With the Serbs in Macedonia

THE SERBIANS 243
an O.Pip to see these particular trenches, and
this hospitable invitation was the result.
The lunch was too good to be left out. It
began, as usual, with cheese. Then came veal
broth, followed by a meat dish with rice and
strips of pastry, a kind of home-made macaroni,
and accompanied by a perfectly wonderful
sauce. Then came a potato cream, alone and
delicious, like a thick silky broth— a gastronomic
revelation. This was followed by steak,
with rice, beetroot, tomato, horse-radish, mar-
row, and paprika — a dish of many colours.
Then came a cheese pastry, very flaky and
light, and stewed pears a^.d coffee. All this,
four hundred metres from the enemy, for three
humble second-lieutenants—who showed their
appreciation hi the usual way !
After that, the trenches. They were in the
wood on the crest of a high hill— the whole
Serbian line there was among the peaks. The
trees were badly knocked about by shell-fire.
In this particular sector the enemy was at no
place more than three hundred metres away, for
a long stretch it was only one hundred and forty
metres to his trenches, and at the nearest point
the distance was only thirty metres. Naturally
conversation was not encouraged in the latter
region. Each side had snipers always on duty,
and one peeped through the sandbags at those