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He had been a patient in our hospital, and gangrene, following typhus, had so poisoned his legs that both were amputated. He had been discharged the day before, and had travelled up from Vrntze, some eight hours, in an open truck.
At one point we passed a train in which were other English people, who stared amazed at us and waved their hands as we disappeared. Dusk was down when we passed Vrntze, and we reached the gorges of Ovchar in the dark. We thundered through tunnels and out over hanging precipices, the river beneath us a faint band of greyish light in the blackness of the mountains.
Why had they not withdrawn to the hills and then built proper defences with barbed wire entanglements and labyrinths? for properly entrenched they might have defied the Austro-German forces for months. Some day, perhaps, these questions may have to be answered. One day a party came in. They had passed through Vrntze much later than we, and we heard that Dr.
"Quel pays," he said, bounding up. "Et les Bulgars, quoi?" "Good Lord," said Jan. "Let's go out and get some fresh air." The only people lacking to complete the scene were the Sirdar and Dr. Clemow. A doctor who had just arrived from Salonika asked us to look after four English orderlies who, new to the country, were travelling to the Red Cross mission at Vrntze.
They had new uniforms, yellow mackintoshes, white kit bags, and beautiful cooking apparatus, which took to pieces and served a thousand purposes. In the chilly morning we got out at Stalatch, just too late for the Vrntze train. Luckily the station café was open. The four Englishmen ordered beefsteak, but were given long lean tasteless sausages.
The Serbs stood round listening to the melodies that were so different to their own plaintive wailings, and presently asked us to translate. We don't know if the subtleties of "Didn't want to do it," or "The little grey home in the west," were very clear in the translations, as they seemed puzzled. Arrived at Vrntze, we found no carriages to meet us.
They were in a wretched condition: their clothes were torn, they said that they had no change of underclothes, and were swarming with vermin, nor could they be cleaned, for they worked even on Sundays, and had no time to wash their clothes. They begged us for soap, and asked us to send them a change of raiment from Vrntze.
In the evening went off to the Government motor school, where I found my old friend Ristich and Colonel Derrock; both these men are first-class Serbs jolly, keen and friendly. October 5th. Our car not being finished, Mr. Berry and Sister Hammond went back to Vrntze in a car lent by Colonel Derrock. I was to stay till all the repairs were completed on ours.
Some months earlier she had visited our hospitals in Vrntze and she had asked if one of our V.A.D.'s could be sent to her as housemaid. Seeing her in the station, Jo involuntarily ran over in her mind, was she "sober, honest and obliging?" The American doctors and we picnicked together. We ate bully beef and a huge water melon. The heat was awful.
Two trains came in, but neither was for Kralievo; one was Red Cross and the other for Krusevatz. A lot of boys, in uniform, clambered on board and shouting out, "Sbogom Vrntze," were borne off into the night. Our spirits fell lower and lower. We thought of the friends we were leaving behind us, and of what we had before us. The reaction had set in, intensified by the gloom and cold of the station.
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