The situation was growing hourly worse. Where were the French and English troops? We received marching orders, and were off again by 6 a.m. (October 20th) for Gliebovatz, two miles to the north of Palanka. It was again difficult, owing to mud, and rain, and wind, and no shelter, to find suitable ground for tents, oxen, and the men's bivouacs. Major A., who had, from the first been pessimistic as to the military situation, was now much depressed. He told us that the Bulgars were already near to Nish; that they had cut the line; that the Serbian Government had left Nish; and that the Germans were only three kilometres behind us. The French doctors, however, were always delightfully optimistic, and they and we made a point of trying to laugh the Major out of his forebodings. On the 20th we received no wounded--again a bad sign, though there was not much firing. We expected marching orders every minute, and we did not put up all the tents. Most of the staff slept in the cars. On Thursday, October 21st, at 9 a.m., we received the order to go to Palanka, and to establish our dressing-station in the Casino, opposite to the Hotel Serbia, in which Major A.'s column was placed. Rooms for the staff were found in the Hotel Central. I slept in the car, as usual. The cars were drawn up in the yard of a private house. There was a small veranda and a kitchen belonging to the house, and here we cooked and ate our food. Palanka, when we entered it, was already evacuated in readiness for the Germans. The houses were deserted, the shops shuttered, the mud churned by thousands of oxen, horses, and wagons, into gelatinous paste, was a foot deep. Heavy rain was falling. In the main street a continuous stream of fugitives--old men, women and children--were splashing through the mud, carrying their bundles of household treasures on their backs, and driving hurriedly before them their precious pigs, and goats and little flocks of sheep. The news from the front, which was, alas! behind us, continued to be bad. Work, therefore, for doctors and nurses was slack; there is never time, in a retreat, to collect all the wounded. At this point we were troubled to know how to carry the benzine for the cars. It was too heavy for the wagons, and we optimistically decided to send some of it by train to Lapovo, to await us there. I stopped a refugee woman with her cart and commandeered her, against payment, to take some barrels to the station. The barrels left for Lapovo, but we never saw them again, because Lapovo was in the enemy's hands before we reached it. [Illustration: BROKEN BRIDGE AT FRONTIER BETWEEN MONTENEGRO AND ALBANIA Our route lay across the basaltic rocks] [Illustration: SERBIAN SOLDIER (2nd RESERVE) DURING THE RETREAT]