etermined efforts to pierce the
Serbian line. It was in one of these counterattacks, near the central
height, where the railroad entered a tunnel, that the resistance of the
Austrians was broken. After the Serbian riflemen, with their machine
guns, had thrown back the enemy, the Serbian artillery caught the
retiring masses of blue and gray clad soldiers of the Dual Empire.

This produced a panic in the densely packed retreating column, whereupon
the Serbian infantrymen leaped out of their trenches and dashed forward
in pursuit, forming two pursuing columns, one on either flank of the
fleeing Austrians, like wolves worrying a wounded buffalo. And as these
streams of Serbians ran uphill more rapidly than the blue-gray flood
moved, the Austrian rear guards, composed of heavy forces, turned to
check the pursuit.

On the morning of December 14, 1914, the Serbians approached the
southern defenses of Belgrade, where the Austrians must make their last
stand; along a line from Ekmekluk to Banovobrodo. Here General Potiorek
had constructed a system of earthworks, consisting of deep trenches with
shrapnel cover and well-concealed gun positions, with numerous heavy
howitzers and fieldpieces. Evidently he hoped to withstand an indefinite
siege on this fragment of Serbian territory, holding Belgrade as a
bridgehead for another advance toward the main Morava Valley, when the
next effort to invade Serbia should be made. He would, at the same time,
preserve at least a semblance of his prestige from all the calamities
that had befallen his armies, enabling him to represent the campaign as
a reconnaissance in force, similar to Hindenburg's first advance against
Warsaw.

But his troops had been so terribly punished that they could not
garrison the siege defenses. The Serbians, now drunk with their many
victories, and absolutely reckless of death, as they drove on toward
their capital, with their old king, grandson of Black George, moving
through their foremost ranks, charged up into the ring of hills.

The last fight, on December 14, 1914, which definitely broke the back of
the last effort of the Austrians to maintain a footing on Serbian soil,
took place on the central height, Torlak. Two battalions of Magyars were
defending this point. And just as the sun was setting over in the
Matchva swamps in a glow of fiery clouds, the foremost Serbians leaped
up to the attack.

Long before the fight was over darkness set in. The Serbians, driv