[Illustration: CAMP OF THE 111TH FLIGHT (ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE). To face p. 192. ] While the Armée d’Orient had suffered a reduction of strength in consequence of the Russian defection, it received in the winter of 1917–18 an unexpected reinforcement in the Serbian Army. During the early period of the war a large number of Yugoslav subjects of Austria-Hungary--Serbs, Bosnians and Herzegovinians, Croatians, Slovenes, etc.--had been made prisoners by the Russians. Not a few had, in fact, from hatred of their own Government, voluntarily surrendered. They afterwards declared themselves ready to enlist in the Russian Army to fight against the Dual Monarchy, and as there were very few officers among them (the Austro-Hungarian Command was careful to bestow commissions only on persons on whose loyalty it could depend), a number of regular officers of the Serbian Army were sent out to command them. Thus some Yugoslav divisions were formed which fought gallantly on the Russian side against the Austrians and Germans. When the revolution broke out in Russia they continued to fight in spite of the gradual defection of the Russian Army, and in the last offensive in June and July 1917 in Galicia, which began with a success and ended in disaster, they found themselves abandoned by their erstwhile comrades in arms, and suffered enormous losses, as the Russians, infected with Bolshevism, either ran away or began to “fraternize” with their own worst enemies. Finally, when the Russian situation had become manifestly hopeless, they determined to go and join their brothers in Macedonia. The enterprise was no easy one, for if the distance between the borders of Galicia and Macedonia was short, invaded Roumania and hostile Bulgaria stood between. It was therefore necessary to cross the whole of Russia. The first detachments went to Archangel, where they embarked for England, thence they travelled across France to Toulon, there they re-embarked for Italy, and finally came on by road and rail to Salonica, where they began to arrive at the end of November, 1917, after a journey of many months. Others followed in December and January. Those of them whom I saw in the train between Vralo and Salonica were really fine-looking soldiers; indeed, only picked men could have had the endurance to face all these difficulties voluntarily. But the last detachments underwent even more dramatic vicissitudes. They found themselves in the midst of Bolshevized Russia, hostile to themselves and a vassal to Germany. Lenin, acting in Germany’s interests, did not wish to allow them to leave, and it was only thanks to the absolute anarchy then dominant in the country that they were able, after infinite difficulties, to continue their journey. The Bolsheviks at first demanded that the infamous soldiers’ councils should be instituted among them, but the Yugoslavs refused to destroy their own discipline.