With the invasion came the question of evacuation. At one time it was possible the whole of the British unit might escape _via_ Montenegro. Sir Ralph Paget, realising that the equipment could not be saved, allowed any of the hospital unit who wished to remain with their wounded. Two parties went with the retreating Serbs, and their story and the extraordinary hardships they endured has been told elsewhere.
Those left at Krushieevatz were in Dr. Inglis’ opinion the fortunate units. For three months they tended the Serbian wounded under foreign occupation. The unit with Dr. Inglis kept to their work, and when necessary confronted the Austro-German officers with all the audacity of their leader and the Scottish thistle combined.
Their hospital accommodation was designed for 400 beds. When we went up there were 900 patients. During the greatest part of the pressure the number rose to 1200. Patients were placed in the corridors--at first one man to one bed, but later two beds together, and three men in them. Then there were no more bedsteads, and mattresses were placed on the floor. We filled up the outhouses. The magazine in full blast was a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten.
Upstairs the patients occupied the shelving. There were three tiers, the slightly wounded men in the highest tier. The magazine was under Dr. Holloway, and Dr. Inglis says the time to see the place at its best or its worst was in the gloaming, when two or three feeble oil lamps illuminated the gloom, and the tin bowls clattered and rattled as the evening ration of beans was given out, and the men swarmed up and down the poles of their shelves chattering as Serbs will chatter. The Sisters called the place ‘the Zoo.’
The dread of the renewal of the typhus scourge, amid such conditions of overcrowding, underfeeding, fatigue and depression, was great. Dr. Inglis details the appalling tasks the unit undertook in sanitation. There was no expert amongst them:--
‘When we arrived, the hospital compound was a truly terrible place--the sights and smells beyond description. We dug the rubbish into the ground, emptied the overflowing cesspool, built incinerators, and cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned. That is an Englishman’s job all over the world. Our three untrained English girl orderlies took to it like ducks to water. It was not the pleasantest or easiest work in the world; but they did it, and did it magnificently.