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.
[Illustration: BROKEN BRIDGE AT FRONTIER BETWEEN MONTENEGRO AND ALBANIA Our route lay across the basaltic rocks]
[Illustration: SERBIAN SOLDIER (2nd RESERVE) DURING THE RETREAT]
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.