The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 12. READY, MY CHETNIK BROTHERS It WAS NOW obviously advisable to remain in Belgrade. After a few months in the Srbski Kralj Hotel I found a very attractive home in the Slavija Hill district. It was an L-shaped corner house and, like most old Serbian houses, one-storied, and right on the pavement. Through the double windows and net curtains I could see out perfectly, but no one could look in. It was a curious sensation to have people passing within three feet quite unconscious of my close observation. Now I had a perfect setting for all my lovely antiques. I added to them busily by haunting not only the little shops but also, my best source, the open markets, of which I knew seven. I spread out soft gold brocades on which I laid or hung the things I treasured most: old silver trays showing ancient heroes slicing off the heads of foes; a rusty spearhead, dating probably from 1389 dug up on the battlefield of Kossovo; old swords and knives, their silver hilts and sheaths studded with coral and cornelian, and their steel as sharp today as on the last time they were plunged into a heart by chieftains in the far Black Mountains of Illyria. On the walls, in a curious butterfly shape, were hung rare purple and blue velvet cloaks, so stiff with fine gold embroidery they could stand alone, left from the days when Serbian pride and power showed itself in dress; with them went heavy silver belts set with manycolored stones. For contrast with the swords I had the traditional woman's weapon, scissors. My collection, made up of specimens some two hundred years old, was unique, I believe. Their golden handles spelled a prayer for victory to Allah. All these things were dear to me both for their intrinsic beauty and because they expressed a living tradition. Best, most valued of all my treasures were my thirteen fine old icons of St. George, the patron saint both of Serbia and of England from the time when the Crusaders brought him back, their prototype, as they returned home across the Balkans from the Holy Land. Lovingly enameled, set with silver, gold, and pearl, and dim with the incense of a thousand candles long burnt out before him, in thirteen attitudes he sat his prancing steed and swung his spear to slay the writhing dragon: St. George, the Fighting Saint of Serbia. Sitting at my window one morning in November I940, I saw a column of marching men passing down my street to the near-by Orthodox church. They were dressed in the handsome black-embroidered brown costume of the Shumadiya peasant. On their heads the black astrakhan cap, the shubara; on their feet the rawhide, upturned opanche, the soundless sandals. Before them they carried black banners, silver fringed, bearing in white and silver the device of a grinning skull above crossed bones. They wore the same device in metal on their breasts, together with, in some cases, rows of decorations. They were bearing their somberly fierce banners to church to be blessed by the priest, and so they were that day unarmed. To call these big men tough-looking is to make an extreme understatement. There was something in the carriage of their heads, the calm yet burning look in their narrow eyes, the slightly stealthy, slightly sinister loose movement of the knees, in the reckless, devil-may-care yet unostentatious, supremely self-reliant swing of the shoulders, which marked them the toughest set of men I had ever laid eyes on. They had no musical instrument of any sort, not even a drum. Little they cared about straight ranks or even about keeping step. No officers marched before or beside them: discipline was obviously a matter for each man himself. The elder men with the largest number of medals seemed a shade tougher and grimmer than the others. They were in the forward ranks. The only honor seemed to be the bearing of the heavy flags. They were all officers, they were all privates-they were brothers. They were the Chetniks, marching. And low, monotonous, hardly more than a mutter-not for these stern men to open their mouths and yell!-like rumble of distant thunder came the song that is to me the greatest marching song on earth: "Ready, now ready, Chetnit brothers! Mighty the coming battle, And on our glorious victory Will rise the sun of Liberty . . ." The song of the Chetniks on the job-the soul of Serbia on the march! When violins are playing, another one Iying aside will sometimes answer, vibrate on a note. Just so my heart sang its answer to those marching men. I remembered that old eagle, Vukosava of the Sanjak mountains, and his blow upon my back. Was this at last what I had been waiting for, unconsciously seeking for ? I had no doubt that it was so. Nothing else mattered. I made up my mind. It is interesting to compare the Chetniks with the Nazis and their everlasting squawking, their robot parades, the blatantly staged mass ceremonies with which they have to keep up their morale. (It is an actual fact that when German soldiers are marching and the order is given to sing, if a man does not shout loud enough he is severely punished!) Chetniks seldom march-almost never when on the job. They drift, as a fox drifts through the brush. Soundless, like the tigers in India, they will make their attack perhaps at fall of night, and next morning be far across the mountains and away. They are the Invisible Army. They are the Silent Front. They have no big "rah-rah" meetings, and no social life in the sense of parties. A man becomes a Chetnik for the single purpose of killing enemies of Serbian freedom with gun and knife. The simple peasants who constitute nine tenths of the force do not need elaborate training. It is bred in their very bones by centuries of inheritance. Alertness, quickness of decision, cunning and speed are theirs by the long process of natural selection-by the fact that men lacking those qualities did not live long enough to propagate, to water down the race. In emergency each man thinks for himself what is best to do and does it. It has to be right, or he isn't a Chetnik-at least not for long! Every peasant born in the heart of Serbia is born a candidate for membership in the brotherhood. Today I have no hesitation in saying that every peasant still alive in certain areas of Serbia is a Chetnik. They have no reserves: every man is all-out. They have no transport: every man is his own means of locomotion, and the distances they can cover on foot are stupendous. For artillery, they have only the guns and ammunition each man can carry on himself. They have no field kitchens: every man carries ten days' rations of hard bread, cheese, and onions done up in a handkerchief. If he comes across something else-corn, a sheep-he is lucky and is, by the law of the land, entitled to take whatever he needs. Every Chetnik must be a whole army in himself. There are many Serbian women in the organization, and they are true Chetniks. They fulfill innumerable vital functions. They forage for food, they look after the weapons, they creep through the army lines and gather information. They are doing it now as I write. And they fight-make no mistake, they fight-and they kill. Some have received high decorations. They turn a sentry's head at the right moment, they poison enemy food, they lay time bombs. And when they must, they use a sharp knife or a gun. Draja Mihailovich, who is today holding open the back door of Europe for the Allies, has been able to do it not least because of the courage and the resourcefulness, the cunning and the strength of Serbian Chetnik women. It happens that I can walk twenty miles a day, day after day, and thirty at a pinch. I proved it. I can ride most things on four legs for longer than the animal can stand it. I proved it. Also I happen to like hard bread and cheese and onions. I was invited to join the Serbian Cavalry. I was also asked to act as observer in the Flying Corps (I had flown my own plane). I preferred to be a Chetnik. A noted member of the force presented me to that old Chetnik leader Voivoda Kosta Pechanats (translated, the Duke Kosta of Pech, spoken of by the foreign correspondents by his family name of Pavlovich). Great and valorous he had been in his past as a fighter in all the recent Balkan wars. Thus I shall always remember the old man, however sad his later fate. Typical of the whole organization were his headquarters. You entered a narrow door into a little courtyard and walked up rickety wooden stairs into a two-room office. What had been sufficient for a hundred years was sufficient now. There, behind a large desk, sat the great old fighter, his left breast covered with row upon row of ribbons, recognitions from his own and many foreign governments of services in war. Voivoda Kosta Pechanats was just a little too old for active fighting, just a little too large from recent years of ease. He was dramatically handsome with the years of adulation he had received. Three walls of the low room were completely covered with pictures and photographs of Serbian fighters old and recent, of Chetnik groups in mountain and field, of crowned heads who were the Voivoda's friends, of lesser men of desperate deeds, among them Princip, who murdered the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and started World War I. These mementos were interspersed with an arsenal of pistols, guns, swords, daggers, and knives. In one corner hung an icon of Saint Sava, an everlasting lamp glimmering before it; in the opposite corner, on a little shelf, the most conspicuous thing in the room: a skull, a real skull, Iying on crossed shinbones. These were the actual bones of a seventeen-year-old Chetnik who died in action against the Bulgarian I.M.R.O. Often this boy's mother came to see the old man, never guessing that the bones she saw were those of her own son. My name was written in a big and well-worn book and I was taken in hand, M.P. serving as my surety and sponsor. (I must remind my readers that the Balkans are still under the German heel. Hence, though I should like to give full names and it seems ungrateful not to do so, it would endanger the lives of my friends and their relatives. Even the initials are incorrect.) Being already a fair shot with a revolver, I was now taught how to use a dagger: not from above the shoulder, as one would expect, but upward under the ribs to reach the heart. Like the western two-gun men, one had to be as quick as lightning, with the balance just right. I practiced, of course, on a hanging bag of sawdust. This was just for unexpected emergencies, as it was soon decided that for my intended function I should have to depend on brain, not brawn. I must also say a word about the poison, concerning which American papers have made elaborate misstatements. It has been widely printed that I gave an oath never to be taken alive, since "all Chetniks commit suicide if captured." That is, of course, simply absurd. No Chetnik is ever taken prisoner if he is known to be a Chetnik. Chetniks neither give nor receive quarter: they are shot on sight. If, however, one is taken alive and is known to be a Chetnik, it can only be for the purpose of forcing information from him, which is always done-not least by the Germans-by torture. If therefore he is captured, certain of his fate, he takes poison to avoid any danger of giving away his comrades as he is mangled to death. To commit suicide when his captors do not know him to be a Chetnik would, of course, be idiotic, would in fact be contrary to his oath, since he might still escape or somehow be useful to his force. I knew one Chetnik personally in Belgrade prison, and there may have been and quite probably were others like him, not known by their captors to be members of the organization. As an American woman I did not seriously fear torture by the Germans and Italians-little did I then know the Nazis! Nevertheless I sewed the poison in the collar of my coat in the usual position, where it can be chewed when the hands are bound. When engaged in intelligence work behind the enemy lines, a Chetnik, needless to say (I am sometimes asked such weird questions), gets rid of his uniform. It has been said by enemies of the Serbs in America that Kosta Pechanats was pro-Axis, that he was then in German pay. This, I know-no one could know better-is absolutely false. His later action, and that of others associated with him, was the result of a tragic paradox: they loved their people more than they loved their country. But Serbia is Serbia because of Serb tradition, and the true bearers of Serb tradition, the Chetniks, loved Serbia more than their own lives. Pechanats erred in that he hoped to save the lives of his people -the lives which they themselves held worthless if preserved only at the price of surrendering their national honor. At last, on the third of March, a cold gloomy day with the first damp but exciting breath of spring blowing gustily through the snowy streets, I stood in that strange little room presided over by a hero's skull. Only four people were present. The Voivoda took down a dagger and drew it from its worn sheath. A pale sun shone on its bright blade as he laid it on the desk. He took down a revolver, not bright but dark and well oiled. He broke it to make sure it was fully loaded. He laid it crosswise on the dagger. I faced the icon and, putting my right hand on the crossed weapons and looking the old Chetnik leader firmly in the eye, repeated after him: "Do smrti za Srbiju, tako mi Bog pomogao [Till death for Serbia, by the help of God]." That was all. There was a murmur of "Amens." We all shook hands warmly, without smiling. Then he took the big old book and drew a line through my name. "Your life," he said, "is now no longer your own: it is given to Serbia." This is the only organization in the world, I think, in which, when you become a member, your name is not put down but crossed out. You must consider yourself as good as dead. How proud I was that day to be admitted to the company of that brotherhood and sisterhood! There have been women Chetniks of Serbian birth but foreign citizenship (married to foreigners) and women of foreign birth but Serb citizenship (married to Serbs), but I am, I was told, the only woman of both foreign birth and foreign nationality ever to be admitted. That evening we had a little celebration. In a small, obscure restaurant where Chetniks foregathered, we had a frugal, quiet meal. There were several of our men, mostly alone, scattered in the room. Once you are a member, you somehow can't mistake them. Though they must have guessed why I was there, not a flicker of greeting passed over their faces. It was correct to have it so. My face was, I hope, as wooden as theirs. I was a Chetnik until death. 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