The headquarters of the Serbian Army left Krusevatz for Rashka, as
the German advance menaced its retreat from the former town if longer
delayed. With my colleague of the _Petit Parisien_ I determined to push
forward to join the Second Army, which was opposing the enemy's advance
in the valley of the Morava.
The roads were in a frightful condition. They were, for the most part,
mere cart tracks and perfect seas of mud. The carriage half the time
was ploughing through two feet of tenacious clay. Twice it stuck fast
up to the axles in mud, and was only extricated with the friendly aid
of a passing bullock team. Good horses are no longer to be had in
Serbia; they have all been requisitioned for the army.
One of our horses, a giraffe-like chestnut, is an ex-cavalry horse of
the Austrian army and bears the mark of a wound from a shell splinter.
It is named Julius. Its partner (which I have named Cæsar) is a
flea-bitten gray, somewhat short in the wind. Both regard Serbian mud
and the effort it entails on them with profound disapproval.
Just at the point where the road from Krusevatz joins the main road
running to Stalatz I came across half a dozen British soldiers
belonging to the heavy battery which defended Belgrade. They were
seated at the roadside preparing the inevitable pot of tea without
which Tommy Atkins's happiness is not complete.
They told me their battery was en route for Nish and that the guns had
already been entrained at Stalatz. They were covering the intervening
sixty kilometres in a couple of bullock carts. They were profoundly
ignorant of what was happening in Serbia or the outside world, but were
correspondingly cheerful.
They insisted on us sharing their tea, and produced a pot of the
equally inevitable marmalade, which they proudly declared was one of
the few objects which had survived the bombardment of Belgrade. I left
them loading up their wagon and giving orders to their drivers in weird
but apparently effective Serbian.
It was dark when we reached Chichivatz, the first stage on our journey.
The problem was to find quarters and food. Every village behind the
front is filled to overflowing with the fugitive population from
the country held by the Germans. Every public edifice is crammed;
people sleep on straw, twenty in a room, in every available house. At
the village inn the food supply resolved itself into the inevitable
"Schnitzel," which in the present instance was a badly burnt piece
of pork. We were, however, fortunate enough to find the local
station-master at the inn, who hospitably offered us a bedroom in the
railway station.
When we got there we noticed that he had already begun to pack up ready
to leave. With him was a young official of the Ministry of Commerce,
who had been sent to destroy the stores and rolling stock....
As fast as the Germans advance in the north and the Bulgarians in the
south the locomotives and rolling stock are accumulated on the only
section of the line now in Serbian hands; that is the 80 kilometres
between Chichivatz and Nish.
When everything is lost on this section the Serbian authorities fill
the whole track with rolling stock from one end to the other and blow
up all the bridges, so as to render the line unworkable. The new
American engines, which were only delivered this year, have been placed
in a long tunnel on a side line, and each end of the tunnel blown up,
so as to entomb them undamaged....
Seven Serbian divisions opposing eighteen German divisions were odds
that not even the bravery of King Peter's army could withstand. Train
after train rolled through the station loaded with military stores and
packed with fleeing peasants.