ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION. 113 



laborers, for carpenters, for blacksmiths." Of course they told us: 

 "As much as possible, try to ask for people who are not fit for actual 

 battle, those who have been wounded or have a couple of fingers knocked 

 off, or are minus a jaw or a leg or something like that, if you possibly 

 can, use those, if they will do just as well." So the Serbian army 

 picked out for us 150 Serbian soldiers, and I went out in the highways 

 where they were repairing the roads — the roads have to be built new 

 down there every month on account of the terrible amount of traffic, 

 ammunition and supplies, that go to the army, to and from. Those 

 roads are all Macadam. They put about six inches of crushed rock 

 on them every month, and they roll it, and next month of course the 

 road is all holes and all gone to pieces. 



Now for this lovely job of crushing rocks and shoveling the road 

 and leveling it up and putting some dirt above so as to pack it more 

 tight, they used for that the German, Austrian and Bulgarian prisoners, 

 thounsands and thousands of them they had down there, working in 

 gangs of about a hundred or two hundred, and all about a mile apart. 

 And I drew for the rest of our help from those. When I came to one of 

 those gangs I spoke to them in German and spoke to them in Bul- 

 garian and asked them were there any mechanics there ; or any men 

 who could do carpenter work or blacksmith work, and of course a few 

 raised their hands, and I found among the Germans some very good 

 blacksmiths, some very good workshop men, some very good mechanics. 

 I found men who had handled machinery before in Germany. When- 

 ever I found those, I picked them out, lined them up on the side, and 

 the commander sent a soldier with a gun and "Face about, march" — 

 marched them down to our camp, and they were finally transferred 

 into our command. In our camp we had twenty-seven soldiers from 

 France standing around watching those fellows work. Now, all we 

 had to give those men was some bread, some potatoes, and a little 

 meat, all their meals, that was the only pay they got. ^ We had pretty 

 nearly two hundred people working in our camp this way. 



Now, while the work in the camp was going on and while I was 

 traveling around those fronts, up alid down for a hundred miles, in 

 our little Ford — by the way, the Ford is the official automobile of 

 the Balkans; they have nothing else down there, or they have about 

 fifty Fords to one of some other pattern. In fact, if you see some other 

 car coming you look, while you never look at a Ford, it is such a com- 

 mon thing around there. And they use them this way, they run them 

 until they are knocked to pieces and then get new ones. 



Well, we had our Fords, and we went around, and in my travels I 

 met those bee-keepers. Now, our camp was within eight miles of the 

 actual front, right behind the second line trenches, and the view was 

 most beautiful. We were down in the plains, like you stand in a 

 pitcher's box. Then the mountains were rising on three sides, just 

 like the grand stand in a baseball park. We were standing in the 

 pitcher's box and watching the grand stand, and there along the grand 

 stand the battle was raging, cannons fired off and shells exploding and 

 skyrockets going up, and the road was crowded with wagons carrying 

 up ammunition and food supplies, one stream going up and one going 

 down. The road was right in front of our camp, and we sometimes 

 — 8 B A 



