At first, therefore, we hoped that we should only have one or two accidental cases, and that the attacks would be slight. But this was unhappily not to be. One after the other, seventeen women members of the unit were laid low, and three, including Mrs. Dearmer, died; no men, and none of the patients, were attacked.
It was a nightmare to hear every day, as I lay ill with my own attack, that another and still another victim had been laid low. But I shall never forget the sympathy and kindness of our Serbian official friends. Many of them, including Colonels Guentchitch and Popovitch, also Dr. Antitch, the fever expert, came twice daily, and Major Protitch always twice a day; they brought me flowers and ice--a rare luxury, as Kragujevatz possessed no ice machine--and sat and talked with me, and in every conceivable way, showed the truest friendship. Had they thought the green cheese in the moon good for me, they would have gone--on chivalrous quest--in search of it. But, thanks to the care of our own doctors, and nurses, and my own electric constitution, I was only ill for a short time, and was soon playing the old game of showing visitors round the camp.
[Illustration: Photo. Topical MRS. ST. CLAIR STOBART Talking to Serbian peasant patients at the Roadside Tent Dispensary at Kragujevatz. Doctors and Nurses on the left]
[Illustration: THE TRAIN OF WHICH I WAS COMMANDER, AND SOME OF THE FLYING FIELD HOSPITAL UNIT With Field Kitchen, Motor Ambulances, Wagons, Oxen, Horses and Soldiers, leaving Kragujevatz for the front]
The first to be shown round was Prince Alexis Kara Georgevitch. I had had the pleasure of meeting him, and the Princess, at tea in their London house, shortly before leaving for Serbia.
I was extremely thankful--if I had to be ill--that I had chosen a time whilst military events in Serbia were still quiescent. For it had always been understood, from the time shortly after our arrival, when confidence in the organisation and the mobility of the hospital had been established in the minds of the medical-military authorities, that if military activities should be renewed, a portion of the unit was to be detached to accompany the Serbian Army, as a flying field hospital, to the front. Colonel Guentchitch wrote a letter to this effect, and the prospect of this work kept up the spirits of those who wanted active military work. And it was fortunate for all of us, in the light of subsequent events, that our epidemic timed itself thus opportunely.