Read Ebook: An English woman-sergeant in the Serbian Army by Sandes Flora Gruji Slavko J Author Of Introduction Etc

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 250 lines and 36356 words, and 5 pages

PAGE

REJOINING THE SERBIANS, NOVEMBER, 1915--THE SECOND REGIMENTAL AMBULANCE 1

A SERBIAN AMBULANCE AT WORK--WE START TO RETREAT 22

A RIDE TO KALABAC AND A BATTLE IN THE SNOW 46

I MEET THE FOURTH COMPANY--A COLD NIGHT RIDE 77

WE SAY GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA AND TAKE TO THE ALBANIAN MOUNTAINS 104

FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 126

ELBASAN--WE PUSH ON TOWARDS THE COAST 148

SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY AT DURAZZO--AEROPLANE RAIDS 170

WE GO TO CORFU 192

THE "SLAVA DAY" OF THE SECOND REGIMENT 230

REJOINING THE SERBIANS, NOVEMBER, 1915--THE SECOND REGIMENTAL AMBULANCE

Events moved so rapidly in Serbia after the Bulgarians declared war that when I reached Salonica last winter I found it full of nurses and doctors who had been home on leave and who had gone out there to rejoin their various British hospital units, only to find themselves unable to get up into the country.

I had been home for a holiday after working in Serbian hospitals since the very beginning of the war, but when things began to look so serious again I hurried back to Serbia. We had rather an eventful voyage, as the French boat I was on was carrying ammunition as well as passengers, and the submarines seemed to make a dead set at us. At Malta we were held up for three days, waiting for the coast to clear. The third night I had been dining ashore, and on getting back to the boat, about eleven, found the military police in charge, and the ship and all the passengers being searched for a spy and some missing documents. We were not allowed to go down to our cabins until they had been thoroughly ransacked, but as nothing incriminating was found we eventually proceeded on our way, with a torpedo-destroyer on either side of us as an escort. The boats were always slung out in readiness, and we were cautioned never to lose sight of our life-belts. We had to put in again at Piraeus, and again at Lemnos for a few days, so that it was November 3rd before we finally reached Salonica--having taken fourteen days from Marseilles--only to find that the railway line had been cut, and there was no possible way of getting up into Serbia.

My intention had been to go back into my old Serbian hospital at Valjevo to work under the Serbian Red Cross as I did before; that was out of the question now, of course, as Valjevo was already in the hands of the Austrians, but I thought I might get up to Nish and get my orders from the President of the Serbian Red Cross there. I inquired from a Serbian officer staying at the hotel, who had just ridden down from Prisren, if it would be possible to ride up into Serbia, but he most strongly discouraged all idea of riding, saying that with every facility at his disposal, and relays of fresh horses all along the route, it had taken him ten days to ride from Prisren to Salonica, and that during that time he had frequently been unable to obtain food either for himself or his horses; that, furthermore, it was very dangerous even with an escort, as part of the way was through hostile Albania, and that all the horses were needed for the Army. I gave up that idea, therefore, and set to work to find out where I could come into touch with the Serbians, and finally found I could go to Monastir, or, to call it by its Serbian name, Bitol. Accordingly, I, with four other nurses and a doctor whose acquaintance I had made on the boat, who also found themselves unable to reach their original destinations, left for Bitol the next day.

Arrived at Bitol, I at once made inquiries about the next step farther, and found that Prilip, about twenty-five miles farther on, was still in the hands of the Serbians, though its evacuation was expected any minute, and even now the road from Bitol to Prilip was not considered safe on account of marauding Bulgarian comitadjes, or irregulars. However, the English Consul had to go out there, and he said he would take us with him to see how the land lay, and whether we were needed in the hospital there.

I spent the afternoon prowling round Bitol, mostly in the Turkish quarter.

The next day we went with the Consul to Prilip--though up to the last moment I was afraid we should not go, as there was so much talk about the road not being safe--some of us in the touring car and the rest in a motor-lorry, with an escort of Serbian soldiers, all armed to the teeth. I took my camp bed and blankets with me, on the off chance of being able to stay at Prilip, as I was gradually edging my way up to the Front, leaving the rest of my baggage in Bitol to be sent after me. We got there without any mishap, keeping a sharp look-out for Bulgarian patrols. We found a Serbian military hospital at Prilip, and I asked the Upravnik or Director if I might stay and work there, to which he consented, but added that he was afraid that it would not be for long, as they were expecting to have to fly before the Bulgarians any day. I accordingly got a room at the hotel, and the Consul left me an orderly to look after me, named Joe, who could speak a little English. I was very pleased at getting into a Serbian hospital again in spite of all difficulties, as the opinion in Salonica seemed to be that it was impossible; but I must say I felt rather lost when the cars went back that evening and I was left alone, the only Englishwoman in Prilip.

The first thing I did was to turn all the furniture, including the bed, out of the room in the tenth-rate pub., which was the best hotel that Prilip boasted, and made Joe scrub the floor and put in my own camp bed.

I take the following extract out of my diary, written on my first night in Prilip:

"The view from my window is not calculated to inspire confidence either. It looks on to a stableyard full of pigs, donkeys and the most villainous-looking Turks squatting about at their supper. These, I tell myself, are the ones who will come in and cut my throat if Prilip is taken to-night, as I don't think any responsible person in the town knows I am here. However, if I live through the night things will probably look more cheery in the morning."

In the middle of the night I was awakened by another fearful racket in the passage. "That's done it," I thought, sitting up in bed with my electric torch in one hand and my service revolver in the other, "it's like my rotten luck that the Bulgars should pitch on to-night to come in and sack the town." However, a very few minutes convinced me that it was only two drunks coming up to bed, and, telling myself not to be more of a fool than nature intended, I turned over and went to sleep again.

I think my morbid reflections must have been brought on by the supper I had had. Joe, my orderly, had, for reasons best known to himself, taken me to a different restaurant to the one where we had been to lunch with the Consul, assuring me that it was much better; it was not, very much worse, in fact, though I should not have thought such a thing could be possible. It was full of soldiers and comitadjes drinking. At first I could get no food at all, and when it did come it was uneatable. I had supper with an American doctor I met in the town next night, and he informed me that food was so scarce and dear in Prilip that to get anything of a meal you had to have your meat in one restaurant, your potatoes in another, and your coffee in a third!

Next morning I went round to the hospital, and in the afternoon one of the doctors took me round and introduced me to the Serbian Chief of Police, who was most friendly and polite, got me a nice little room close to the hospital, and apologised for not being able to ask me to come to his house as his guest as his wife was ill. This is the sort of courtesy that has always been extended to me in Serbia; they think the best of everything they can offer is not too good for the stranger within their gates, and I began to feel much cheered up.

There were not very many wounded in the hospital, but a great many sick, and dysentery cases beginning to come in rapidly. I was soon quite at home there, being used to the ways of Serbian hospitals. The Director was going to Bitol for a few days, and I asked him to ask the head of the Sanitary Department there, Dr. Nikotitch, if I might join a regimental ambulance as nurse, as I heard that the ambulance of the Second Regiment was some miles farther up the road, just behind the Front. The Second and Fourteenth Regiments were then holding the Baboona Pass, a very strongly fortified position in the mountains, against the Bulgarians.

I stayed about a week in the hospital; there was plenty of work to do--in fact, to have done it properly there would have been enough for a dozen nurses, as dysentery was rapidly becoming an epidemic, and the hospital was soon full up; we could take in no more. We were fearfully short of everything, beds, bedding, drugs, and we simply had to do the best we could with practically no kind of hospital appliances. Any kind of proper nursing was impossible, most of the patients lying on the floor in their muddy, trench-stained uniforms.

One afternoon two of the doctors motored out to the ambulance of the Second Regiment and took me with them. We stopped first at the ambulance of the Fourteenth, where we found twenty unfortunate dysentery cases lying on the bare ground in two ragged tents groaning. We had a long chat with the doctor of the Second Regimental ambulance, and had coffee and cigarettes in his room--a loft over the stable. That is to say, I did not do much of the talking as he was a Greek, and besides his own language only talked Turkish and not very fluent Serbian, although later on, strange to say, when I joined the same ambulance, we used to carry on long conversations together in a kind of mongrel lingo very largely helped out by signs.

We visited a large empty barracks on our way back, and made arrangements for it to be turned into a dysentery hospital, as this disease was beginning to assume serious proportions, and our hospital was full up. This was never carried out, however, owing to the Bulgarians' rapid advance a few days later.

The next day the Director came back, and brought with him papers whereby I was officially attached to the ambulance of the Second Regiment; and it was part of my extraordinary luck to have just hit on this particular regiment, which is acknowledged to be the finest in the Serbian Army. Everybody was extremely kind to me in the hospital, and all the doctors asked me to stay there and work, saying I could have no idea of the hardships of ambulance life; but as I knew that it would not be many days before we all had to clear out of Prilip before the advancing Bulgarians, and that would mean my going back to Salonica, and losing all chance of staying with the Serbians , I adhered to my resolution to throw in my lot with the Army.

It was rather late in the day when Joe and I finally set out in a very rickety carriage commandeered by martial law, with a very unwilling driver, and a horse that could hardly crawl. The harness, which was tied up with bits of string, kept coming to pieces, and the driver kept stopping to repair it. Joe began to look very uneasy, and kept peering round in the gathering dusk for any signs of wandering Bulgarian patrols, or comitadjes, as it was a very lonely road. At last, after what seemed an interminable time, we arrived at the ambulance, which was on the grass by the side of the road. They were not expecting me then as it was late, and the Serbians turn in soon after sunset. There was apparently nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. One of them took us round to the doctor's quarters, the same loft I had visited a few days before, not far from the ambulance. He turned out full of apologies, and said that he had had notice that I was coming that day, but that as it was so late he had given me up.

It seemed a bit of a problem where I was to sleep, but eventually some of the soldiers turned out of one of their small bivouac tents. These tents are only a sort of little lean-to's, which you crawl into, just the height of a rifle, two of which can be used instead of poles. You seem a bit cramped at first, but after I had lived in one for a couple of months I did not notice it. All the tents were bunched up together, touching each other, with four soldiers, or hospital orderlies, in each. I insisted, to their great surprise, in having mine moved to a clean spot about fifteen yards away from the others, and some more or less clean hay put in to lie upon. There was a good deal of excitement and confusion, the whole camp turning out and assisting. They could not imagine why I wanted it moved, and declared that the Bulgarian comitadjes would come down in the night and cut my throat before the sentry knew they were there. Afterwards, when I was more used to war, and accustomed to sleeping in the middle of a regiment, and to sleeping when and where one could, in any amount of noise, I used to laugh at my scruples then, and only wondered they were all as good-tempered and patient as they were with what must have seemed to them my extraordinary English ideas. The doctor sent me down some supper of bread and cheese and eggs, and presently came down himself and sat on the grass beside me as I ate it, and altogether they all did their best to make me comfy, and were as amiable as only Serbians can be when you rouse them out in the middle of the night and turn everything upside down. It reminded me somewhat of my arrival in Valjevo, at the beginning of the typhus epidemic, when owing to the vagaries of the Serbian trains I was landed at the hospital at 3 a.m., after everyone had given me up. After I had finished my supper I crawled into my tent, tightly rolled myself up into the blankets as it was a very cold night, and slept like a top on my bed of hay.

A SERBIAN AMBULANCE AT WORK--WE START TO RETREAT

Next morning we all turned out at daybreak, and I got a better view of my surroundings. The ambulance itself consisted of one largish tent, where the patients lie on their clothes on very muddy straw, until they can be removed to the base hospital by bullock-wagon. This is done as often as transport permits. There were a few cases of dressings, drugs, etc., in the tent, and a small table for writing at. There were about twenty patients in at one time, some of them sick and some wounded. About a dozen little tents, similar to mine, for the soldiers and ambulance men, and two or three wagons completed the outfit.

There was a Serbian girl, about seventeen, helping; she was very unlike any other Serbian woman I had ever met, lived and dressed just like the soldiers, and was very good to the sick men. She spoke German very well, so that we understood each other and became very good friends; she gave me lots of tips, and though I had been under the impression that I knew something about camping out and roughing it, having done so already in various parts of the world, she could walk rings round me in that respect. The first thing the men did after I had had some tea with them by the camp fire was to set to work to convince me of the error of my ways, and to move my little tent back to its old spot before any harm could happen to me. We don't have breakfast in Serbia, but have an early glass of tea, very hot and sweet, without milk.

The doctor came down shortly afterwards to prescribe for the men who were sick, and then a couple of orderlies and myself dressed the wounded ones, those who were able to walk coming out of the tent and squatting down on the grass outside, where there was more room, and light enough to see what you were doing. They kept straggling in all day from Baboona, where there was a battle going on; it was not far away, and the guns sounded very plain. There were not very many seriously wounded, but I am afraid that was because the path down the mountains is so steep that it is almost impossible to get a badly wounded man down on a stretcher. Any who are able to walk down do so, and they were glad to get their wounds dressed and be able to lie down. At lunch-time we knocked off for a couple of hours, and I went back with the doctor to his loft. We had lunch in great style, sitting on his bed, there being no chairs, and with a blue pocket-handkerchief spread out between us for a table-cloth. He said they were expecting to have a retreat at any moment, and that we must always be in readiness for it as soon as the order arrived. All the patients we had were to go off that afternoon if the bullock-wagons arrived. This question of transport is always a terrible problem; in many cases bullock-wagons are the only things that will stand the rough tracks, although here there was a good road all the way to Bitol, and had we had a service of motor-cars we could have saved the poor fellows an immense amount of suffering. Imagine yourself with a shattered leg lying in company with three or four others on the floor of a springless bullock-wagon, jolting like that over the rough roads for twenty or thirty miles. When I was in Kragujewatz we used to get in big batches of wounded who had travelled like that for three or four days straight from the Front, with only the first rough dressing which each man carries in his pocket.

The wagons came that afternoon, but only two or three for the lying down patients; several poor chaps who were so sick they could hardly crawl had to turn out and start on a weary walk of a good many miles to the nearest hospital at Prilip. One man protested that he would never do it, and I really didn't think he could, and said so; however, the ambulance men, who were well up to their work, explained that it was absolutely imperative that all should get off into safety day by day, otherwise when the order came suddenly to retreat we might find ourselves landed with an overflowing tentful of sick and wounded men, and no transport available on the spot. "Go, brother," they said kindly, "Idi polako, polako" , and fortified with a drink of cognac from the ambulance stores, and a handful of cigarettes from me, he and the others like him set off.

We all turned in prepared that evening, and I was cautioned to take not even my boots off. Later on, sleeping in one's clothes didn't strike me as anything unusual; in fact, two months later, when we had finished marching and arrived at Durazzo, it was some time before I remembered that it was usual to undress when you went to bed, and that once upon a time, long, long ago, I used to do the same.

Later on during the day came another telegram, and I must say that the English Consul at Bitol was a perfect trump in the way he did his duty by stray English subjects and looked after their safety, before he finally had himself to leave for Salonica. A Serbian officer was sent out from somewhere, and he said that if I liked to throw in my lot with them and stop he would send out a wagon and horses, in which I could live and sleep, and in which I could carry my luggage. I hadn't very much of the latter, and what I had I was perfectly willing to abandon if it was any bother, but he wouldn't hear of that; and in due course the wagon arrived, and proved, when a little hay had been put on the floor to sleep on, a most snug abode.

The next day the wounded kept straggling in all day, faster than we could evacuate them, and when the order came at ten o'clock that night that the regiment was forced to retreat from Baboona, and that the ambulance was to start at once, we had sixteen wounded in the tent, twelve of them unable to walk. The Serbian ambulances travel very light, and half an hour after receiving our orders we were on the move, the men being adepts at packing up tents and starting at a moment's notice. At the last moment, while the big ambulance tent was being taken down, a man with a very bad shrapnel wound in the ankle was carried in, and as it was blowing a gale, and we couldn't keep a lamp alight, I dressed it by the light of a pocket electric torch, which I fortunately had with me. They said at first that he would have to go on as he was, but as I knew very well that it might be three or four days before he would get another dressing I insisted on them getting out some iodine, gauze, etc., and kneeling in the mud, and with some difficulty under the circumstances as the tent was being taken down over my head, I cut off his boot and bloody bandages and cleaned and dressed the wound. He was awfully good, poor fellow, though it hurt him horribly, and he hardly made a murmur. Then two ambulance men carried him out to the ox-wagon, three of which had appeared from somewhere, I don't know where. I found the Kid, as I called her, had been working like a Trojan in the pitch dark and pelting rain helping the men through the thick slippery mud down the bank to the road, and had settled four men, lying down, in each wagon, that being all they could hold, and had also decided the knotty point which should be the four unlucky ones who had to walk--these four being, I may say, quite well enough to walk, but naturally not being anxious to do so. When they were all started off, she and I clambered into our wagon, and the whole cavalcade set off in the pitch dark, not having the faintest idea where we were going to travel to or how long for. We were a long cavalcade with all the ambulance staff, the Komorra or transport, and a good many soldiers all armed, and a most unpleasant night we had rumbling along in the dark, halting every few miles, not knowing whether the Bulgars had got there first and cut the road in front of us, or what was happening. It was bitterly cold besides, and as the Kid and I were black and blue from jolting about on the floor of our wagon I began to wonder how the poor wounded ever survived it at all.

A little way on we picked up a young recruit who said he was wounded and couldn't walk; our driver demurred, saying that he had had orders that no one else was to use our wagon, but we said, of course, the poor boy was to come in if he was wounded. He lay on my feet all night, which didn't add to my comfort, though it kept them warm. He was evidently starving, so we gave him half a loaf of bread that we had with us, and some brandy out of my water-bottle, and he went to sleep.

Putting brandy in my water-bottle had been suggested to me by a tale a young Austrian officer, a prisoner, who was one of my patients in Kragujewatz hospital, told me. Poor boy, he had been badly wounded in the leg, and was telling me some of his experiences during the war and about the terrible journey after he was wounded, travelling in a bullock cart. He said he had a flask full of brandy, and that was a help while it lasted. When that was all gone he filled up the flask with tea, which was pretty good, too, as it had a stray flavour of brandy still, and then when he had drunk all that he put water in, and that had the flavour of tea!

The next morning our "wounded hero" hopped off quite unhurt, and we couldn't help laughing at the way we had been done. It was a bitterly cold dawn, and we found to our sorrow that the recruit had not put the cork back in my water-bottle, and the rest of the brandy had upset, as had also a bottle of raspberry syrup which the Kid set great store by. I once upset a pot of gooseberry jam in a small motor-car, and it permeated everything until I had to take the car to a garage to be washed, and go and take a bath myself before I could get rid of it; but it was not a patch in the way of stickiness to a pot of raspberry syrup let loose in a jolting wagon, and we were very glad to get out at daybreak, after eight hours' travelling, to walk a bit to stretch our legs, and also to wipe off some of the stickiness with some grass.

We came through Prilip that night, and were rather doubtful how we should get through, but though the people standing about glowered at us, and we heard a few shots in the distance, nothing much happened, and only one man got slightly hurt.

We arrived somewhere between Prilip and Bitol at sunrise, and made a big fire and waited for further orders when the Colonel of the regiment should arrive. Presently he rode up with his staff, and I was introduced to Colonel Militch, the Commandant of the Second Regiment. My first impression of him was that he was a real sport, and later on, when I got to know him very well and had the privilege of being a soldier in his regiment, I found out that not only was he a sport, but one of the bravest soldiers and most chivalrous gentlemen anyone ever served under. We stood round the fire for some time and had a great powwow; my Serbian was still in an embryo stage, but the Colonel spoke German.

We were all very cold and hungry, but one of the officers of the staff, who was a person of resource, made some rather queerish coffee in a big tin mug on the fire, and we all had some, and it tasted jolly good and hot, and then the Colonel produced a bottle of liqueur from a little handbag, and we drank each other's healths. I got to know that little handbag well later--it used always to miraculously appear when everybody was cold, tired and dying for a drink.

After a couple of hours the ambulance went on about a mile and pitched camp, and I went with them. The Kid went to sleep in the wagon and I did the same outside on the grass. The doctor sent me a piece of bread and cheese, which I casually ate on the spot, not liking to wake the Kid up, but afterwards I was filled with remorse for my thoughtlessness, when I was convicted by her later on for not being a good comrade at all, as it appeared it was the only eatable thing in camp; but, as I was new and green at "retreating," at that time it never dawned on me: I learnt better ways later on. I made her some tea with my tea-basket, but it was not very satisfying.

Later on in the day the Commandant of the Bitol Division, Colonel Wasitch, and an English officer came up in a car. I was introduced to them, and went with them in the car somewhere up the road to visit a camp. The Commandant of the division went off to attend to business, leaving the English officer and myself to amuse ourselves as we liked.

At some of the other fires dotted about they were roasting some unwary geese which had been foolish enough to stray round our camp. As the inhabitants of the houses had fled leaving them behind we certainly could not call it looting. Looting was very firmly checked; the Serbian is far from being the undisciplined soldier in that respect that some people suppose.

A RIDE TO KALABAC AND A BATTLE IN THE SNOW

It snowed hard in the night and most of the next day and was bitterly cold, blowing a gale, but my wagon was a good bit snugger than the tent. The Colonel and his staff had quarters in a loft over a little caf? just along the road, and after lunch the Commander of the division, who came with two English officers, took the Kid and me with them in their cars some miles back along the road towards Prilip, where we all walked about and inspected the new positions part of the regiment was to take up. The Kid went back to Bitol in the car with them that evening to fetch some clothes, and I never saw her again, though I believe she did want to come back to us later on.

I used to sit over the camp fires in the evenings with the soldiers, and we used to exchange cigarettes and discuss the war by the hour. I was picking up a few more words of Serbian every day, and they used to take endless trouble to make me understand, though our conversations were very largely made up of signs, but I understood what they meant if I couldn't always understand what they said. It was heartbreaking the way they used to ask me every evening, "Did I think the English were coming to help them?" and "Would they send cannon?" The Bulgarians had big guns, and we had nothing but some little old cannon about ten years old, which were really only what the comitadjes used to use. If we had had a few big guns we could have held the Baboona Pass practically for any length of time, for it was an almost impregnable position. I used to cheer them up as best I could, and said I was sure that some guns would come, and that even if they did not they must not think that the English had deserted them, as I supposed they had big plans in their head that we knew nothing about, and that though we might have to retreat now everything would come right in the end. It was touching the faith they had in the English, whom they all described as going "slowly but surely." They were very much excited when they saw the two English officers, as they were sure they had come to say some English troops were coming.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet