The people were curiously ignorant about the danger of infection, and friends from their own, and from other villages, would come in and sit on the beds of the small-pox patients, and spend an hour or two, and then go home and rejoin their families. Small wonder that epidemics played havoc in the country. With Major Protitch, we planned a scheme for disinfection of the village, but without a hospital in which to segregate patients, this was not an easy job. CHAPTER XIII The next dispensary to be started was at Lapovo, an important railway junction on the Belgrade-Nish line. On Sunday, July 18th, at 5 a.m., Colonel Guentchitch, the head of the Army Medical Service, accompanied me and one of our doctors to Lapovo to choose the site. The day was, as usual, a feast day, and we stopped on the way, at an artillery encampment, to watch the soldiers dancing the kolo. One soldier stood playing the fiddle, whilst fifty or sixty others were holding hands, and dancing, quite silently, in a circle round him. How could even their enemies have painted these simple-minded, clean-living peasant soldiers, as fierce, fighting-loving savages? A suitable camping-ground was found adjoining and above the railway, on either side of a long one-storied building which was not yet completed; this could later be used as hospital with eighty beds. The doctor of the reserve hospital in Lapovo, two miles from the station, invited us to lunch under the trees, in the field of the church compound. A requiem service was being held, and the church was full of peasant women. Upon the floor were many trays of food--the favourite cakes and fruits and flowers of the dead. When the service was over, the women picked up the trays and came outside and handed the food to their friends. They then carried the remainder of the food home; they could not take it to the dead in the cemetery, because the men had been killed in battle. [Illustration: THE SERGEANT DISTRIBUTING BREAD WITH THE HELP OF AN ADMONITORY ROD Bread is on the ground in front of him] [Illustration: SERBIAN ARMY IN RETREAT CROSSING A BRIDGE NEAR ANDREAVITZA] These requiem services for the dead, are held first after forty-two days from death, in accordance with the old belief that the soul takes six weeks to reach Heaven; then after six months, and again at the anniversary of death. The women wore tartan skirts, very full; short, loose bodices, of a different colour to the skirt, generally a plain colour, and kerchiefs which completely covered their hair, and were either brilliantly coloured, or else were in black to denote mourning. The men often wore long white tunics, over white trousers, which were tucked into long, knitted, coloured stockings; and opantsi or soft leather sandals.