Photograph by Herbert Corey 

 SERB SOLDIERS WEARING FRENCH TRENCH HELMETS MAKING THEIR WAY UP A PATH 



ON DOBRAPOLYA MOUNTAIN 



In the background are the lines of trenches, while the roads leading to the valley are shown 



in the middle distance 



The Serbian army began the great re- 

 treat of 191 5 250,000 strong. Xot more 

 than 150,000 reached asylum on the 

 island of Corfu after the winter's fight 

 through the snow-filled passes of Albania 

 and Montenegro. In the confusion of 

 those days some one had forgotten. 

 There was not sufficient food or clothing 

 or medicines or nursing waiting them. 

 Men who had struggled through the 

 winter died on the open beaches of the 

 island of Yido. 



Dying men dug their own graves and 

 then dug the graves of the men already 

 dead. Xot more than half were fit to 

 serve again when the fall campaign of 

 1916 began. 



AN ARMY OF OLD MEN IN THE FIGHTING 

 LINE 



It was a sad army — a bitter army — 

 but not a despairing army that I accom- 

 panied laot winter. Many of these men 

 were "cheechas," in the Serb phrase. 

 \\ hen a man reaches the a°:e of fortv he 



becomes "uncle" to his neighbors. Some 

 of these men were in the fourth line be- 

 fore the war. 



Serbia to the Serb peasant means the 

 little white cottage, the plum orchard, 

 the ten acres of ground. Few of them 

 had been fifty miles away from home 

 when Avar began five years ago in the 

 Balkans. Fewer have seen their homes 

 since. They have received no news from 

 their wives and families, for the Austro- 

 Bulgarian censorship has been extremely 

 severe. They had seen their comrades 

 die. Most of them— three men out of 

 five in some units — had been wounded at 

 some time during the war. 



There were no songs upon the march 

 except during those vivid days when the 

 Bulgarians were being forced out of 

 Monastir. There was no light-hearted 

 talk about the camp fires. There was no 

 music, except that now and then one 

 heard the weird and complaining tones 

 of a one-stringed fiddle which some pa- 

 tient soldier had made out of the material 



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