SOLDIERS WHO DON'T EAT.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 110, 19 November 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

SOLDIERS WHO DON'T EAT.

SERVIA'S WONDERFUL ARMY. IRISHMEN OF THE BALKANS. (Published in the ;< Times") A correspondent of the Times who was lately in Servia says that a most remarkable thing is the capacity of the Servian soldier to lire and fight gaily with practically nothing to eat. '" ft is a peasant army, the correspondent adds, " and in the best of times it 6 food is of the simplest—bread, potatoes, and curded milk, and rarely, except on feast days, a little meat, .bread is the staff of life in the real sense.

" For tour years Servia has been almost continually at war. It is difficult for the women, with all the men in the ranks, to keep up the agriculture, and the country Has become poor to a degree not known in years ot bad crops in congested districts of Ireland. The soldiers have been inured to a life of extreme privation. While fighting last winter it was their toughness ana their ability to withstand hardships that gave them the advantabe over the Auetrians. 1 have repeatedly heard Servian officers 6ay that their men had not eaten for two days. " When the country was knee-deep in mud the Servian soldiers pushed on utterly careless of the commissariat. They simply hunted the Austrians day and night, not giving them a moment's rest. Only men ot iron, to whom semistarvation was almost a normal condition, could have done it, yet the Servians' laughter-loving disposition ha 6 reamined unspoiled. "Every Briton soon discovers that the Servian is absurdly like the Irishman, When he is not laughing he is generally singing. Careless, long-limb-ed, lean, deep-chested, of kindly manner, with cheeks bronzed, the Servian is an ideal fighting man. When wounded he is almost insensible to pain, and ho takea death lightly. The nurses and doctors have unbounded admiration for him.

"the chief weakness of Servia's military position is that there are no reserves. The entire fighting strength of the country—almost its entire manhood—is already in the ranks."