ng outside the hospital in a
line--ten little springless carts in charge of a stupid-looking corporal
who had misunderstood his orders. He moreover refused to move, saying he
"had his orders."

The indefatigable Churchin was found, and sent him off with a flea in
his ear. When he arrived at the camp we found a woman and household
luggage in one of the carts. He said it was his wife, and objected to
our putting anything into that cart. We told him he would have to lump
it, and he got sulky; as each extra package was put on a cart he said
that it would break to pieces. Certainly the tents were very heavy, but
we had been ordered to take them. When the carts were loaded up to the
last degree they moved slowly through the mud and drew up at the
hospital. We were sadly overladen. Our party consisted of Mawson, West,
Cutting, Rogerson, Willett, Blease, Angelo, Whatmough, Elmer, Owen, and
Hilder--the last four being our friends of the railway journey from
Nish. We were thirteen. Temporarily with us also were the two little
Austro-Serbian boys. The other four carriages were occupied by a doctor
and three members of the Stobart unit, two "Scottish Women," their
orderly and a Russian medical student who had been a political prisoner.

Leaving the town was a slow business, as it was being evacuated. Our
little procession proceeded very slowly. Most of us walked. Jo drove
with two of the Stobarts, watching from a seat of vantage the packed
masses of people who wormed their way in and out between the ox carts.
The road was blocked by some gigantic baking ovens on wheels. Hundreds
of boys, big seventeen-year-old boys with guns, and little limping
fellows from thirteen to sixteen, wearing bright rugs rolled over their
shoulders, were dragging along in single file. Their faces were white,
and their noses red, sergeants were beating the backward ones along with
a ramrod. One of them said--

"I have eaten nothing for three days--give me bread." We had no bread,
but we discovered some Petit-Beurre biscuits, and left him turning them
over and over.

The whole town buzzed: motor cars, surrounded by curses, insinuated
their way through the crammed streets; whips were cracking, men were
quarrelling but all had their faces turned towards the road to Rashka,
which we realized would be as full as at straphanging time in the Tube.
The boys passed us, then we passed them. They passed us again. Hundreds
of Austrian prisoners were being hurried