The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 29. TREASON AND AMBUSH OTHER TRAINS began to meet and pass us with all sorts of war material. And then one to which there clung first one or two, then groups, of careless, disheveled soldiers, laughing, skylarking, some evidently drunk. As we passed at snail's pace they cried out to us tauntingly, triumphantly, waving their arms. The men in our car crowded to the windows and replied sharply. Sneers and raucous laughter answered and rude motions were made. At first I couldn't understand, couldn't believe. But quickly it became certain: those soldiers were Croatians-they were going home. "Go home," they yelled, "you Serbs, you something-something Serbs. Go home, the war is over. The Germans have won-hurrah, hurrah! Croatia is free, we are going home. The blankety-blank Serbs are beaten, beaten, beaten, the war is over. We are going home!" There were a number of Croats in our car, simple men. The Serbs came from the windows and sat down, amazed, thinking they could hardly be awake. The Croats remained standing. Their chests began to swell. They gave each other sly, triumphant looks, exchanged muttered words. They turned and regarded us with bold impertinence. "Ha, the English," they chuckled contemptuously, staring at me. They began to look really ugly. After this had happened three times and the passing trains were crowded with these obvious deserters, the atmosphere in our car became electrical. The Serbs began to mutter and look ugly too. I regretted that I had put my bulky automatic in my bag, but I thought it best to sit quietly as if unconcerned. My girls seemed hardly to breathe. With a crash we stopped again, this time in the middle of a small town. The prefecture or town hall directly opposite and all the surrounding houses were gaily decorated with flags: but they were Yugoslav flags turned upside-down to become Croatian flags. Just as we stopped, the mayor of the town, with a large document in his hand, stepped out onto the beflagged balcony and began to read a proclamation to a crowd below. We three sat still, but everyone else jumped out of our car and ran over to listen. Wild cheers broke out, and they came pelting back. Great chatter now ensued, and I heard the dumfounding news that Ante Pavelich, the well-known Croatian thug and international intriguer who had been paid by Mussolini to arrange the murder of King Alexander-that Ante Pavelich had proclaimed Croatia an Independent Kingdom, an ally of the Axis, and himself as king. Pavelich king? I wanted to shout with laughter, not guessing then the chaos of misery and horror that wretched sadist was to bring upon his land. The statement was repeated to me several times. Pavelich may or may not have actually proclaimed himself king: in any case he did not remain a king for more than a week at most. Then the Italians took over. The Croats in the car had managed to secure some bottles, and our position was now becoming really serious. I noted gratefully that in settling down again in sullen silence some of the Serbs got in front of us. Early in the day I had noticed a well-dressed man at the other end of the car. I had expected he would come and speak to me, but he was careful not to do so. I noticed he spoke to no one. Several times, however, he had given me anxious glances and nodded slightly as if to indicate he was a friend. Now I heard a whisper beside me: "You can't stay here. Those men will soon be drunk, and your uniform infuriates them. When we try to protect you and your girls there will be bloodshed." It was the well-dressed man speaking perfect English. "What had we better do ?" I whispered. "We are near Mostar, and many people will get out. I'll go forward now and try to push a place for you to stand until we stop. You can trust me. Follow me almost immediately!" He was gone. I told the girls. Quietly we got up, stooped to take our bundles, and gently edged toward the forward door. Our friend was in the corridor of the next car. By firmly pushing people aside he got us through to the door of a first-class compartment in which three people were preparing to leave. As the train slowed up they grabbed their bags and came out, and quickly we slipped into their places. Just as the train stopped there was a heavy volley of firing near the station. General consternation-and people sprang pell-mell from the train. Our friend said he would try to find out what was going on and left us. Almost at once he was back, sat down very quietly, and said there was no knowing what was happening. Another volley of firing, more scattered and prolonged. Immediately on securing our seats I had undone my sleeping bag, taken out my automatic and put it in my jacket pocket. The train stood as if taking root. Burst after burst of machine-gun firing. Now a soldier with rifle and fixed bayonet went through the car, bawling that no one must leave the train. Two men slipped breathlessly into the compartment and sat down. They were Montenegrin gentlemen of about thirty, tall and healthy-looking, but fat and soft. I knew them both by sight from Cetinje. One was a lawyer, the other a businessman. They looked scared to death. Again and again the rat-tat-tat of machine guns, sometimes nearer, sometimes farther off. It was obvious the town was being fought for. But by whom? Which way was it going? Our lives might depend on the answer. We sat turned, as it were, into ears. An hour pass-it seemed a week. I was terribly thirsty, and so were my girls. How I regret that thirst now! It cost the life of a kindly friend in need. But perhaps-such is the beastliness of war-perhaps it was just as well. Still the train stood. The sun had set and the firing seemed to be dying down. The strain made our throats dry. We got thirstier and thirstier. I mentioned it to our friend. Instantly he said he would try to get us some water. One of the men had an empty bottle. Our friend took it and, in spite of my protests, went out. I watched him anxiously as he ran over the neighboring rails in the gathering darkness between two sheds just opposite. A few minutes later he reappeared, running. There was a volley and he fell, not to move again. Two soldiers came and dragged away the body. Soon two soldiers appeared in the corridor. One came in and asked which was the man's luggage-they seemed to know exactly in which compartment he had been. There were, of course, no lights in the car, and when the one who came in saw me he hesitated as if taken aback and gave me a somber, undecided look. Then he took our dead friend's briefcase and, without speaking to his companion, they both departed. Who was our mysterious friend? The riddle can be answered in two ways, but I fear the weight of evidence is against him. However, he was not a coward. And the thought that an enemy was killed trying to get me a drink of water-even if that was only an excuse-is not a pleasant one. Still the train stood immovable. We had now been there more than two hours. It was completely dark. There were sporadic explosions of firing in the town. Suddenly there came a gentle tap-tap on the window. I peered out. Dimly a face in Flying Corps cap looked up-who but our sergeant friend of yesterday! I got the window down. "Listen," he said, speaking very quickly, "this train is likely to be attacked by the Croats towards the border of Herzegovina. There is a mutiny of Croats here, and we have orders to remain. Do you wish to stay with us?" I said I for one had to go on, but I left the girls free to do as they liked. They decided to stick with me. "Very well then," he replied coolly, "I advise you to pile your baggage in the window. When firing starts lie down on the floor. Good luck!" And, after squeezing our hands affectionately, he faded into the night. Our two fine gentlemen now began feverishly to pull down their bags to pile them in the window. But this was too much. If something was going to happen I was at least going to see what it was and where we were. I spoke sharply and the bags went back on the racks. But one man actually tried with shaking fingers to draw the thin silk curtains to hide us-in a completely unlighted train! Two more men had softly insinuated themselves into our compartment. All now began silently to pray and to cross themselves. Suddenly there was heavy trampling in the corridor as a line of soldiers took their places; we could hear the dull thud of grounded rifles. Towards midnight we suddenly discovered that we were softly moving. My two acquaintances, more at ease, began to tell me what news they had heard. It was all bad-they were like that-but the worst for me was about Skoplye. Skoplye, the half-Mohammedan old capital of Macedonia, sitting grandly on both banks of the beautiful Vardar River and almost equidistant from the Bulgarian, the Albanian, and the Greek borders, was the chief Serbian air base. It had drawn, of course, the full weight of the German attack. It was, they said, completely smashed and blasted, and as the inhabitants fled from their crowded, narrow streets, not less than ten thousand of them had been machine-gunned from the air. I thought of the lovely times I had had in Skoplye, of the beauty of its mosques and minarets, its fine museums and its antique treasures -never again to be replaced, since the town would surely be completely looted. But most of all I thought of M.P.-of all my friends, the airmen. So many, almost all of them, I knew. When we fore gathered before they left for Skoplye, they had begged me to come with them to act as aerial observer. I could well imagine their frantic, wild despair at the pitiful uselessness of their own little obsolete planes against the crushing force of the huge German bombers. Most of them now were dead, my acquaintances whispered, many buried alive on the airfield. As we passed in darkness through the starlit night, my bitterest tears fell slowly, unquenchably, for a grief I knew would never be assuaged. Suddenly a sharp burst of firing. The train jerked to a stop. Our soldiers, yelling raucous curses at the Croats, trampled down the corridor, jumped out and down the embankment. Violent firing continued for ten or fifteen minutes. I could watch the flashes of the guns as our Serbs hunted the traitors among the trees and shrubs along the riverbank. I felt ridiculously baffled and helpless, realizing that with my wretched automatic I should be more in the way than useful out there. The ambushers dispersed, our soldiers jumped back into the train and it started up again. These attackers were Croat soldiers of the Yugoslav Army. They were certainly not members of the Ustashi, Pavelich's Italian-paid organization of thugs who had entered Croatia with him far to the north four days before. These ambushers were members of the armed forces of the Yugoslav Crown, traitors to their oath of allegiance, who had deliberately planned and were now executing, not passive, but active treachery upon their brother soldiers. I was soon to hear that such attacks had taken place all over Yugoslavia. Without question they were carefully planned beforehand and directed by Croat officers of the Yugoslav Army. It is a sad fact that Yugoslavia, of all the small nations of Europe, is the only one in which a large portion of her army with its regular officers turned traitor to their oaths and, going over to the enemy, deliberately set out to kill those who remained loyal. To say, as Croat propagandists in America have said, that the Ustashi were alone responsible for the horrors that broke out immediately in Yugoslavia is, quite simply, a falsehood. Pavelich's force of terrorists consisted at the very outside of one thousand men when he arrived on April 7 in Croatia, the northwest province of Yugoslavia. It is absurd to suggest that in four days he had been able to spread his men, even thinly, over the whole country and to organize and carry out these attacks. Serbs abroad felt bitterly ashamed at the quick collapse of Yugoslavia. But the explanation is clear, and it is not discreditable-to the Serbs. That many Croats, both educated and simple, were revolted by the action of their countrymen, I know. That I was twice indebted to Croats for acts of kindness if not the saving of my life, I acknowledge with gratitude. But facts are facts, and it is both unjust and dangerous to conceal them, since the truth is the only sound guide of action. The principal reason why Yugoslavia collapsed so quickly is that every Serbian officer had momentarily to expect to be shot in the back by his Croatian soldiers, and hundreds were so shot. A total of I,679 officers representing 95 per cent of the Croat officers in the Yugoslav Army, who had sworn to protect their king and country, proved traitors to their oath and went over to the enemy. The detailed figures, as given by the official gazette of the Independent State of Croatia, include II generals, 4 admirals, 52 colonels, 73 lieutenant colonels, 68 captains, and 72 naval captains and officers; also I,342 non-commissioned officers, aviation specialists, and mechanics. Letters have been published in Croat papers in which Croat officers of high rank with the most cynical brutality bragged that they had married Serbian girls of influential family with the single purpose of getting themselves into key positions for more effective treachery: so long and so well had the thing been planned. Of the 224,000 Yugoslav prisoners of war taken into Germany, less than 2 per cent were Croats, and to them honor, for they only had to announce that they were Croats to be released at once. Of the 14,000 Serb officers who, if they agreed to submit to Germany, were offered their freedom to return home to their families, only 800 accepted, and most of them have been retaken and killed. Three times in two hours our train was attacked by the traitors in the same way and with the same result. And each time, while the two girls sat immovable as little mushrooms, the behavior of our two foreign-educated, denatured Montenegrins was a sight to see. They fell down flat, like overripe stalks of wheat crushed by a storm. Their faces blanched, their breath stopped with fear. The third man, a simple fellow, remained quite stolid, but the fourth had disappeared. He was discovered lying across the door of the compartment, his head under one seat, his feet under the other, where he apparently had lain all the time in the dirt! Between the attacks, we were given the strange and beautiful experience of passing silently, in an unlit train, down the famous Neretva Valley. The foaming river, its rapids dancing as they caught the slowly rising glow of the moonlight, curved now near, now far, from our course. Soft, unreal silhouettes of darkened villages, of mosques and graceful minarets, of gnarled old fig trees, were printed for a moment black against a sky thick-sown with glorious southern stars. Far in the background towered a long shoulder of snow-capped mountains. And over all there sailed, calm above man's fury, a delicate young moon. I dozed to wake with a violent start as the train stopped with a crash. This time there was very heavy close firing along the whole train. The put-put-put of machine guns hammered while loud voices outside yelled that everyone was to get out or the train would be blown up. Crashing of glass and deafening explosions followed as our men fired from the corridor. Two soldiers ran into our compartment and, lying on top of me, struggled to pull the window down. This time I might get into action-there would be wounded men unable to use their rifles. Could I get one) I reached the door, and just as I stepped heavily on our human earthworm, the train started up with a terrific jar, throwing us all across the compartment. Away it tore through the night, a thick shower of sparks flying past the window. Firing and yells died away behind us. A few minutes more of wondering if we should cross a mine and fly into the air. Then the train gradually slowed down to its old pace. I settled back and fell into a heavy sleep. When I awoke it was bright day and we were amidst wild and savage scenery, totally uninhabited. Tumbling, soaring mountains were reflected in the wide lakes into which the Neretva spreads before it rushes out into the Adriatic. This was Ullyria. It seemed as untouched by man as the foothills of the Rocky Mountains were before the trappers came. Our soldiers were gone. At Gabela, it appeared, having received reinforcements, they had returned to deal with the ambushers and to help crush the revolt in Mostar. The airfield of Mostar, it appeared, was under the command of Colonel Yakov Makiedo, a Croat. Immediately the revolt started he ordered all Yugoslav insignia removed from the uniforms of the officers under his command, whom he ordered to return home. This officer is now Master of Ceremonies at the Court of Ante Pavelich, the leader of the Independent State of Croatia, who keeps up a regal style! Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel