“We’ve just come from Vrnjatchka Banja,” we explained.

She took Jo to the hospital, while Blease and Jan dropped their heavy luggage and washed in a basin, provided by a Serb servant girl.  Jo did not return.  Jan went to the hospital to look for her.

Crowds of men were at the door, crowds in ragged and filthy uniforms, with bandages on arms, or foot, or brow, dirty stained bandages with bloodstains upon them.  Some of the men were crouching on the ground, some were lying against the house, fast asleep.  Somehow we got through them.  The passage was full of men, and men were asleep, festooned on the stone stairs.  The smell was horrible.  Beyond a swinging glass door Scottish women were hurrying to and fro bandaging the men as they entered, and passing them out on the other side of the building.  The Serbs waited with the stoicism of the Oriental, their long lean faces drawn with hunger, pain and fatigue.  Now and again some man turned uneasily in his sleep and groaned.  A detachment of “Stobarts” had found a lodging upstairs, in a bedroom with plank beds; amongst them we found some old friends.

Leaving them we went into the village to look for a meal, back through the mud.  Soldiers, peasants, women, children, horse carts and bullock waggons, all were pushing here and there, broken down and deserted motor cars were standing in the middle of the road.  In the great round central “Place” confusion was worse, animals, carts, and refugee bivouacks being all squashed together on the market place.

White-bearded officers with grey-green uniforms were gesticulating to white-bearded civilians outside the Cafe de Paris.  A motor rushed up, disgorged three men in Russian uniform and fled.  A small fat man vainly endeavouring to attract the attention of a staff officer grasped him by the arm; the staff officer shook him off angrily.  Soldiers lounged against the walls and peered in through the dirty windows....

Within, the big dark room was crammed.  Opening the door was like turning a corner of cliff by the seashore.  Almost all, at the tables, were men:  officers, tradesmen, clerks, talking in eager tense words.  We found three seats.  Nobody had anything to eat or drink.  Three men came to the table next to us.  They exhibited two loaves of bread to the others, and had the air of some one who had done something very clever.  We were famished.

Suddenly half the cafe rose and rushed to a small counter almost hidden in the gloom of the far end.  Coffee can be got, said some one.  Blease, who could get out the easier, went to explore.  In a short while he wandered back saying that he had got a waiter.  A man came through selling apples.  We bought some.  At last the waiter came.

“Cafe au lait,” said we.

“And bread,” we added, as he turned away.

“Nema,” he answered, looking back.

“Well eggs, then.”

“Nema.”

“What have you got?”