Having conducted hospital work with the Serbian armies in two Balkan
wars it was out of the question for me to go anywhere but to Serbia
when the present conflict started. I love Serbia and the Serbian
people, and when I have told my story perhaps you will, too.
After serving through one campaign, a disastrous one for Serbia, I came
to America, and with the assistance of Miss Catherine Burke raised
$38,000 for the American unit of the Scottish Women's Hospital. I was
only too eager to accept when it was suggested by the Serbian Relief
Committee that I return to the war zone to see that the money was
properly administered.
This explains how I came to be in Ostrova on a certain evening last
October, seated at dinner next to Prince Alexander of Serbia, whose
generosity of heart led him to overestimate my service to his nation.
"Would you like to go to the front?" he asked me.
I had been behind the battle lines, and I wanted to tell my countrymen
just how the Serbs were fighting.
"I would like nothing better," I said, "but, of course, it is
impossible."
The Prince smiled. "Madam," he replied, "nothing that you may wish is
impossible."
I thought at first that it was merely his innate politeness, but with
the least possible delay Prince Alexander delivered me into the care of
Col. Sondermayer, chief of the medical service of the Serbian army.
"She is to go wherever she wishes to," was the command delivered to the
Colonel.
And so we started out in a somewhat rattly automobile and went upward
into the mountains, passing a continuous stream of soldiers--French
going to Kisova and Serbians to Dobrpolje. Ammunition trains and
convoys of wounded rumbled over the roads day and night. They were the
back currents, the eddies of the war we were traversing.
As we passed a stone post at the side of the wheel-rutted road one of
the officers said: "We are now in Serbia. This soil has been wrested
from the conqueror."