Land of Death

www.serbia.com

Soiled, torn streets, clouds of smoke and dust, smell of gunpowder,
arsons and rotting human bodies piled on top of each other: this was
the picture of Serbia in the Great War. The courage of this small country
that has stood shoulder to shoulder with the world powers, has
intrigued many. Among them was an American journalist and writer
John Reed, who visited this “land of death”, as he himself named it,
being unaware that he would even take part in a ritual of fraternization
at the end of his journey, at the insistence of a postman from
Obrenovac.

The journey of John Reed was concentrated on the route of Niš –
Belgrade – Kragujevac – Rakovica – Ada Ciganlija – Obrenovac –
Šabac – Prnjavor – Loznica – Gučevo – Krupanj – Zavlaka – Valjevo.
Over the course of his expedition through the tormented country,
Reed made convincing descriptions of landscapes, soldiers, ordinary
people and buildings that even nowadays represent a unique portrayal
of life, death, poverty, as well as courage, dignity, faith and hospitality
of the Serbian people and the army.

Niš, A City Decimated By Typhus
The horrors of war, vicious diseases and death did not bypass Niš, which
was the first “station” for Reed in his war travels. Passing through the
city stricken with typhus, as if a malignant tumor engulfed it, without
a hint of embellishment Reed describes the houses with long, black,
sinister flags, and pale, exhausted faces of prisoners leaning on dirty
blankets and protruding through the window of the hospital, while in
the front – dozens of them lie in the dried mud.
On muddy and plowed streets of Niš, the Austrian prisoners in
uniforms roam freely. Some haul the cart, others dig trenches, and
hundreds of them are idly strolling up and down. Crossing the muddy
Nišava river at the foot of the bulwark of the famous Niš fortress, Reed
sees hundreds of soldiers lounging, sleeping, removing lice and shaking
with fever. Further down the road to Belgrade, John Reed and his
companion, an illustrator – Bordman Robinson, meet the representative
of the Press Bureau Vojislav Jovanović Maramba.

Belgrade, A Quiet City Destroyed By Bombs
Like much of the town, the Belgrade railway station was bombed and
destroyed. Reed, Robinson and Maramba got out at the station in Rakovica,
and travelled in a ramshackle carriage to the city center. Reed
then wrote: “The grass and weeds are growing between the cobblestones,
no one has passed here for half a year, and the guns are completely
silent. The consequences of cannonfire are visible everywhere.
Large holes having 5 meters in diameter gape in the middle of the
street.” A thought that the Austro-Hungarian guns can resume bombardment
at any moment, as they have done dozens of times, was the
constant threat in the air.
Military Academy, Ministry of the army, King’s palace, University
of Belgrade and ordinary houses, sheds, restaurants and hotels were
often without roofs and doors, and window frames without glass were
swaying aimlessly in each building. After touring the trenches built
for Belgrade’s defence, and travelling on a cargo ship “Nebojša” that
had countless loopholes drilled on the sides, they reached the makeshift
firing nests where the soldiers were lying facedown in a muddy
embankment, unshaven, unwashed and gaunt from malnutrition.
Following a meandering and furrowed road, they went further into
the deep interior of Serbia, glancing for the last time at the white city,
which was refusing to surrender.

Mačva and Drina, Havoc Causing Grief
The road led Reed and his companion to the areas where, except soldiers,
men were gone. The vicious disease typhus devastated those
lands. After about a kilometer of walking Reed was able to count one
hundred white crosses on the fences of houses, and each meant that
typhus claimed at least one life in that house. “It seemed that this lush
and fertile land consists of nothing but death and commemoration,”
noted Reed. The landscapes they passed through suffered the most in
bloody battles of 1914.
The train they were traveling in was full of miserable refugees,
mostly women and children who were forced to leave their homes due
to the cruel military attacks of Austria-Hungary. The whole area was
burned, looted, and people were slain. For miles, it was almost impossible
to see neither a bull, nor a man. “Sometimes our train stopped so
that refugees could get off. They were standing right next to the railway
with all their assets packed in a bag over the shoulder and silently
watched the ruins of their country,” wrote Reed.

Gučevo, A Death Valley
Reed presented his strongest condemnation of the war by describing
Gučevo and the huge losses that the Serbian army suffered in
that region. During the second attack the Austrians seized the peak
of Gučevo, and they entrenched there. Under the enemy’s hurricane
fire the Serbs scrambled step by step, until their trenches formed on a
narrow ridge. Then, on the 16 kilometers front, at the very top of the
mountain, one of the most horrific battles in the Great War was fought
– The Battle of the Drina. After 54 days of bloody and difficult struggle,
the Serbs withdrew, only because the third Austrian invasion broke
through their lines in Krupanj.
There were abandoned huts covered with leaves and branches, and
dugouts in which the Serbian army lived for two months in the snow,
all over the forest. The lower parts of the trees were covered with leaves
whilst the top parts looked lifeless. Nine kilometers along the peak of
Gučevo, dead soldiers were stacked, 10,000 of them.