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It would be tiresome, but what could one do?... As they sat upon the parapet of a broken bridge on the road between Elbassan and Ochrida Benham was moved to a dissertation upon the condition of Albania and the politics of the Balkan peninsula. "Here we are," he said, "not a week from London, and you see the sort of life that men live when the forces of civilization fail.
Day by day, thousands of men, ill-clad and ill-shod, or with bare and bleeding feet, so famished that they fed on the flesh of dead horses by the wayside, stumbled painfully and wretchedly along, over trails deep in snow, some going west toward Scutari, others attempting to reach Greece through Elbassan and Dibra.
A day or two later the Austrian and Bulgarian columns operating in central Albania made a junction and occupied Elbassan, thirty-eight miles southeast of Durazzo. The enemy was, in fact, closing in on Durazzo. On February 25, 1916, the Austro-Bulgarian forces had driven the Italians to the isthmus west of the Durs lakes and the Austrian artillery began to open fire on Durazzo itself.
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