Then came an exciting moment; were we to go towards Prizrend or Montenegro? I have never opened an envelope with more acute anxiety, for the fate of the Serbian Army, and of the Serbian people, would be disclosed. And if the fate of my own army and my own people had been contained in that small envelope, I could not have felt more deeply concerned.
The order said: "Take your column at once to Petch (near the Montenegrin frontier) _via_ Valorno Han, Kievo, Lapushnik, and Dresnik, and _don't halt till you get to Dresnik_." That was, I knew, the temporary death sentence of the Serbian nation. It meant that our backs, the backs of the Serbian Army, would now be turned to hope, Allies, and victory, and we must face--better not think of what we might have to face. Thoughts and energies must be concentrated in saving all we could of the Serbian Army, for future effort. This thought must be our beacon to lead us on with firm step and determined heart.
We were ready to start when the messenger returned at 7 a.m. (Monday, November 22nd), but the difficulty of getting into the line was great, because convoys and fugitives were now converging from all directions, on this one road of escape.
The cars went on first; they were to wait for us after half an hour's run; but when we came to the first cross road, we discovered that they had taken the wrong turn, so I had to send messengers flying after them, and we waited for them, with the column, by the side of the road, on an open plain. The cars returned, but we could not get back on to the road or regain our position in the line. We were by then surrounded by a solid block of convoys, on the plain beside the road. A glove could not have been dropped clear, amongst that chaos of wagons, horses, oxen, soldiers and refugees.
When the cars arrived I sent for the sergeant; he couldn't be found, so I searched, and found him playing cards with the sergeants of other columns. He said it was hopeless to expect to move to-day; some of the columns had been already waiting here for two days; we had better make up our minds to spend the night here. It was true that the columns around us had outspanned their oxen, and the men were sitting complacently round their ubiquitous fires, though the Bulgarian guns were dinning louder and louder every minute in their ears. It certainly looked hopeless to expect that jumble of wagons, animals and men, ever to disentangle themselves and break away into the serried line of convoys, artillery, transport, and refugees, which were all streaming without a break, along the road beside them. A more complete nightmare it would be difficult to picture. But I told the sergeant that we must get on at once; our oxen must not be outspanned; I didn't care what other columns did; if they chose to be taken by the Bulgars, that was their affair. He said it was impossible to get on to the road; we couldn't move either forward or backward, and between us and the road, and parallel with the road, was a broad deep ditch. There was, he said, nothing to be done but to wait patiently--the fatal doctrine of Kismet, by which he had been all his life impregnated. He was never resourceful, and now despair had paralysed him. But I had no intention of calmly letting the column be captured by the Bulgars, so I examined the ditch near to us, sent for some of the soldiers, told them to bring spades, and then ordered them to level the ditch. This was soon done. I then warned the column to be ready to move at a moment's notice, and, with Vooitch, I stood on the road watching an opportunity to break in. We stopped an officer who was commanding a passing column and asked him to insist on our having a place after his column; as we were a hospital we had, by right, precedence over many others. He responded by immediately stopping the columns behind him, and he gave us a place just behind the carriage in which was riding the General of the Kossovo Division. I heard afterwards that some thousands of the people whom we left behind on the plain, when we crossed that ditch, were captured by the Bulgars.