WITH THE SERBIAN STOICS IN EXILE—UNDER THE GERMAN YOKE

Experiences in the Flight to Albania Told by Gordon Gordon-Smith, with the Serbian Army

Gordon-Smith was with the armies of King Peter in the flight into Albania. He stood beside the forlorn king as he fled with his people before the German-Austrian-Bulgarian hordes. His accounts of the hardships and heroism of the Serbs is the first to reach the world. He tells about the tragic exodus through the mountain passes—men, women and children; the babes and the feeble on the procession of bullock carts; the wolves howling through the night and gnawing at the bodies of the dead along the road. A few of these stories are told here by permission of the New York Tribune, for whom he acted as special correspondent in the Balkans.

I—HOW I FLED WITH KING PETER'S TROOPS

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.

II—"WE SADDLED OUR HORSES TO RIDE TO THE FRONT"

Next morning the station master roused me at 7:30 o'clock with the words, "The Germans are coming!" From his tone one could have supposed the cavalry were at the outskirts.

The real reason, I soon discovered, was his desire that I should evacuate my sleeping quarters, as an ox wagon was already at the door to transport the furniture to a place of safety.

We determined to leave the carriage to ride to the front, as a carriage, in a sudden retreat, is apt to be cumbersome. We accordingly saddled the horses and rode to Parachine, twenty kilometers distant.

Parachine we found in a state of considerable excitement. The thunder of the guns drawing nearer and nearer gave evidence of the approach of the enemy. The battle was raging about four miles outside the town. The Second Army held the heights on both sides of the valley, opposed to a force of nearly double its strength....

As the staff of the Second Army was expected to arrive in the town that evening we determined to remain over night at Parachine. With thirty thousand refugees in a town of twelve thousand inhabitants it was no easy matter to find a room, but the Mayor kindly had a deserted house broken open for us, and also, which was even more important, found food and stabling for our horses. Next morning the people of the next-door house awakened us with the news that the Germans were attacking the town, and that infantry fire was clearly audible.

When we got out we found the Serbian baggage train pouring through the town—a clear sign that the retreat had begun. The town was in wild excitement for two reasons—firstly, on account of the approach of the Germans, and, secondly, because orders had been given to distribute to the inhabitants everything in the military stores to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. As a result I saw hundreds of people going about carrying a dozen pairs of boots, uniforms, under-clothing, bread, biscuits, etc.

At midday the provision and munition columns, having safely cleared the town, General Stephanovitch and his staff, after placing a strong rear guard to delay the German advance as long as possible, left for Rajan, a town about twenty miles distant.

The wildest reports were current. But it is no use arguing with panic-stricken people. In spite of my assurances, they went on loading carts and wagons in feverish haste and, in spite of the pouring rain, went off in the darkness. The curious thing is that not one in ten knew where they were going. The Germans were coming from the north, therefore they fled south.

III—"I MET HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES"

For a month past I have met hundreds of thousands of such refugees, who wander on aimlessly from town to town, driving flocks and herds before them, always trying to keep a couple of days march in advance of the invader.

It goes without saying that they add enormously to the difficulties of the military situation. They block the roads and overcrowd towns and villages. When their food supplies run down they are face to face with starvation. And when one remembers that a similar exodus is going on from the south before the Bulgarian invader the horror of the situation may be imagined....

The whole of Old Serbia, the Serbia of King Milan, is in the hands of the Germans, while the Bulgarians are masters of nearly the whole of Serbian Macedonia.

I had hardly been asleep half an hour when I was aroused by a tremendous explosion, followed a quarter of an hour later by a succession of minor explosions. These were caused by the blowing up of the ammunition wagons. The crimson glare announced that the scores of cars on the railway siding were ablaze.

At the same time an engine just opposite my windows began whistling stridently. Downstairs in the courtyard I found the whole population, male and female, old and young, busy looting the carriages and trucks not yet a prey to the flames.

Half a dozen wagons filled with boots for the Rumanian army, which had been lying in the siding for three months, were being plundered. Two other wagons filled with 50,000 francs' worth of cigarette papers, wagons filled with Serbian wine, French champagne, liqueurs and perfumery, were also given over to plunder. Thousands of bags of flour, boxes of biscuits, tinned meats and sardines covered the ground on all sides, while the inhabitants of the village were loading carts and handbarrows.

These people were not worrying much about the approach of the Germans. As they had determined to be taken prisoners, they regarded the advance of the invaders philosophically.

My chief worry was Varvarian, which I could see only four miles away. It had been occupied at dawn by the German cavalry, and, of course, they might risk a sudden dash for Chichivatz, and perhaps even Salatz, down the line.

We therefore determined to return at once for Krusevatz. The press of vehicles on the road was so great that we saw we could proceed quicker on foot, so we left the carriage to follow and started to cover the intervening twenty kilometres.

When we reached Krusevatz, late in the afternoon, we found the town apparently in high festival. Everybody seemed in the best of humor and gaiety reigned everywhere.

We soon discovered the cause. The whole town, men, women and children, had been drinking unlimited quantities of French champagne, a trainful of which was lying in the station. When the capture of the town was seen to be inevitable orders were given there, as elsewhere, to let the population plunder everything in sight, and the order had been faithfully obeyed.

I doubt, however, if this had the effect of preventing the goods falling into the hands of the Germans. The latter would not be long in hearing of what had happened. They would simply post up a notice to the inhabitants telling them to bring back all the plunder to the "Kommandatur," twelve bullets being provided for any one who should fail to do so. This, plus the threat of a house-to-house search to discover those who had failed to obey, would probably rake in nine-tenths of the goods.

The great retreat of the Serbian army across the mountains had now begun. With their 300,000 bayonets, in spite of the fact that the Teutons were, as far as physique went, the most miserable material it was ever my lot to see, they continually outflanked the 150,000 men the Serbians were able to oppose to them.

The Serbian armies, except the division which was opposing the Bulgarians in the south, were forced back on the mountain range, which at this point runs transversely across Serbia, and behind which lies the old Turkish province, the Sandpak of Novi Bazar, and the Plain of Kossovo.

The operation of conducting the retreat of the Serbian armies through the mountain passes was like filtering a fifty-gallon cask through the neck of a pint bottle. The transport of 20,000 ox-drawn army service wagons, whose best gait is about two miles an hour, alone constituted a formidable problem.

In view of the terrible nature of the roads, we had to add a third horse to the team of our carriage. A mile from the town we found ourselves in a mass of wagons, which every instant became more congested. The passage of tens of thousands of guns and wagons had churned the roads into a huge quagmire.

IV—"I WATCHED THE TERRIFYING SPECTACLE"

As darkness fell the scene became a sinister one. To the left, behind the railway station, one building after another burst into flame; the employees were firing the storehouses and blowing up the wagons on the siding. A few minutes later the whole town was shaken by a series of explosions. The accumulated stocks in the Obelitchavo powder magazine were being blown up.

From the eminence on which I stood the spectacle was terrifying. Krusevatz was blazing at half a dozen points, the whole sky was covered with a crimson glare, while below us the river, like red blood in the flames, could be followed to the horizon, where the flashes of Serb guns delaying the German advance could be seen.

On the line of retreat confusion was becoming worse. The whole road was filled with a triple line of bullock wagons, their panting teams straining to tear them through the tenacious mud.

Suddenly there came an explosion like an earthquake. An immense column of yellow flame shot heavenward. The heavy girder bridge over the river had been dynamited. At the same instant three immense German shells came screaming overhead and burst with tremendous explosions, one near the town hall and two near the railway station. These nerve-shaking explosions caused a wild panic, the first I had seen in Siberia. The terrified oxen broke into a run and poured in a surging mass, with my carriage in their midst, down the road.

Suddenly they came on a narrow bridge spanning a small ravine. Those on the outside were forced against the parapet. I saw the carriage balance for an instant and then with the three horses roll into the ditch thirty feet below. There was a sound of smashing glass, and it was all over with our vehicle.

The only thing was to extricate the kicking horses and salve such baggage as had escaped. This was a long and difficult process in torrents of rain, but after an hour and a half of hard work we finally got our belongings ranged alongside the road.

The next difficulty was a means of transport, but an obliging non-commissioned officer to the Reserve Munition Column of the Timok Division stopped a half-empty ox wagon and our belongings were hoisted in. We in turn found shelter under the tilt of another wagon and made ourselves as comfortable as the munition boxes would allow.

The German infantry was of miserable quality, men who a year ago would never have passed the doctor, they burst their way through by shell and shrapnel fire.

It was during these attacks that they took hundreds of prisoners, all of them, as I have said, of miserable physique. I saw a youth in the streets of Krusevatz, who could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old. His "pickelhauben," much too large for him, came down over his ears. Another I saw was minus a finger on his left hand, and a French surgeon told me he had a German patient who was deaf and dumb. All were pale-faced, narrow-chested, and not the class of men one saw twelve months ago.

Then came the blizzards of snow and inundations which blotted out the road in districts hundreds of kilometers in extent. Add to this fact, all communication with the outside world was completely cut off, there were no letters, telegrams or newspapers, and such vague reports as filtered in were brought by circuitous routes over hundreds of kilometers of the worst roads in Europe.

With every trump card in the hands of her enemies, Serbia's fate was sealed. All she could do was to fight to the last, and this she did.

V—EVERY ROAD WAS FILLED WITH HUMAN MISERY

Every road in Serbia was filled with the flowing tide of human misery. Every town and village was overcrowded. In Kroljevo in ordinary times there are 15,000. When I reached the town it contained 120,000. The same held good of every other center.

The government issued a decree ordering all the male population above fourteen to leave the invaded districts before the arrival of the enemy. This added nearly a million to the number of people the government had to support, and under the strain the civil administration broke down completely. Soon the old Serbia of King Milas was completely in the hands of the Germans, while the Bulgarians drove out the population of Serbian Macedonia.

As a consequence the only refuge left was Novi Bazar. Into this narrow space poured an endless tide of refugees. Gaunt, hollow-eyed men, women and children dragged themselves wearily for hundreds of kilometers, bound they knew not whither. Always behind them they heard the inexorable thunder of the guns, warning them to press on and on. Thousands fell by the wayside, succumbing to cold and hunger.

Probably not since the crossing of the Alps by Napoleon has such a military expedition been undertaken as the traversing of the Albanian Mountains by the headquarters staff and the remains of the Serbian army.

The sight presented by Lium Koula on the eve of departure was unique. On the mountain side for miles nothing could be seen but endless fires. They were made by thousands of ox wagons, unable to go further, as the road for vehicles ceases there. Fortunately the snowstorm ended and was followed by brilliant sunshine.

Next day at 9 o'clock the headquarters staff set out. It included 300 persons and 400 pack animals. The road wound along the banks of the Drin, which had to be crossed twice by means of picturesque old single-span Turkish bridges, since destroyed to impede the Bulgarian advance.

The first mistake was that of transporting the sedan chair of Field Marshal Putnik at the head of the procession. Every time it halted to change bearers, which was every fifteen minutes, the whole two-mile-long procession, following in single file, had to stop also. As a result, instead of reaching Spas before sundown, we only reached the base of the mountain after darkness had fallen.

Here a long council was held as to whether we should bivouac in the village below or undertake the mountain climb in the dark. The latter course was decided upon. It was one of the most extraordinary adventures ever undertaken. A narrow path, about four feet across, covered with ice and snow, winds corkscrew fashion up the face of the cliff. On one hand is a rocky wall and on the other a sheer drop into the Drin.

VI—OVER THE MOUNTAIN SIDE WITH GENERAL PUTNIK

This road winds and twists in all sorts of angles, and it was up this that we started in the black darkness, with the sedan chair of General Putnik still heading the procession. Every time it reached a corner it was a matter of endless difficulty to manoeuver it around.

On one occasion we stood for thirty-five minutes in an icy wind listening to the roar of the Drin, invisible in the black gulf 500 feet below. Horses slipped and fell at every instant, and every now and then one would go crashing into the gulf below.

It was 10 o'clock when, tired, hungry and half frozen, we reached bivouac at Spas. Here we found that though dinner had been ready since 3 o'clock it could not be served because all the plates and spoons were on the pack animals, which remained in the village below. Neither had the tents arrived, and as Spas contains only five or six peasant houses accommodation was at a premium. Colonel Mitrovitz, head of the mess, told me I would find room in a farmhouse a quarter of a mile away.

The house really was two hours distant, over fields deep in snow. When I got there at midnight I discovered that there were already nearly a score of occupants; but at least I was able to sleep in some straw near the fireside, instead of in the snow outside.

Next morning I set out at 6 to get ahead of the main body of the headquarters staff. The day was magnificent and we slowly climbed foot by foot to the cloud-capped summits of the mountains. Up and up we went, thousands and thousands of feet.

Every few hundred yards we came on bodies of men frozen or starved to death. At one point there were four in a heap. They were convicts from Prisrend penitentiary, who had been sent in chains across the mountains. They had been shot either for insubordination or because they were unable to proceed. Two other nearly naked bodies were evidently those of Serbian soldiers murdered by Albanians.

VII—"I OVERTOOK KING PETER"

Soon after midday I overtook King Peter and his staff. Despite his seventy-six years, he marched on foot with vigor younger men might have envied.

During all the four hours I marched with the royal staff he never once mounted his horse, which a soldier was leading behind him. When we stopped for the night at Bredeti King Peter had a ten hours' march to his credit.

It was at this point I came across the first of Essad Pacha's gendarmes. They had been sent out by that heavy-handed ruler to protect the King and his staff. They were a picturesque lot, many of them barefooted, but there was no doubt about the first class quality of their rifles and revolvers. They wore the Serbian gendarme's uniform—that is, they wore any uniform—of which the Nish government had some months before made them a present of several thousand.

The attitude of the population could not be described as friendly to the Serbians, but at the same time there were no outward signs of hostility. They rarely saluted and showed no desire whatever to offer hospitality. In the case of the royal household and headquarters staff Essad Pacha had requisitioned accommodations, but any one not belonging to one of these units had every chance of faring badly. All they had to depend on were wayside caravanserai.

These huge, barnlike structures consist of nothing but four walls and a roof, the latter generally doubtfully water-tight. Here men and horses were all quartered pell-mell. Everybody annexes as much space as he can get and lights a fire for warmth and cooking. As they have no chimneys, the smoke is left to find its way out through the open doors or the thatched roof. The state of the atmosphere may be imagined.

As my colleague, Paul Dubochet, of the "Petit Parisien," and I had pushed on ahead of the headquarters staff, we had naturally lost the advantage of being billeted by Essad's gendarmes. When we finished the day's march we took our share of floor space, but the atmosphere in an hour generally proved too much for us.

We were therefore compelled to surrender, and, despite the freezing cold and the driving snow, we determined to put up a small tent I received at the time of the destruction of the military stores at Kraguyevatz Arsenal. It was only three feet high and open at the end; hence it was only an indifferent shelter against the blizzard. However, I ordered my man to build an immense fire near the open end, and we went to sleep.

Three hours later we awoke, to find the wretched tent ablaze. We struggled out with difficulty and managed to save most of our belongings, but the tent and the sleeping rugs were gone. There was nothing to do but remain at our camp fire until dawn.

VIII—A THOUSAND MEN AND HORSES OVER A ROCKY GORGE

On the next march a new experience awaited us. The road ran for miles through a rocky gorge, and nothing else. The bed of the river was the only means of travel. There is nothing so nerve-racking as to keep one's eyes constantly glued to the ground, when each step presents a new problem. Of course, every now and then one of the stones would turn under our feet, and this meant a plunge up to the knees in icy water.

So far as the eye could see there was nothing but this rocky bed, winding between towering basaltic cliffs. The task of transporting a thousand men and horses under such conditions was almost superhuman. If the Albanians had been openly hostile not one man would have come out alive.

The Albanian, like most peasants, is grasping and fond of money, but once you cross his threshold your person and property are sacred. I never had the slightest fear once I entered an Albanian house.

On the road everything is possible. The tribes live at war with one another and respect for human life is non-existent. It would have been as much as our lives were worth to travel an hour after darkness. But during the daylight an armed party inspires a certain respect.

The men physically are probably the handsomest in Europe. I have never seen anywhere such beautiful children as those of the Albanians. Not one in a hundred knows how to read or write or has even been more than twenty miles from home.

It was through such a country the Serbians had to transport soldiers, and that with the Germans and the Bulgarians in close pursuit.

The last stages of the march were probably the hardest, as fodder for the animals and food for the men was practically unprocurable. Money difficulties also increased daily, the Albanians refusing to accept Serbian script at any rate of exchange. They would, however, give food and lodgings for articles of clothing, shirts, underwear, socks and boots. On the last stage we had, therefore, to resort to the primitive system of barter, buying a night's lodging with a shirt and a meal with a pair of socks.

IX—WOLVES LIVING ON CARCASSES IN MOUNTAIN PASSES

In the mountains just before Puka I discovered the first trace of wolves. The carcasses of dead horses, which were now numbered by scores, showed signs of having been torn by them. A part of the French aviation corps, which was preceding us, got lost in the snow and darkness, and had to spend the night in the open without protection. A dozen were frostbitten, but no fatal casualties. After six days we finally reached the Drina again, a swiftly flowing stream.

Thence the march to Scutari may be summed up in the word mud—mud of the deepest and most tenacious kind, sometimes only reaching to the ankles, sometimes to the knees, but it was always there.

The twenty-five miles between the Drina ferry and Scutari represents physical effort of no mean order. It was the finish for scores of unfortunate pack horses. During the last two days they got practically no food. On these days we found dead horses every hundred yards. When at last, at 4 in the afternoon, we came in sight of the towers and minarets of Scutaria every one heaved a sigh of relief. The streets presented a wonderful sight, being thronged with Serbian soldiers, mixed with French aviators, men of the French and Serbian medical staff and scores of the Red Cross unit—British, French, Russian and Greek.

Scutari's normal population of 40,000 had been increased by 100,000 Serbian and other refugees. Food was running scarce, and there were practically no accommodations. The unfortunate diplomatic corps was scattered all over in such lodgings as could be found for it. The headquarters staff took possession of the Hotel De la Ville. I learned the Danube division, which had entered Albania by Montenegro, had performed the miracle of saving part of its field artillery.

The fate of Serbia was worse than that of Belgium, for to King Albert's subjects there always remained France, England and Holland as havens of refuge. For King Peter's people there was none. On the one hand, the inhospitable mountains of Montenegro offered a barrier which the starving people were powerless to cross. On the other was the desolation of the snow-capped peaks of Albania, with a population sullenly hostile to Serbia and everything Serbian.

But even if they had been willing to welcome them with open arms they could not have helped them, as the mountaineers of Albania live themselves all their lives on the ragged edge of starvation. The catastrophe, therefore, was beyond human aid, and Serbia had to drink the cup of bitterness to the dregs and witness the foundering of all that was left of her manhood and national wealth. It was the death agony of one of the bravest nations in Europe, of a people who had for five long years fought four victorious wars for its national existence, and at last succumbed to a combination of forces three times stronger than itself.