The site of the next dispensary was Rudnik: this was chosen on July 23rd, and the work began on August 19th. On the former date, the surveying party included Colonels Guentchitch and Popovitch, Major Protitch and two other officers, our treasurer and Dr. Payne. The prospective Rudnik doctor (Muncaster) had not yet arrived. We breakfasted at 3.30 a.m., and immediately afterwards started on our drive of sixty kilometres to the beautiful mountain village of Rudnik, 2,000 feet above sea level. The day was brilliant, without haze, and the country through which we passed, was a kaleidoscope of colour effects, with purple plums and golden corn, and the rich green, shining kukurus. It is no wonder that Serbians love their country.

We halted at Gorni-Milanovatz, a kilometre off the track, because Colonel Guentchitch wanted to inspect a hospital in the town. So we ate a second breakfast at nine o'clock, outside a small hotel, on the street pavement, under acacia trees. The Prefect of the town sat with us, and rejoiced to know of our intention to help his people. He said the district was destitute of doctors. With the exception of the doctor in the Serbian hospital in the town, who could not leave his work to visit the country people, there was no medical aid available for the thousands of peasants in the scattered villages around. He went with us to Rudnik. The town Commandant also breakfasted with us, and, while Colonel Guentchitch was visiting his hospital, he told us terrible tales of the events which had taken place in Milanovatz during the preceding winter. In December the town was an inferno, filled with wounded, and with victims of typhus. The Austrians came within five kilometres, and the Commandant gained personal experience of their behaviour towards the women and children. His stories as an eye-witness corroborated the worst that has been told of Austrian atrocities in Serbia. One hundred and twenty women and children were tied together and mown down by machine-guns. Again, a crowd of women and children were driven into a building which was then set on fire; our Commandant saw their charred corpses the next morning. His own family was at that time at Kragujevatz, and, thinking that the onrush of the Austrians was inevitable, he was on the point of starting for home, to shoot his wife and children, to save them from a worse fate. But the unexpected happened; ammunition arrived in the nick of time, and Milanovatz, Kragujevatz and Serbia were saved, alas! only temporarily. Our Commandant was thus spared, by a narrow margin, from killing his family at the moment when it was no longer necessary.

From Milanovatz to Rudnik, the mountain views were gorgeous. This country must not, shall not, fall into the hands of the enemy, was my constant prayer. The village only contained the inn and half a dozen cottages, the latter, as usual, models of picturesqueness. One especially was a great joy: one-storied, with whitewashed walls and red tiles. It contained two rooms, hung with hand-made tapestries, and carpeted with rugs from Pirot, near the Bulgarian frontier. I hoped when I saw the rugs that I might one day go to Pirot and see the rug-making industry. I little thought how soon I should be there; but not to see the rug-making.

We chose for our dispensary site, the school's enclosure, from which there were glorious views towards Valievo, and the south and south-west. There was not enough level ground for the whole encampment, the dispensary and kitchen were therefore housed within the school building, and the staff tents, and mess tents faced a succession of mountains and valleys, which stretched, as it seemed, to the world's end.

We lunched in an open shed attached to the small inn, sat awhile during the heat of the day under the shade of apple trees, and made the return journey via Milanovatz and Chachak. At the latter town Colonel Guentchitch inspected another hospital, so we had supper whilst we waited for him, and we fidgeted at not being able to start home before 8.30, knowing the danger of motoring in the dark along those roads.

One of the officers who drove home in the car behind me, had optimistically taken with him from Rudnik, a large jar of honey, which he had, still more optimistically, placed beside him on the seat. Presently he wanted to get up to go out and help to push the car up a steep hill, but he was held in his seat by an invisible power. I heard him say something rather loudly, and I don't think he was praising the scenery; the jolting in the deep ruts had smashed the jar, and the honey had surreptitiously spread itself under the Major's beautiful blue uniform trousers. He stood for the rest of the journey. This car, which was not ours, required help up every hill, and we only reached camp at two next morning.

At last the doctors and nurses, cooks and chauffeurs for dispensaries, arrived from London on Sunday, August 15th, at a moment when the political horizon was again clouded in Serbia. It had always been understood that if active hostilities should be renewed, the dispensary units must be called in. Military considerations were of primary importance, and all available help would be wanted for the wounded. Also it would not be desirable to leave small units isolated in country districts. We had waited three months for the arrival of personnel and stores wherewith to carry out the dispensary scheme. Had these arrived too late?

As a measure of precaution our German-speaking Austrian prisoners—with all the others in the town—were removed on August 17th, much to their and to our regret, to work, it was said, on the tunnel of the railway to Rumania, where doubtless supervision, in case of Austrian success, would be easier. This looked suspicious.

Rudnik was difficult of access, and risk to the little unit must be avoided. We delayed our expedition for a day or two, and on August 17th, I had another talk with Colonel Harrison, and with Colonel Guentchitch, and they considered that next day we might carry out our programme and start work at Rudnik. But torrential rain made the roads impassable. We therefore again postponed, but early on the morning of the 19th, our bales of tents, and stores, and the unit members, were packed in motor lorries and in two cars lent by the military authorities, and we set out to establish the fourth dispensary.

All through the spring and summer the hedges had been gay with flowers in wedding colours, but now they were covered with the black-seeded booryan plant (something like dwarf elder when in flower). Here and there the yellow rag-wort alternated with the booryan, in a passing scheme of black and yellow, or the delicate blue chicory flower made a brave show on the roadside; but the main impression now was blackness: the hedges were already in mourning for the sights they soon would witness.

We lunched under some trees, three-quarters of an hour from Rudnik, and arrived at noon. The long grass in the school enclosure had been cut as promised—Serbian officials never fail to carry out their promises—and by 6 p.m. the camp was established. The Prefect welcomed us on arrival, and placed everything we could want at our disposal.

This unit was especially fortunate in its surroundings, their tent doors opened to a georama of mountains and valleys which seemed to stretch to Infinity and to include all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Mountains did not hide mountains, for we were on the heights, 2,000 feet above sea-level. Ruins of an old fort on the kopje of Ostavitza, a few kilometres distant, a reminiscence of Turkish history, gave the only touch of human reality. The sunset that evening ignored its usual levantine limitations, and ran riot in flaming colours of red, and gold, and nameless greens, all over the heavens: a chord of Nature in the major key; and in antiphon, the mountains gave response, in colours reflected from heaven and earth and all that in them is.

Later, when work for the day was finished, and I lay on my camp bed—the tent doors open—gazing into the black curtain of night, trying to see things that were invisible, the moon came sailing through the sky, tacking in and out of banks of storm clouds. Her wireless was as usual in minor mode. "Joy and colour are ephemeral," was her code message. "Beauty is death, and death is shade and sorrow. The shade of a long night draws near. The dews of death are in the air."

I was going to dispute with her, but she abruptly hid behind a thunder-cloud. An owl in a beech tree hooted; a gust of wind sent a shiver through the plum trees, and I remembered the stirring in the mulberry trees—the warning to David of the coming enemy; a rumbling, like a cannonade, echoed through the mountains; a clap like the bursting of a thousand bombs boomed overhead—Thor's guns, more merciful than man's—then immediately came a fall of rain, fierce, precipitous, as though the dams of heaven had burst; lightning, like a fiery sword, striking an unseen enemy; then a hush, as sudden as the onslaught, and a quiet night.

The successful routine of this dispensary was, under Dr. Muncaster, at once established. From far-off villages and isolated mountain hamlets, the peasants came bringing their sick in ox-wagons, or walking incredible distances. Evidently no simpler or more efficacious system of relief could have been devised.