The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia

Cora Gordon, Jan Gordon

Informations

• Publié par: dodil
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 50
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Project Gutenberg's The Luck of Thirteen, by Jan Gordon
Cora J. Gordon
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Luck of Thirteen
Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia
Author: Jan Gordon
Cora J. Gordon
Release Date: December 12, 2005 [EBook #17291]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LUCK OF THIRTEEN ***
Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Taavi Kalju and the
Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe at
http://dp.rastko.net. (This file was made using scans of
public domain works from the University of Michigan Digital
Libraries.)JO AT THE MACHINE GUN.
THE LUCK OF THIRTEEN
WANDERINGS AND FLIGHT THROUGH
MONTENEGRO AND SERBIA
BY
MR. AND MRS. JAN GORDON
WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND A MAP
TAIL PIECES BY CORA J. GORDON
COLOUR PLATES BY JAN GORDON
NEW YORK
E.P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
1916
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITEDLONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND
Pg v CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Contents v
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction 1
II. Nish and Salonika 10
III. Off to Montenegro 20
IV. Across the Frontier 31
V. The Montenegrin Front on the Drina 47
VI. Northern Montenegro 66
VII. To Cettinje 85
VIII. The Lake of Scutari 99
IX. Scutari 105
X. The Highway of Montenegro 122
XI. Ipek, Dechani and a Harem 145
XII. The Highway of Montenegro—II 169
XIII. Uskub 182
XIV. Mainly Retrospective 198
XV. Some Pages from Mr. Gordon's Diary 213
XVI. Last Days at Vrntze 227
XVII. Kralievo 244
XVIII. The Flight of Serbia 263
XIX. Novi Bazar 284
XX. The Unknown Road 299
Pg vi XXI. The Flea-Pit 315
XXII. Andrievitza to Pod 328
XXIII. Into Albania 341
XXIV. "One more Ribber to cross" 359
Index 377
Pg vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOURED PLATES
FACING PAGE
Jo at the Machine Gun Frontispiece
The Ipek Pass in Winter 140
Retreating Ammunition Train 276Albanian Mule-drivers Camping 354
HALF-TONE PLATES
Out-patients 4
Shoeing Bullocks 4
Peasant Women in Gala Costume, Nish 20
Serb Convalescents at Uzhitze 28
Serb and Montenegrin Officers on the Drina 58
A Concealed Gun Emplacement on the Drina 58
Peasant Women of the Mountains 76
A Village of North Montenegro 76
Jo and Mr. Suma in the Scutari Bazaar 110
Christian Women hiding from the Photographer 112
Scutari—Bazaar and Old Venetian Fortress 112
Disembarkation of a Turkish Bride 114
Governor Petrovitch and his Daughter in their State Barge 114
In the Bazaar of Ipek 162
Street Coffee Seller in Ipek 162
Pg viii A Wine Market in Uskub 184
Big Gun passing through Krusevatz 194
In-patients 202
Broken Aeroplane in the Arsenal at Krag 220
Where the "Plane" fell 220
House near the Arsenal damaged by Bombs 220
Peasant Women leaving their Village 260
Serb Family by the Roadside 260
The Flight of Serbia 266
Unloading the Benedetto, San Giovanni di Medua 364
Route Map of the Authors' Wanderings At end of text
Pg 1 THE LUCK OF THIRTEEN
INTRODUCTION
It is curious to follow anything right back to its inception, and to discover from
what extraordinary causes results are due. It is strange, for instance, to find that
the luck of the thirteen began right back at the time when Jan, motoring back
from Uzhitze down the valley of the Morava, coming fastish round a corner,
plumped right up to the axle in a slough of clinging wet sandy mud. The car
almost shrugged its shoulders as it settled down, and would have said, if cars
could speak, "Well, what are you going to do about that, eh?" It was about the
264th mud hole in which Jan's motor had stuck, and we sat down to wait for the
inevitable bullocks. But it was a Sunday and bullocks were few; the waitbecame tedious, and in the intervals of thought which alternated with the
intervals of exasperation, Jan realized that he needed a holiday.
To be explicit. Jan was acting as engineer to Dr. Berry's Serbian Mission from
Pg 2 the Royal Free Hospital:—Jan Gordon, and Jo is his wife, Cora Josephine
Gordon, artist, and V.A.D.
We had a six months of work behind us. We had seen the typhus, and had
dodged the dreaded louse who carries the infection, we had seen the typhus
dwindle and die with the onrush of summer. We had helped to clean and
prepare six hospitals at Vrntze or Vrnjatchka Banja—whichever you prefer. We
had helped Mr. Berry, the great surgeon, to ventilate his hospitals by smashing
the windows—one had been a child again for a moment. Jo had learned
Serbian and was assisting Dr. Helen Boyle, the Brighton mind specialist, to run
a large and flourishing out-patient department to which tuberculosis and
diphtheria—two scourges of Serbia—came in their shoals. We had
endeavoured to ward off typhoid by initiating a sort of sanitary vigilance
committee, having first sacked the chief of police: we had laid drains, which the
chief Serbian engineer said he would pull up as soon as we had gone away.
We had helped in the plans of a very necessary slaughter-house, which Mr.
Berry was going to present to the town. There was an excuse for Jan's desire.
The English papers had been howling about the typhus months after the
disease had been chased out by English, French, and American doctors, who
Pg 3 had disinfected the country till it reeked of formalin and sulphur; shoals of
devoted Englishwomen were still pouring over, generously ready to risk their
lives in a danger which no longer existed. Our own unit, which had dwindled to
a comfortable—almost a family—number, with Mr. Berry as father, had been
suddenly enlarged by an addition of ten. These ten complicated things, they all
naturally wanted work, and we had cornered all the jobs.
So, after the fatigues of February, March, and April, and the heat of June, Jan
quite decided on that Uzhitze mud patch that a holiday would do little harm to
himself, and good to everybody else. Then, however, came the problem of Jo.
Jo is a socialistic sort of a person with conservative instincts. She has the
feminine ability to get her wheels on a rail and run comfortably along till Jan
appears like a big railway accident and throws the scenery about; but once the
resolution accomplished she pursues the idea with a determination and ferocity
which leaves Jan far in the background.
Jo had her out-patient department. Every morning, wet or fine, crowds of
picturesque peasants would gather about the little side door of our hospital,
women in blazing coloured hand-woven skirts, like Joseph's coat, children in
unimaginable rags, but with the inevitable belt tightly bound about their little
Pg 4 stomachs, men covered with tuberculous sores and so forth, on some days as
many as a hundred. Jo, having finished breakfast, had then to assume a
commanding air, and to stamp down the steps into the crowd, sort out the
probable diphtheria cases—this by long practice,—forbid anybody to approach
them under pain of instant disease, get the others into a vague theatre queue,
which they never kept, and then run back into the office to assist the doctor and
to translate. All this, repeated daily, was highly interesting of course, and so
when Jan suggested the tour she "didn't want to do it."
But authority was on Jan's side. Jo had had a mild accident: a diphtheria
patient fled to avoid being doctored, they often did, and Jo had chased after her;
she tripped, fell, drove her teeth through her lower lip, and for a moment was
stunned. When they caught the patient they found that it was the wrong person
—but that is beside the subject. Dr. Boyle thought that Jo had had a mild
concussion and threw her weight at Jan's side. Dr. Berry was quite agreeable,
and gave us a commission to go to Salonika to start with and find a disinfector
which had gone astray. Another interpreter was found, so Jo took leave of her
out-patients.In Serbia it was necessary to get permission to move. Jan went to the major for
Pg 5 the papers. There were crowds of people on the major's steps, and Jan learned
that all the peasants and loafers had been called in to certify, so that nobody
should avoid their military service. Later we parted, taking two knapsacks. Dr.
Boyle and Miss Dickenson were very generous, giving us large supplies of
chocolate, Brand's essence, and corned beef for our travels, and we had two
boxes of "compressed luncheons," black horrible-looking gluey tabloids which
claim to be soup, fish, meat, vegetables and pudding in one swallow.
OUT-PATIENTS.SHOEING BULLOCKS.
The Austrian prisoners bade us a sad farewell, but many friends accompanied
us to the station, and the rotund major and his rounder wife did us the like
honour. Our major was a queer mixture: he was jolly because he was fat, and
he was stern because he had a beaky nose, and in any interview one had first
to ascertain whether the stomach or the nose held the upper hand, so to speak.
With the wife one was always sure—she had a snub nose.