LAST TRAIN FROM NISH.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 January 1916, Page 12

LAST TRAIN FROM NISH.

J ENGLISHMAN'S STIRRING STORY, STARVING REFUGEES AND BABIES. A TALK WITH iaNG PETER, HIS TRUST IN ENGLAND [Mr. Charles J. Jenkin, a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, contributed to the Daily Mail an account of the Serbian people's retreat from Nish. Mr. Jenkin is engineer and surveyor to the Finchley Urban District Council. After attending a meeting at the Mansion House he volunteered for work under the Serbian Relief Fund, and the Council granted Mm six months' leave of absence, for the purpose. He went to Serbia in April, and improved the sanitary conditions of the British hospitals there,]

There has been exciting times at Nish —the temporary capital—during my sojourn/in October. The Serbian Parliament was considering the proposals of the Allies, and journalists and 'the public waited eagerly for the results- of its deliberations and for the replies to its ultimatum to Bulgaria. The evening coitions of the. papers were wildly announced and feverishly bought up. Everyone wanted to know the meaning of the Bulgarian mobilisation. M. Venizelos, the Greek Premier, resigns, and there is an euthusiastic proSerbian demonstration by the Greek residents through the streets ito the house of the Greek Consul.

Enemy aeroplanes from Austria are received by "friendly" Bulgaria after having dropped bombs on Nish, killing innocent women and children, and Austrian prisoners, and the "friendly" visits and bomb-dropping are repeated day after day.

' • The Austro-German forces have again furiously bombarded Belgrade, destroying hospitals and other buildings and causing a stampede of the civil population to the south.

The Serbian Army is forced to retreat, *nd several northern towns are evacuated. Now the Bulgars have attacked all along the line after giving assurances that they had no intention of so doing. Pirafc and the main Constantinople line to Nish are threatened, "but the Allies, England and France, will help us," the people say, and the streets are gay with flags and masts in their honor.

The tense, anxious days pass; the deluge of cold rain and sleet sops the flags and ithc question, "Will they never come?" passes from lip to lip.

DESOLATE BELGRADE PALACE. At the end of September I went to Belgrade. There was an intermittent bombardment. I was looking at the railway bridge, and, as I was wearing the uniform of an English Volunteer corps, I suppose I attracted the attention of the enemy on the other side of the river. Three shells came very near me, one about four feet above' my head, the others bursting near. They had the range to a nicety. Belgrade was very deserted'; many houses were smashed to rubbish ; all the windows of ithe palace had been broken by concussion; throughout th - city more than half the windows seemed to be smashed. I went to Valjevo. All the houses were pitted with rifle bullets and roofs were broken in. Shabacs had been partially destroyed by the former Austrian attack. I heard shameful stories of outraged women and tortured children. Houses had been wilfully destroyed by Austrian soldiers, not for military purposes, but for the purpose of setting up a reign of terror. . . WOMEN BAREFOOTED IN MUD. When the great bombardment of Belgrade began the people left, hoping for shelter in the spilth. Such as could afford it and could do it went by train, but even that involved a walk of some miles to the nearest working station. Semendria, *o the east of Belgrade, was evacuated. The main roads to the south from the.towns join at Velplana, and there it was that I saw Serbia in her igony, the most hopeless and desolate picture of misery one could imagine. There had been heavy rain for some time. The roads, always bad, are now deplorable, two feet deep in sticky mud, for Serbia has been almost continuously at war for the last three years, and the able-bodied men have been under arms. In that dismal road, with the rain falling pitilessly, crowds of people were trudging slowly on, hoping to find some place to rest. Women took off their boots and stockings and walked in mud up to their knees, their picturesque costumes and gaily colored head cloths sodden with rain. It was odd to see that some still stuck in their hair the pathetic remains of a flower.

Many carried on their backs a bundle, from which came a faint cry. They jvere carrying their babies—sometimes two—and leading other children by the hand. They were splendid, these peasant women of Serljia.

The misery of this pathetic crowd of homeless folk was intensified by the fact ithat there were so few able-bodied men to help them. Women, children, and, old men were mixed up in confusion with tattle and sheep and pigs, and to the eternal rain was now added the cold bite of sleet. In places the procession came to a hopeless deadlock, crowding together in the mud. FOOD EXHAUSTED. I saw no sign of panic—simply a stolid, hopeless resignation. Days and (lays they were on the road. I did not know where they were going: many did ■not know themselves. Nish they hoped for, TJskub they hoped for; they seemed more afraid of the Bulgars than the Austrians. They crowded into towns and villages in abject misery. How they fed I cannot say. Peasants las a rule give bread to each other, br.t the peasants themselves were joining in this dismal retreat, and in the few inns the food had been exhausted. Many children died, and their bodies were left by the roadside. Many women and old men I must have died of starvation. The faces of these poor peasants were hard and stony. But through it all they seemed | to cherish the hope that the Allies would come and save their country.

AT XISH—A GRANDFATHER'S TRIALS. Under these conditions I arrived on the evening of October 15 at Nish Station, tin; waiting rooms and wry a vailul-le inch of space being crowded with rain[soaked and weary women and children land the old men of the people. Here a pathetic, bent, old figure on a sodden bundle of brilliant-colored rugs—his sole belongings—had been sitting hour after hour m::\>iiig his fretful grandchild. Everywhere is drawn-out human suffering. On the opening of the station barriers some hundreds of these poor folk rush for the train under the cold, pitiless rain, and the air is full of the cries of the women and the wallingof the poor, tired little ones. Such is Jlis harvest of warl

Wp are in the train at 7.30, but wait till the small hours of the mornm;; before a start is made.

There are long waits at many stations, sentries and soldiers everywhere, and in the darkness one sees the lights high up among the snow-topped hills where the Serbian outposts await the Bulbar idvanoe. The Serb could not attack, being held back by the Allies, who still appeared ito trust Bulgarian friendlii:os;, :md so many valuable days were lut while the Bulgars pushed on their final pre> parations.

LADY PAGET SEEN AT CSKUB. At L'skub we arc many hours lute, and here Lady (Ralph) Paget and some of her heroic nurses are on the platform removing necessaries for (he wounded. More refugees crowded into the train, and there are rumours that the line has. been cut behind us by the enemy. This proved to be true. All communications were cut four hours after we had passed. Ghevgeli, the Greek frontier town, is reached late at night. At the transfer station farther on the Greek train is not ready; there is no shelter from the rain, and an unseemly scramble for tickets takes place in the miserable little station. Xo one has seen anything of the long-expected English soldiers, and again the cry goes up: "Will they never come!"

■Being late, we find the first-class carriages full of the families of Serbian officers and middle-class people. I join a party of four British Red Cross nurses and four or five British medical orderlies. We sleep in the corridor.

We learn that with the Bulgarian advance, on Pirot a fresh stream of refugees began to move towards Nish, crowding all the roads and trains. Some people went in bullock waggons, some rode donkeys, but. most went on foot, for the Government had commandeered most of the bullocks and waggons from the farms for military purposes.

We saw much military movement but no enemv, though firing was heard in the hills.'

At Salonika the train was delayed for a time while the medical officer inspected all passengers; they take careful precautions against the risk of typhus.

CROWDED SALONICA. Salonica is like a military camp. All the male population appear to be under arms. All the open spaces appear to be .occupied by mule and other transport services; large numbers of English and French soldiers are in the . streets. So far as I was able to observe, they were very well received; as for myself, I received every courtesy at the hands of the Greek military and civil authorities. The British camps (in tents) were situated on hillsides, well out of the town; the French camp was a little to the west, and when I was there French troops were leaving in large numbers for the front. Transports, both British and French, were arriving. In the harbour a British warship and a French warship were at anchor, and two great British liners were there as hospital ships. my bedroom I looked at the harbour and the mighty Mount Olympus in the background.' The haunting vision of the last train from Nish was lost in the cries from the crowded streets and the hooting of the ships' sirens. GREEK ARMY ALL MOBILISED. I had many conversations with Greeks in Salonika—offieere. ouslness men, officials. So far as I could gatlier they did not regard the treaty with Serbia as applying to the present situation; it did not, they hold, involve their inclusion in a war with the Great Central Powers, but was routined to Balkan affairs. Yet, said several of them, if they could be perfectly certain that the Allies were going to send enough troops to push the Germans, the Bulgars, and the Austrian* right back they would be ready to join us. The Greek army was completely mobilised. Troops were' moving everywhere. KING PETER AND ENGLAND. Before the events I have been describing I had an audience with King Peter. He sent for me because he desired to hear about the sanitary work in connection with the hospitals. He was in his bungalow at Topola, northwest of Kragujevacs, a nice, unpretentious stone building on the side of a hill, under the shadow of a white marble church which he is erecting to leaye to his people as a memorial. I was presented to the King in the garden, where he was walking. He is a short, slim, erect figure. He walks with an alert, springy step. He has a blond, yellowish moustache and imperial, and keen, blue eyes under «haggy brows. I was about to kiss his hand, but he gave me a hearty nanu-saakc Instead, indicating that he did not desire any ceremony. We walked and talked for about 20 minutes in the most friendly fashion. He spoke in fluent French, and expressed his great regret that he could not use the tongue of "the country that had been so good to his own people." He mentioned that he met Queen Victoria in her younger days, and climbed Mount Pilatus with her. Several times he repeated his gratitude towards "England, our greatest friend." He mentioned that he suffers from rheumatism] certainly his movements did not betray it. When speaking of the war, his voice had a sad note—"attacks on three sides, and the ravages of typhus'' —but he was not gloomy; lie seemed confident that tilings would be well in the end.

Ho asked mo to sign his birthdaybook, and I noticed that tlio first name in my pap* (December 4) was that of the Crown Prinee nf Serbia.