The news grew more and more serious. The Bulgars had taken Vranya, the Germans were at Valievo, and also at Michaelovatz, close behind us. The Serbs had been badly beaten in the morning. An unending stream of refugees passed along the road, and whole families of women and children, babies in arms, infants that could just toddle, boys and young girls, all sheltered at night near us in the wood, constructing as best they could, rough arbours of branches, for protection from rain and wind. We had no time for practical sympathy with these forlorn people, who would, in all probability, never see their homes or their menfolk again. All this was another horrible side-light on the "glories" of war.

The situation was growing hourly worse. Where were the French and English troops? We received marching orders, and were off again by 6 a.m. (October 20th) for Gliebovatz, two miles to the north of Palanka. It was again difficult, owing to mud, and rain, and wind, and no shelter, to find suitable ground for tents, oxen, and the men's bivouacs. Major A., who had, from the first been pessimistic as to the military situation, was now much depressed. He told us that the Bulgars were already near to Nish; that they had cut the line; that the Serbian Government had left Nish; and that the Germans were only three kilometres behind us. The French doctors, however, were always delightfully optimistic, and they and we made a point of trying to laugh the Major out of his forebodings.

On the 20th we received no wounded—again a bad sign, though there was not much firing. We expected marching orders every minute, and we did not put up all the tents. Most of the staff slept in the cars.

On Thursday, October 21st, at 9 a.m., we received the order to go to Palanka, and to establish our dressing-station in the Casino, opposite to the Hotel Serbia, in which Major A.'s column was placed. Rooms for the staff were found in the Hotel Central. I slept in the car, as usual. The cars were drawn up in the yard of a private house. There was a small veranda and a kitchen belonging to the house, and here we cooked and ate our food.

Palanka, when we entered it, was already evacuated in readiness for the Germans. The houses were deserted, the shops shuttered, the mud churned by thousands of oxen, horses, and wagons, into gelatinous paste, was a foot deep. Heavy rain was falling. In the main street a continuous stream of fugitives—old men, women and children—were splashing through the mud, carrying their bundles of household treasures on their backs, and driving hurriedly before them their precious pigs, and goats and little flocks of sheep.

The news from the front, which was, alas! behind us, continued to be bad. Work, therefore, for doctors and nurses was slack; there is never time, in a retreat, to collect all the wounded. At this point we were troubled to know how to carry the benzine for the cars. It was too heavy for the wagons, and we optimistically decided to send some of it by train to Lapovo, to await us there. I stopped a refugee woman with her cart and commandeered her, against payment, to take some barrels to the station. The barrels left for Lapovo, but we never saw them again, because Lapovo was in the enemy's hands before we reached it.

Our P.M.O. seemed this day more than usually sad, chiefly on account of the people. He calculated that at least half a million unoffending peasants must die of starvation. This has proved to be an underestimate. But as we should probably, he said, be remaining that day in Palanka, he asked if I would like to go and exchange greetings with our commander. The latter was as delightful, and cheery as usual, and it was easy to understand one, at least, of the reasons why he made a good commander. I was much interested in all he told me about the general position; some day, when the situation was more favourable, I was, he said, to go with him and watch a battle at close quarters.

Shortly after I had left Headquarters the mounted orderly came up with the white envelope: marching orders, and we moved on immediately. This was inopportune, as Dr. Coxon was in need of boots, and, at the moment, she and I were on the point of breaking into a locked and shuttered boot shop. We were obliged to go without the boots; the doctor's crimeless record was left unsullied, but her feet were left unshod, and this at the time seemed more important.

We arrived at dusk, after much trouble with the cars owing to the mud, and took up quarters near some old stone quarries. The guns were growing noisy again, and it was curiously interesting to watch the fire from shell and shrapnel on the hills close behind Palanka. Wounded came again during the night, and we evacuated fifty in our cars and in wagons supplied by the ambulance column, to Ratcha. The wounds were terrible, and some men were already dead when they arrived. The transport of the wounded was always an anxiety, lest the job should not be completed, and the motors should not have returned, before the next order to move should come, as that would complicate the question of staff transport.

I went to bed at one a.m. and was up again at four. I saw that Major A. was on the move, and I knew that our order must come soon. Just then a captain of infantry arrived, and said that we ought to go at once; he had been given orders to dig trenches on the place of our encampment. I told him that he could dig his trenches, but we could not go until the order came. We made ready for departure, and packed everything except the surgical dressings, and then more wounded came, so they were tended. One man died at dawn, and we buried him. At 6 o'clock the order came to go towards Ratcha, to a place only distant 1½ hours. We encamped in a field by the roadside, and immediately wounded arrived.

The outstanding feature of this camp was the behaviour of the dispenser. I noticed during the morning that he was haranguing in a loud voice, and that all the men were gathered in a circle listening to him and laughing. I went to see what was happening, and I found that he was drunk. When he saw me, he stopped talking and ran away and jumped on an unsaddled horse, saying that he was going to ride to Headquarters. The soldiers and I followed him, and the former held the horse, and I told him to dismount immediately. He refused, and promptly pulled a loaded revolver from his pocket. At that moment a friend, with whom he had been drinking, an under-officer from another column encamped close to us, came up and persuaded him to dismount. He took him off to his camp, and said that he would keep him until he had recovered. I took the revolver, and found that it was loaded with five cartridges, and I sent it with a messenger to the P.M.O. In the evening, when I was in the car preparing for a few hours' sleep, the dispenser suddenly arrived and demanded his revolver, and when I told him that it was in the possession of the P.M.O., he was furious and vowed vengeance. He would smash the cars and destroy everything we had, etc., but I got rid of him. The sergeant and the soldiers were very angry, and volunteered to put extra guards round my car, and no more was heard of him. When a fitting opportunity came he was removed. That was the only case of drunkenness I saw from start to finish of that three months' retreat, and he, the dispenser, was not a Serbian proper: he was an Austrian Serb, and, like most of these semi-Austrians, he was hyper-nervous of falling into Austrian hands.

The next morning (October 24th) at 5.45, we again retreated, this time to a field beyond Ratcha. The roaring of the guns was now terrific, and the scenes along the roads, which were crowded with refugees, who were all mixed up with the retreating convoys of the army, were heartrending. But this day, for the first time since we left Pirot, the sun shone, and we were at least physically warm for a few hours.

In the afternoon we witnessed a strange sight. A German aeroplane was flying over our heads, when suddenly from behind some clouds, a French biplane appeared, and the two flew towards each other. And then, as though to hide from us on earth the prostitution of science to murderous ends, both birds of prey dived into a huge white cumulus cloud and disappeared; and immediately, though both biplanes remained invisible, the sound reached us of pit-pit-pit-pit from their spiteful quick-firing guns, as the aviators played hide and seek amongst the clouds. Strange to think that even the heavens are now invaded by the murderous machines of man. We watched for a long time, but we never saw anything emerge from the thick cloud.

That day we heard a rumour that the Germans had been driven out of Ratcha by two regiments who had rushed on them with bayonets, in disregard of the general order to retreat. I tried to believe it was true. On the evening of that day, when again marching orders arrived, I wondered, as I opened the white envelope, whether, on the strength of the last rumour of a German repulse, we might not at last be going to have the joy of an advance. No one who has not experienced the depressing effect of retreating, day after day, in the home country of the retreating army, can picture the eagerness with which the slightest hope of a change of fortune will be hailed. But, alas! a glance at the order soon dissipated hope.

The direction of the place detailed for the next halt was still southerly. It was nine p.m. when the order came. Immediately everything, tents, surgical boxes, kitchen materials, etc., were packed in readiness for departure, when suddenly, as we were about to start, a batch of fifty badly wounded soldiers arrived in ox-wagons, from the battle-field, to be dressed. We could hear that the Germans were now close behind us; their big guns were banging ominously, as the wagons discharged their burdens on the ground, and disappeared. At once I gave the order for the necessary surgical boxes to be unpacked. The night was cold, and dark, and by the light of hurricane lamps, the doctors and the nurses set to work and cut away the torn and bloodstained garments and dressed the wounds of the gory, groaning, battered objects, who were placed upon the ground, round impromptu bonfires, which we made of hay, and straw, and wood, to give warmth. One man was already dead; I ordered a grave to be dug, saw that it was the regulation depth—three feet—and then sent to another column for a priest. For the Serbian soldier is like many another of us, he is not particular about saying his prayers during his lifetime, but he is very particular that prayers should be said over his dead body. Then I stood beside the priest, a few yards behind the scrimmage round the bonfires, whilst he, in his gay embroidered robe, chanted, all out of tune, in the old Slavonic language, which no one now understands, the words of the Greek Church burial service. He held the prayer book in one hand, and read by the light of a small piece of tallow candle held in the other. The groans of the wounded, and the thunder of the guns, coming ever nearer and nearer, made an effective accompaniment. The only incongruity was the frequent repetition in the priest's prayers, of the word "Allelujah!" Why "Allelujah!"? I asked myself in the intervals of my "Amen" responses, as the scene round those bonfires burnt itself upon my mind.

The Germans were coming on fast behind us. They had taken Palanka in the afternoon, and there was no doubt that as we had received the order to move, a couple of hours ago, we ought not now to be here; but we still had our fifty wounded to evacuate. We had been told in the morning that we were to send all the wounded to a hospital along the road leading to Kragujevatz, in a south-westerly direction. It was evidently, then, intended that the retreat should follow that route. But now the orders were to move the column to a place which was, as the map disclosed, along the road leading to Krushievatz, in a southerly direction. I knew that the Germans had, since the morning's order, taken Palanka, close behind us, and that if I now obeyed the morning's order, and sent the wounded and the chauffeurs along the Kragujevatz road, they would almost certainly be cut off by the enemy. I also knew that to disobey a military command is to incur grave responsibility; but I incurred it, in obedience to common sense; and as there was no time for hesitation, I decided at once that the wounded must come along the Krushievatz road with us. I was sure that there would be a hospital, sooner or later, along that road.

But how were we to move the patients? Three of our motors had gone with wounded, earlier in the afternoon, along the Kragujevatz road, and had not yet returned. That left us with only three motors for the staff and for the wounded. The ox-wagons which had brought the patients from the field had disappeared, and, owing to the nearness of the enemy, no other wagons would be available unless Major A. could spare some. He was stationed a quarter of a mile away, across some marshy fields. I must ask him; a messenger would be useless; I must go myself. I tumbled into half a dozen ditches and a bog or two, in the dark, and found him. But he was in the same straits as we were, with many wounded and no transport; he could give no help. I ran back to our column. There was only one thing to be done, if the whole hospital was not to be taken by the enemy. The staff, who usually travelled in the motor ambulances, must walk, until the three motors from the Kragujevatz road caught us up, the worst wounded must go in the motors, those who could crawl, must crawl, and as for the others—well! the usual miracle made everything quite simple, for at that moment empty artillery wagons were passing, and they gladly took the residue of the wounded; and two soldiers were left to tell the three cars to follow on.

The road was abominable, with mud and holes, and narrow and broken bridges, and in the dark, dangerous. We were continually, all through the night, obliged to lift the wounded out of the ambulances, and carry them over the dangers, and hold our breath whilst the motors—those wonderful Ford cars, wonderfully handled—performed acrobatic feats inconceivable to orthodox chauffeurs at home. The three other motors caught us up after we had been trekking for two or three hours, and the staff were again able to ride. This was, fortunately, just before we came to a bridge which was the scene of six motor miracles. I was riding, as always, in front of the column, and when I was half-way across the bridge, I discovered, just in time, that the planks on either side, a few yards in front of me, had been broken off, presumably by the wheels of the heavy gun-wagons which had preceded us. There was no parapet, and the bridge was so narrow, that it seemed doubtful whether there was room for a car, even if it could steer straight enough, to avoid the precipice on either side. If the wheels skidded in the mud, the car must overturn; and just beyond the bridge there was a mud-hole three or four feet deep; and there was no other road. The wagons, being warned, passed safely, though some stuck in the mud-hole and had to be dug out. But the men then cut branches of trees and found some kukurus stalks. We stopped the mud-holes with the trees, and laid the kukurus on the skiddy mud on the bridge, and the road was now mended for the motors. The wounded were lifted out and carried on stretchers over the bridge; the first chauffeur had a final good look at the place, then mounted the car and made a dash. Well done indeed! We breathed again—he was safely past the precipice, and only stuck in the hole beyond. That was nothing, for the advantage of a Ford is that you can lift it out of mud-holes. It seemed impossible, however, that the other five chauffeurs should all be equally skilful and equally lucky. And what about the nerve of the woman chauffeur? It was as good as the men's, and that is saying much. And we left that danger safely behind.

There were plenty of others ahead of us, and continually, all through the night, the cars had to be pushed and lifted out of mud-holes. Sometimes, as a variety, a wagon would overturn and block the road; but everything developed the wholesome habit of righting itself, and we reached Gradatz at 9.15 next morning. I was growing accustomed to small allowances of sleep, and I never felt physical fatigue; but on this occasion, although I was not tired, I grew sleepy about four in the morning, when the road became less dramatic, and I was surprised to find how uncomfortable it was trying to keep awake on horseback. I fell asleep for a second or two, then felt myself swaying in the saddle, pulled myself together and gave my mind some active thoughts, only to fall asleep again and go through the same performance. But by the time we arrived I was thoroughly awake.