The ammunition wagons almost jammed one side of the road now and the
other side was jammed with the carts bringing back the wounded. On
their scant beds of straw they lay, some groaning, some shrieking
in delirium, some grinning, but almost all of them contented and
uncomplaining if they had a cigarette.
Your wounded Serbian prefers his cigarette to an anæsthetic, and I
have seen the most painful, shocking operations performed in the field
hospitals with no other sedative for the patient than a cigarette. In
Serbia no one begs. It is considered almost a crime, but there is one
temptation the soldiers cannot resist, especially the wounded ones.
That is to ask for a cigarette.
During one of our halts I spoke to one poor fellow whose lips were
blue, eyes dim and breath coming in short, painful gasps, almost sobs.
I knew that before he reached the field hospital his body would be
taken from the cart and laid at the roadside for burial.
Although the words almost killed him he managed to gasp, "Little
Sister--for the love--of mercy--a cigarette."
I gave him one. I saw him take one blissful puff, blow from his mouth
the smoke, which was no bluer than his lips, and die. So small a thing
as a cigarette had sent one man who died for his country before his God
with a smile upon his lips, despite his suffering. Was this not worth
my whole trip?
We passed the Serbian artillery and to the summit of Dobrpolje. Here
in the crevice of a great rock we ate lunch, which had been supplied
by officers at the very front. There were pancakes, raw onions, bread
and Turkish coffee, and a meat stew. I know something about fare at the
front, and there is no doubt in my mind that these same officers went
on short rations for many a day to make up for the repast they set me.
There was more sugar in the coffee than a soldier in Serbia gets in
four days.
In our crevice in the rock we were 500 yards in advance of the Serbian
guns. The panorama of the battle was spread out before us. The great
projectiles from the masked Serbian artillery, which was being fired
over a range of hills, swept diagonally in front of me from a line
behind. They exploded in the village of Brod and on the hill in the
rear of it were the Bulgarian trenches. Through binoculars I could see
into the Serbian trenches and sometimes men in the Bulgarian trenches.
The enemy's guns were firing from behind the hill on which stood the
village of Brod, but they did not have the range of our artillery, and
most of their fire fell on a village a quarter of a mile in our rear.
At times, however, a big shell exploded in the Serbian trenches and I
saw monstrous mushrooms of earth and debris hurled high into the air.
In the debris were many fragments. Some were of timber and some were of
human flesh and bone.
Stretching away directly in front of us was a wide plain, at the far
extremity of which against a hill was Monastir, resembling a great
cluster of pearls against the dark mountain. The French from the
heights of Kisova were shooting down into this plain.
It was terrible; it was grand. It was cruel; it was sublime. My
emotions almost overcame me. Major Todorovitch, noticing my agitation,
thought I was unstrung and wished to return to the rear.
"Do you not feel well?" he asked me.
"I feel--I feel like a man," I said.
It was the only way I could express myself. I understood now how men
fought and died, and were willing to fight and die innumerable times if
it were possible for their country. If some of my sisters who cry for
peace at any price could have seen the grandeur of this war in a just
cause I am sure they would feel as I did.
Major Todorovitch leaped to his feet and grasped both my hands. I
thought he would crush the bones.
"Come," he cried, "you are one of us. You shall have the greatest honor
of us all."
Dragging me to the edge of the precipice, where had a Bulgarian officer
seen him a burst of shrapnel would have greeted him, he planted his
feet firmly against a solid rock.
"Lean over!" he cried enthusiastically.
Holding to his hands, my arms straining behind me, I leaned far over
the edge of the precipice. I seemed suspended over the very heart of
the battle. It seemed for a moment as though the spirit of the war had
caught me up and flown with me where the whole fabric of the world
conflict was being woven beneath my feet.
"Now," cried the Major, "you are further into Serbia--Serbia
reconquered--than the bravest of our brave have been. No Serbian
fighting man has yet been so close to Monastir."
The fineness of his compliment could not have been excelled.
I had been told that I might remain upon the summit of Dobrpolje an
hour, but the scene fascinated me so and my soldier escorts were so
chivalrous that they gave in to me and it was not until nightfall that
they dragged me away to the rear, although we had reached the summit
about midday.
Once more we were in the backwash of the battle. The roads were lined
with stretcher bearers and in the stretchers lay men whose blood
dripped through the canvas and stained the dust of the roads--the dust
for which they were fighting and dying and suffering the tortures of
the damned.
From the _postes de secours_ they were taken to the rear in carts, and
the steady rumble of the heavy wheels reminded me of the passing of
the tumbrels in the "Tale of Two Cities."
At one point we passed about 800 Bulgarian prisoners and they did not
seem at all unhappy at being out of the fighting. It is a commentary on
the nature of the Serbians that they gave cigarettes to the prisoners,
although the Bulgars have committed nameless atrocities against their
foes and have devastated thousands of acres of prune trees, thus
destroying a lucrative and immense Serbian industry.
That night Brod fell to the Serbs, but nevertheless I had been that day
further into Serbia than any of her fighting sons at that time.