Photograph by Herbert Corey 

 TWO WOUNDED SERBIAN SOLDIERS BEING CARRIED TO THE ElEED HOSPITAL ON A 



WING-TYPE MULE LITTER 

 Compassionate comrades are giving them a drink of water from an old Turkish fountain 



again, dodging from rock to rock, hiding 

 in the crevices of the surface. 



Occasionally the drama takes on an 

 intimate — almost a neighborly — touch. 

 Five cold men of the Choumadia division 

 became aware last winter that in the Bul- 

 garian dugout just opposite their post — 

 not 50 feet away — three fur-coated offi- 

 cers often met. 



"Let us get the fur coats," said the five 

 cold Serbs. 



The story of the getting is too long to 

 be told here. But during the two weeks 

 in which the five cold men intrigued and 

 maneuvered for those three fur coats 

 their entire regiment became aware of 

 the play and watched it as one might a 

 particularly entertaining movie. In the 

 end the five cold men succeeded. Lives 

 were lost on both sides ; but that is be- 

 side the point. Prom the colonel down 

 the men of that regiment rejoiced over 

 the strategy of the five cold men. For 

 the remainder of the winter they luxuri- 

 ated in fur. The bitter winds of Dobra- 

 polyi Mountain had no terrors for them. 



There was the old woman of Polok, 

 too. Polok is hardly a hamlet. It is just 

 a huddle of stone huts, stained by the 

 ages, each crowned with a blackened and 

 disheveled thatch. For weeks the Serbs 

 attacked Chuke Mountain, in a dimple of 

 whose shoulder Polok rests. Each day 

 the village had been under bombardment. 

 The artillery observers from their high 

 posts could see the lone old woman going 

 about her business. No other peasants 

 were seen in Polok ; but she milked her 

 cows and drove them to water, as though 

 peace reigned in the land. Once she was 

 seen chasing a group of Bulgarian sol- 

 diers with a stick, as though they were a 

 parcel of mischievous boys. 



Twice the hamlet was taken in hand- 

 to-hand fighting and lost again. The 

 third time the Serbs held it. 



The old woman picked her way down 

 the cluttered hillside, past the dead men 

 and the wounded, and through the shell 

 holes and amid the ruins of the other 

 huts, until she found the officer com- 

 manding': 



3Qi 



