The cold that first night at Petch was intense, and in the morning we couldn't put on our boots till we had unfrozen them at the fires. In the morning (Tuesday, November 30th) I went into the old Turkish town, picturesque with mosques and narrow streets, to get orders, on the telephone, from the P.M.O. I was told to do whatever was done by the Fourth Field Hospital. They were out on the frozen swamp, so I sent an orderly and told him to report their movements. In the meantime, as my hands when I was riding were generally frozen, I tried to buy some warm gloves, for though shops were all shuttered, and their owners had for the most part gone, it was possible here and there still to buy a few odds and ends, if you knew where to go. But there were no gloves to be had, so I bought a pair of short white woollen socks to wear as gloves. A clumsy, but on the whole a useful contrivance.
On Wednesday, December 1st, we had received no order to move. I went into the town to see the Kragujevatz party start on their long mountain walk, and I took possession of a couple of rooms vacated by them, for kitchen and for dining and sleeping-room. The only available site for the column was in an old Turkish graveyard, close to the house. This house, which was near the headquarters of the Montenegrin police, belonged to a Montenegrin man, who was not at home when we arrived. I wanted to take down his fence at the back of the house, as it enclosed a grass space convenient for the cars, and I asked the police if I might do this. They said perhaps I had better wait till the owner returned in the afternoon. About three o'clock, a tall, dark, heavily-built man, looking like the villain in penny novelettes, appeared; he had been in America, and spoke a very little and very bad English. Serbians in America pick up marvellously little English. We met many who, though they had been years in the United States, could not make themselves intelligible in our tongue. Our friend said he was sorry to be late, but that he had only this minute come out of gaol. "Ah, yes," I said, as though that was the place from which one naturally expected one's friends to be arriving, "and what business took you there?" "Oh!" carelessly, "I just killed a nozzer fellow here," and he pointed to his own doorstep. It seemed that his wife and the "nozzer" fellow had been on too familiar terms, and our Montenegrin giant had taken the law into his own hands, and had promptly rid himself of the enemy. He had not yet been tried, though he had been in prison for ten months and three days. But now, as Petch was being evacuated, all prisoners were set free, to escape as best they could. He gave us permission to destroy his fence. As the moral fence around his home had already been destroyed, the wooden fence must have seemed of small importance; besides, his house would soon be in the hands of the Germans, and nothing could have seemed of much consequence now except his freedom. He was lame, he had no money, and his horse was too small to carry him, so he asked if we would let him go with us over the mountains to the coast, and if we would let him ride our biggest horse in exchange for his pony. He must, otherwise, he said, be captured by the enemy. We couldn't let him be taken prisoner again, and as he said he knew all the Montenegrin roads and might be useful, we let him come with us. He came, but he didn't know the tracks, and if ever I asked his judgment as to direction, he was invariably wrong. But he was kindly and harmless, and we took him as far as Podgoritza.