With the Serbs in Macedonia

ACTIVE SERVICE 57
serpentine pass. But we got through all right,
and the ever-friendly Serbs presented us with
bunches of small wine-grapes to cool our parched
and dusty hps. Routine orders, by the way,
of all uncooked
absolutely forbade the eating
fruit ; but— well, I leave it to you.
We were just beginning to return when a long
train of ramshackle ox-carts came lumbering
up. In the distance they looked like a page out
of a cheap illustrated edition of the Bible, but
as they creaked and jolted closer one forgot
their crude picturesqueness in a thrill of horror.
They were laden with wounded, roughly
bandaged, straight from the firing-line, lying on
straw in those springless vehicles and exposed
to the sun and the flies ! The
flies were awful.
On every patch of blood there was a ghastly
cluster of them.
The eyes of the French doctor in charge of
that pitiful convoy gleamed when he caught
sight of our petits camions. In much too fluent
French he explained that all the field hospitals
were overcrowded and if we could relieve him
of his burden he would be infinitely obliged.
Otherwise the poor wretches must go on in
those dreadful ox-carts and take hours on the
journey.
We had no orders to carry wounded, but it
was impossible to refuse. They were trans-