Flora Sandes

“ This question of corporal punishment in the Serbian Army has so frequently been brought up to me by English and French officers that I purposely mention it, as I have always tried to thoroughly disabuse their minds of any idea that the men were indiscriminately knocked about. I may add that it is not so very many years since flogging was abolished in our own Navy, and no doubt in course of time the Serbian Army will follow suit. The most popular officer I knew, who was absolutely adored by his own men, was extremely ready to award corporal punishment. ”

“ Serbian soldier is proud because in his midst he sees a noble daughter of England, whose people is an old Serbian friend, and to-day their armies are arm-in-arm fighting for common idea, and you Miss Sandes should be proud that you are in position to do a good, to help a Serbian soldier—Serbian soldier will always respect acts of your kindness and deep down in his heart will write you kind acts and remember them for ever. ”

“ In the middle of lunch I had my first sight of the enemy, a Bulgarian patrol in the distance, and orders were promptly given to some of our men to go down and head them off. The men all seemed to be in high spirits up there, in spite of the cold, and some of them were roasting a pig, although I suppose that was a “Slava” luxury for them, not to be had every day.
It was evening by the time we left, and we slipped and slid down the mountain again by moonlight. When we got back to the first trenches which we had visited we made a short halt, and sat in an officer’s little tent and drank tea. ”

“ The Serbian Christmas is not till thirteen days later than ours, but we celebrated my English Christmas Eve over the camp fire that night. A plate of beans and dry bread had to take the place of roast beef and plum pudding, but we drank Christmas healths in a small flask of cognac, after which I played “God Save the King” on the violin, and we all stood up and sang it. This violin went into my long, narrow kit bag, which was carried on a pack-horse and had managed to survive its travels, though the damp had not improved its tone. ”

“ No words could ever express the deep gratitude of the Serbian Nation for the splendid services rendered by the many British Medical Missions, whose staffs, men and women, have nursed the sick and wounded without a thought for the hardships and dangers to which they have been personally exposed, and which, especially during the typhus epidemic and, later on, during the Great Retreat, were very serious indeed. ”

“ I was superintending the unloading of some goods from a lighter one day, which all had to be transferred to another lighter, and taken across to the warehouse that evening. We were all very tired and wet, and the men were slacking off, and it didn’t seem, at the rate we were going on, as if we should get through before 9 or 10 o’clock that night. The Serbian sergeant tried to buck them up, but the men were fed up and were just doing about as little as they possibly could. It is worse than useless to bully a Serbian soldier if he doesn’t want to do anything ”

“ We did not know in which direction our camp was, and, even had we got there, would have been no better off without a tent or blankets; so we spent the remainder of the night sitting on a packing-case beside the sentry’s fire, and I was glad enough to be able to borrow an overcoat from the Serbian officer in charge of the quay, who was just going off duty.
There was one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen, but under some [205] circumstances you feel you would most willingly barter the most gorgeous panorama of scenery for a cup of hot tea. ”

“ I was introduced to all the officers, and a great many of the men who were pointed out to me as having done something very special. One of the men was wearing an English medal for [88] “distinguished conduct in the field.” The men seemed awfully pleased with their little presents; they never have anything in the way of luxury—no jam, sweets or tobacco served out to them with their rations, no parcels or letters from home (at this time) , no concerts or amusements got up for their benefit, none of the things that our Tommies hardly regard in the light of luxuries, but necessities. ”

“ No one who has not lived with them can imagine how simply they live, how much they think of a very little, and what a small thing it takes to please them. After that little ceremony was over we sat round the officers’ camp fire and a young sergeant—a student artist—played the flute very well indeed, and they sang some of their national songs. ”

“ I always had my meals at the hospital now, and we had quite a merry supper that night, and they all drank my health, declaring they would see me back in three days, when I had been frozen out of my small tent on the hills, where it was already bitterly cold. The next afternoon I went all round the hospital and said good-bye to everyone; I was very sorry to leave my patients, they are so affectionate, and always so grateful for anything one does for them. ”

“ One day previously some bombs had fallen in the neighbourhood of a camp of Italian soldiers, who had to vacate it. A company of hungry Serbians near by had with great presence of mind seized the opportunity to go in and clear the deserted camp of all the bread and everything eatable it contained, and they were heard to express a wish afterwards that there might be a visitation of aeroplanes every day. ”

“ During the typhus epidemic she volunteered to go to Valjevo, which was the centre of the disease and where eight Serbian doctors and many nurses had already succumbed. The same fate very nearly overtook her, but fortunately she recovered and resumed immediately her self-imposed duty.
Such examples of self-sacrifice, added to so many others given by British men and [viii] women in Serbia, have implanted in the hearts of the Serbians a deep love and admiration for Great Britain, who may well be proud of such sons and daughters. ”

“ I thought we were going to ride all night, and it was a pleasant surprise when we turned off the road, and put our horses at a steep muddy bit of mound at the top of which was an old block-house, one of the many built by the Turks and dotted all over that part of the country. The telephone was rigged up there, and it was full of officers and soldiers; the ground all round was a perfect sea of mud, and there were soldiers everywhere. ”

“ We had supper by the camp fire with an orchestra of two Tziganes, who sang and played the Serbian airs on their violins. These Tziganes are all very musical and would sooner part with anything than their violin. Some of them play very well, and they can do a very difficult thing—sing a song and play their own accompaniment with chords on the violin at the same time.
The next day, the men having by now had a little time to get rested, there was a big parade and inspection, though we were a somewhat ragged-looking regiment for a full-dress parade. ”

“ There were a number of ships in the harbour waiting to be unloaded, and everyone was working as hard as he could, and things were considerably complicated by the fact that hardly one of them could speak the other’s language. It was quite a usual thing to find an Englishman, who could not speak French, trying to explain to a French official that he wanted a fatigue party of Serbian soldiers to unload a certain lighter, and neither of them being able to explain to the said fatigue party, when they had got them, what it was they wanted them to do. ”

“ All the patients we had were to go off that afternoon if the bullock-wagons arrived. This question [26] 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. ”

“ We had been looking forward to Corfu as a sort of land flowing with milk and honey, with a magnificent climate and everything that was good, but our ardour was rather damped when we landed at that hour at a small quay, feet deep in mud, miles away from the town, and about 8 miles away from our camp, so we were told. ”

“ We had a great reception, the whole company was lined up, and under the direction of their Company Commander I gave every seventh man a white woollen helmet—unfortunately there were not enough for each man to have one—and every man a couple of cigarettes, and my orderly followed with half a dozen large pots of jam and a spoon, the men opening their mouths like young starlings waiting to be fed. ”

“ I rode back with an artillery officer, who invited me to lunch next day, the other side of Kavaia, and I promised I would come if I could borrow a better horse than the one I was then riding. The road from our camp to Durazzo was in a shocking condition, and it was very hard to ride along it after dark; there were so many dead horses strewn all along it that it was a wonder they did not breed a pestilence. ”

“ The Commandant and I used to have a [55] race whenever we got to a good bit of ground. He was a fine rider, and, as the horses were pretty well matched, we used to get up a break-neck speed sometimes, and had some splendid gallops. About a year before in Kragujewatz I was riding with a Serbian soldier who had been sent with a horse for me, and he said: “What did I want to be a nurse for?” and tried to persuade me not to go back to the hospital, but to join the Army then and there, regardless of my poor patients expecting me back. ”

“ Though a corporal, I always messed with the officers.
The British Adriatic Mission were feeding the Serbian Army, and were doing wonders, though owing to the constant arrival of fresh troops and the scarcity of ovens for baking their bread (although they were building fresh ones as fast as ever they could) the men were still on half rations of bread, and some days had to have biscuits instead; but, of course, the men could have eaten a lot more after their months of starvation. ”

“ Embarking is always a tedious business, and is always inseparably connected in my mind with hours of standing about on your own weary feet, like a flock of tired sheep, in weather that is always either too hot or too cold, or else raining, patiently waiting for orders. ”

“ Foreigners always look upon English people as more than half mad on the subject of fresh air, especially at night. The next day my orderly, who was in a great state of mind, and seemed to think that I would lose caste with his fellow orderlies if I persisted in sleeping on the balcony, told [80] me that he had found another room for me in a hahn by the roadside, where I accordingly slept the next night, and subsequently we all moved down there. ”

“ Our camp was in a bare and very muddy field about two miles outside Elbasan. In the afternoon Lieut. Jovitch got leave and took me with him to Elbasan to see the sights and show me what an Albanian town is like. It was a filthy little town; the streets paved with big cobble stones and running [149] rivers of mud. The inhabitants were as hostile as they dared to be, and used to refuse to sell us anything. They put the price of bread up to Frs. 16 a loaf, and everything else in proportion, and would not sell us any hay for our horses, although they had plenty. ”

“ We rode very, very slowly, always through crowds of soldiers, pack-horses and [93] donkeys, halting about every hour at little camp fires along the roadside made by our front guard, where we sat and warmed our feet for about a quarter of an hour till the tired soldiers could catch us up, there being frequent halts for them to rest for a few minutes. I rode alongside the Adjutant and another officer, and was very glad that my orderly had filled my thermos flask with hot tea, with a good dash of cognac in it, which the three of us consumed while riding along. ”