The Flaming Sword in Serbia and ElsewhereStobart, M. A. (Mabel Annie)
History
The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere
Stobart, M. A. (Mabel Annie)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
On Wednesday, December 1st, we had received no order to move. I
went into the town to see the Kragujevatz party start on their long
mountain walk, and I took possession of a couple of rooms vacated by
them, for kitchen and for dining and sleeping-room. The only available
site for the column was in an old Turkish graveyard, close to the
house. This house, which was near the headquarters of the Montenegrin
police, belonged to a Montenegrin man, who was not at home when we
arrived. I wanted to take down his fence at the back of the house, as
it enclosed a grass space convenient for the cars, and I asked the
police if I might do this. They said perhaps I had better wait till
the owner returned in the afternoon. About three o'clock, a tall,
dark, heavily-built man, looking like the villain in penny novelettes,
appeared; he had been in America, and spoke a very little and very bad
English. Serbians in America pick up marvellously little English. We
met many who, though they had been years in the United States, could
not make themselves intelligible in our tongue. Our friend said he
was sorry to be late, but that he had only this minute come out of
gaol. "Ah, yes," I said, as though that was the place from which one
naturally expected one's friends to be arriving, "and what business
took you there?" "Oh!" carelessly, "I just killed a nozzer fellow
here," and he pointed to his own doorstep. It seemed that his wife and
the "nozzer" fellow had been on too familiar terms, and our Montenegrin
giant had taken the law into his own hands, and had promptly rid
himself of the enemy. He had not yet been tried, though he had been
in prison for ten months and three days. But now, as Petch was being
evacuated, all prisoners were set free, to escape as best they could.
He gave us permission to destroy his fence. As the moral fence around
his home had already been destroyed, the wooden fence must have seemed
of small importance; besides, his house would soon be in the hands of
the Germans, and nothing could have seemed of much consequence now
except his freedom. He was lame, he had no money, and his horse was too
small to carry him, so he asked if we would let him go with us over the
mountains to the coast, and if we would let him ride our biggest horse
in exchange for his pony. He must, otherwise, he said, be captured by
the enemy. We couldn't let him be taken prisoner again, and as he said
he knew all the Montenegrin roads and might be useful, we let him come
with us. He came, but he didn't know the tracks, and if ever I asked
his judgment as to direction, he was invariably wrong. But he was
kindly and harmless, and we took him as far as Podgoritza.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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