and his clothing, and perhaps his
life. The sanitary section of that Austrian army was not good; it
happened frequently that victims of malaria and wounded men were told to
walk--if they arrived, so much the better. These poor fellows did not
know that if they ultimately got back to Vienna they might be the
objects of Imperial solicitude--the least to be dreaded was the Archduke
Salvator, who was wont to come to a hospital, with his wife, and to
bestow on every man a coloured picture-postcard of their Imperial and
Royal persons, with a sentence printed underneath respecting their
paternal and maternal love; it was officially reported in Vienna, of
another hospital, that those who lay there had been spending "happy
hours" in "the circle of the exalted Family"--this referred to the
Archduchess Maria Immaculata, whose compositions for the piano are said
to be beyond all criticism; she herself did not play them, but would sit
there while they were inflicted by a courtier on the helpless men. Not
very enviable was the lot of those Magyar officers who were taken to
that hospital in Buda-Pest over which the Archduchess Augusta, a
strikingly ugly woman, presided. It was a regulation that no wounds were
allowed to be dressed until the Archduchess, arrayed in uniform and
armed with a revolver, made her appearance of an evening. The officers
were told that it was etiquette for them to broach a pleasant
conversation with their benefactress. But the most dangerous Habsburg
was the Archduchess Blanka, who was interested in medicine; she had
thought out for herself a remedy which human ailments never would
withstand, but which was more especially effective in cases of
tuberculosis, of malaria and of kidney diseases. At the hospital in the
Kirchstetterngasse she had a ward entirely devoted to kidneys. Her
treatment consisted in hot bandages of corn-flowers; the patients were
packed in these bandages and that was all that was done to them. With
regard to the diet, there were no particular regulations. Some of the
men were sent from there to another and less original hospital, but it
was often too late.