The chauffeur brought the car to a standstill and I jumped out. The men
followed me and we knelt and kissed the soil we all loved. I do not
think their emotion could have been stronger than my own.
Shortly after this Major Todorovitch pointed into the sky and said,
"See the aeroplanes. They are our scouts."
I looked in the direction he indicated, but all I could see was a
series of puffs of white. It was shrapnel from the Bulgarian guns
bursting so close to the Serbian planes that the round puffs of smoke
were drawn out into streaks by the suction of the fast flying machines.
Occasionally we could see the sun flash on the wings of the aeroplanes
just as you can sometimes see the approach of a canoe by the flash of
the sunlight on the paddles before you can really distinguish the craft
itself.
At Vrbeni I met Gen. Vassitch, the "_voivode mishitch_"
(commander-in-chief) of all the Serbian forces. Col. Sondermayer
explained that I wished to go to the front.
"How far forward do you wish to go?" asked the General.
"As far as your officers can go," I replied.
The General shrugged his shoulders as though to say, "There is no place
for these women in war," then seeming suddenly to realize that I was in
earnest, he bowed and said, "Madam, you should have been one of us--one
of our Serbian soldiers."
Calling his aide-de-camp, Major Todorovitch, he directed him to obey
my orders and take me wherever I wished to go, so we again got into
the rattly automobile and began to climb still further up into the
mountains.
In the distance I heard the roar of the big guns. As their noise
grew louder the strumming of the machine guns mingled with it and
their staccato was always distinguishable even amid the ear crushing
thunder of the high explosives. Then came the rat-a-pat of rifle fire,
foolishly insignificant in point of noise compared to the cannon, but
cruelly deadly, as any one who has seen war knows.
Artillery is terrifying, but after all it is cold steel in the
hand-to-hand, bestial fighting that slays.