this fire, emerged from around both ends of one of these
islands and made for the Serbian shore. The two battalions of Third
Reserve Serbians, stationed there as an outpost, trained their
old De Bange field guns, of which they had two batteries, on the
oncoming swarms and began firing. But the Austrian fire became
heavier and heavier; a blast of steel pellets and shells swept
through the cornfields and the plum orchards, tearing through the
streets of the village and crumpling up the houses. The breastworks
of the small Serbian detachment were literally the center of a
continuous explosion of shells.

When a full tenth of their number lay dead or disabled, the Serbians
began retiring across the cornfields and up the slopes leading
to the heights behind Losnitza. There, on higher ground, which
offered more effective shelter, they made a determined stand and
continued their fire on the Austrian masses.

Having crossed the river, the Austrians threw up defensive breastworks
and dug elaborate trenches, thus fortifying their crossing. Next
they built a pontoon bridge, and then the main Austrian army poured
across; a whole army corps and two divisions of a second.

Meanwhile, on the same day, August 12, 1914, a similar event was
happening at Shabatz, on the Save, where that river takes a sharp
southward turn and then swings up again before joining the Danube
at Belgrade. Here the country is a level plain, really the southern
limit of the great plain which stretches up to the Danube, past
Belgrade and so into Hungary. Here, too, the Austrians screened
themselves behind an island in the river, then hurled their forces
across, driving the feeble detachment of Third Reserve Serbian troops
back across the plain up into the hills lying to the southeast
of Shabatz. Then the advance guard of the Austrian Fourth Army
occupied the town, strongly fortified it and built a pontoon bridge
across the river from their railroad terminus at Klenak.

Further passages of a similar nature were forced that day, August
12, 1914, at other points by smaller forces; one at Zvornik and
another at Liubovia. In addition the Austrians also threw bridges
across the river at Amajlia and Branjevo. Thus it will be seen
that the invasion covered a front of considerably over a hundred
miles and that six strong columns of the enemy had crossed, all of
which naturally converged on Valievo. For Valievo was the terminus
of a small, single track railroad which