"On the 11th we were sent north under an Austrian guard with fixed
bayonets. Great care was taken that we should not communicate with
anyone _en route_. At Belgrade, however, we were put into a
waiting-room for the night, and after we had crept into our
sleeping-bags we were suddenly roused to speak to a Serbian woman.
The kindly Austrian officer in charge of us said she was the wife
of a Serbian officer in Krushevatz, and that if we would use only
German we might speak to her. She wanted news of her husband. We
were able to reassure her. He was getting better--he was in the
Gymnasium. 'Vrylo dobra' ('Very well'), she said, holding both our
hands. 'Vrylo, vrylo dobra,' we said, looking apprehensively at the
officer. But he only laughed. Probably his Serbian, too, was equal
to that. That was the last Serbian we spoke to in Serbia, and we
left her a little happier. And thus we came to Vienna, where the
American Embassy took us over.... When we reached Zurich and found
everything much the same as when we disappeared into the silence,
our hearts were sick for the people we had left behind us, still
waiting and trusting."
Referring to this year of work done for Serbia, Mr. Seton-Watson wrote
of Dr. Inglis:
"History will record the name of Elsie Inglis, like that of Lady Paget,
as pre-eminent among that band of women who have redeemed for all time
the honour of Britain in the Balkans."
We close this chapter on her work in Serbia with tributes to her memory
from two of her Serbian friends, Miss Christitch, a well-known
journalist, and Lieutenant-Colonel D. C. Popovitch, Professor at the
Military Academy in Belgrade.
"Through Dr. Inglis Serbia has come to know Scotland, for I must confess
that formerly it was not recognized by our people as a distinctive part
of the British Isles. Her name, as that of the Serbian mother from
Scotland (Srpska majka iz 'Skotske'), has become legendary throughout
the land, and it is not excluded that at a future date popular opinion
will claim her as of Serbian descent, although born on foreign soil.
"What appealed to all those with whom Elsie Inglis came in contact in
Serbia was her extraordinary sympathy and understanding for the people
whose language she could not speak and whose ways and customs must
certainly have seemed strange to her. Yet there is no record of
misunderstanding between any Serb and Dr. Inglis. Everyone loved her,
from the tired peasant women who tramped miles to ask the 'Scottish
Doctoress' for advice about their babies to the wounded soldiers whose
pain she had alleviated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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