SERVIA'S NEED TAILORED SUIT.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2474, 29 May 1915, Page 11

SERVIA'S NEED

TAILORED SUIT.

THE PLAGUE OF TYPHTJS. From Nurse E. Peter, of Christchurch, I have received tho following interesting account of her early experiences m Serbia, whither she went in February as a member of Lady I'aget's Red Cross unit, writes a London correspondent to a southern exchange under date April 13. She has been stationed at Skoplje (formerly Uskub). At the time of writing hor nnit was being taken over by Lady Wimborno's, and Nurse Peter had not quite decided wliother to stay on or return heme. She writes:—

"We had one aiternoon and a night at Salonica, but did not leave the steamer till next morning as a high sea was running and the little boats we would have to land in were tossed about like cookie shells. Next morning we had our breakfast at 6 o'clock, and left tho ship at 6.30, walking to the railway station, which we reached about 7 a.m. It took us quite an hour to get our tickets, which the unit had to pay for, as far as the Serbian frontier, and to get our luggage registered, else we would never have seen it again.

"The country for the most part of the way to Uskub is very like parts of Now Zealand. A range of snowy mountains runs all the way, sometimes near at hand, sometimes very fax off, interspersed by plains and undulating country, but the flat parts were mostly very wot. There were numerous droves of sheep, numbering from about 50 to a few hundreds, guarded by peasants with dogs. All the flocks had some black sheep, and others were almost all black, with a few whit© ones. We crossed several rivers of the Waimakariri type, only the water was always brown. The bridges over them had been blown up by Bulgarians a few weeks before, and were only temporarily mended; the train passed over very slowly with most ominous creaking in some places. All along the railway a field telegraph ran beside the ordinary telegraph line, and the whole way the line and bridges were guarded by soldiers. Their shelters looked as if they were dug out of the banks or the sides of a hill and thatched over, such miser-able-looking places.

"The train seems to stop just as long as it pleases at the station —at one we stayed nearly an hour and saw a weird collection of human beings, and small carts each drawn by two tiny bullocks. We also saw long convoys of the same carts all coming the same way towards Skoplje. Here and there on the hills were scattered flowering shrubs, either white or pink, rather like almond and peach blossom, except that they were growing wild, and a small, starry flower like stars of Bethlehem, only different shades of mauve or else white.

. "We reached Skoplje about 9 p.m., instead of 6, and got such a, kind welcome from Lady Paget, who was on tihe station. We have a' room divided into four cubicles with a small portion cut off into which you oome iirst, and in this is a stove which is lit every night about 7 o'clock, so that when we come off duty at 9 o'clock we Lara a nice warm room to come back to. It is about two minutes' walk from tho hospital.

"The food, is good and well cooked, if somewhat monotonous, and there' is plenty of the wine of the country and lemonade for us to drink, as you cannot drink the water. No one but an. inveterate grumbler could complain of the way we are cared for.

"Sister Coleman, who is tron, is just the woman, never spares herself, and is never put out or oroeß, and she has many difficulties to overcome. There is no typhus so far in this hospital, _ but we hear that in the Serbian hospital near here the men are dying like flies with typhus and badly-clressed wounds. I heard that they throw all the dressings and limbs out in the backyard, and that the crows fly about with bits of flesh. Where trie Austrian prisoners are kept typhus has also broken out, and of 5000 prisoners they say that 2000 have already died, and more are dying. Two nurses went up to try and settle things a. little, and they tell me that there are often two men in one bed, sometimes one of them dead. They are also lying in cellars, and they hava to separate the dead from the living as they can. Lady Paget has gone up there with Dr. _ Maitland, but everyone savs that it is not a wise thing to do until they get a staff able to oope with the fever.

"Maroh 22—Lady Paget is ill with typhus, aud one of EKe nurses is tfown also, and Dr. Knobel, who also went there, is dangerously ill with it. Four nurses have had to leave this hospital to look after them, and now one of the nurses has got it, and another has had to leave hero to look after her, and wo expect her to bo the next. Then another will have to go. It seeniß such a pity not to finish off this hospital before trying to start another, and that with a. quite insufficient staff or accommodation. I have 28 patients, mostly suppurating gunshot wounds. Tho Serbian doctors at the front mostly do up the wounds in starch bandages, la-oping in all discharge, then tho patients havo from one to four days corning down, aud you can imagine the state of their wounds by the time tliey get hero. The Wimborne unit is taking on this hospital after March 31, and wo are told we can either go homo or join them.