The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 28. KNIVES AGAINST TANKS TRAIN FOR MOSTAR. MY two nurses and I climbed into the last car, the baggage car, just as it pulled out. Now the pace of events began ominously to quicken. The car was not crowded, and we were the only women. There were groups of men dozing in the corners, reserves who were still trying to rejoin their units, of whose whereabouts they had only the vaguest idea. The train stopped incessantly. At almost every halt at least one man would jump aboard. Instantly everyone sprang up and surrounded the newcomer to listen eagerly to anything he had to tell. Then, when his news was exhausted, he too would collapse, to jump up again to greet the next arrival. Always the same sort of rumors: "Fleets of Allied planes have arrived to the rescue" . . . "Berlin, Budapest, Sofia have been laid flat, burning like Belgrade" . . . "The British are marching up through Macedonia in great force" . . . "Bulgaria is defeated," etc. Early in the morning the tales were all inspiring and the voices loud. But as day drew on and we got deeper into Bosnia, the voices dropped to muttered whispers. At last there were only hunted flashes of dark eyes. Then silence. Disconcerted gloom, like a visible cloud, descended upon us. The eyes of my two girls grew larger, rounder; they kept lifting them to me with a heartbreaking appeal, as if to them I represented in my person the whole power of the Allied arms. So almost exactly two years earlier, during the Italian occupation of Albania, the youth of Scutari had believed that by some magic, with a single word or a twist of my ring, I could call up the whole British Fleet. I squeezed the girl's hands, repeating: "Wait, don't get worried, this is only the beginning. This is only what we must expect." They returned the pressure and tried to smile. Suddenly, in this murk of doubt and fear, there occurred one of those incidents which, because of its pictorial effect and because of its infinitely tragic meaning, etched itself as with burning acid on my memory. A man-or was it a specter ?-stood in the center of the car. He was so tall he seemed to reach the low roof. He stood with heavy shoulders slightly stooped, as go the men who are forever scaling mountains. Gaunt as a scarecrow, his clothes hung in tatters, and his shoeless feet were wrapped in bloody rags. His matted hair, blue-black, hung low into his haggard eyes that glowed with a sort of tigerish light. One look at his broad black eyebrows, curved in a particular manner, and at his eagle nose proved him a pure-blooded Serb of the Black Mountains. On his head the little Montenegrin cap, which is black for mourning, scarlet for blood, and gold for undying hope and loyalty. The apparition was so startling, so fraught with evil omen, that for once no one jumped up: we sat like stone and watched his every movement and expression. He stood a moment looking round into our anxious faces. In a strained voice, yet curiously low, as if speaking more to himself than to us, and panting slightly, he began: "We went out, even those who were not called, like me. We went out although we had no guns. We had knives-most of us-only knives. Our sisters said: 'Stay, you have not been called. Let the Army fight! You have no gun,' they said. 'Stay here!' They hung upon our necks-some of them-and tried to hold us." (Only those who know the extraordinarily close bond between brother and sister in these lands can realize what that plea of a sister meant.) "But our mothers-they rose up and they said: 'We have borne you below our hearts, we have suckled you at our breasts. We have raised you to fight, as your fathers before you fought, for Montenegro.' They said: 'Go out, now, and fight. Fight,' they said, 'as your fathers fought -to keep Tserna Gora free. Go out,' our mothers said, 'go out now and fight, and return as victors-return as victors-or never return again. Death,' our mothers said, 'death is better than slavery."' He actually said those words. And remembering those proud and stern old Serbian women of the Black Mountain Kingdom, I knew he spoke the truth. He paused and drew a deep breath: "We ran with our knives. We jumped on trucks, and ran again southward, to fight the Bulgarians" (he must have gone about a hundred miles southeast toward the Bulgarian frontier). "We came up with our army. They had shot away all their bullets-every one- and they did not know what to do. Our sandals were gone and our feet were bleeding with running. The officers on horseback took the shoes from their own feet and gave them to us. Those officers were good men. There were no more bullets-none. But we Tsernagorci ran on to fight the Bulgarians." A pause and his eyes glittered feverishly. "But there were no Bulgarians. No-there were only big iron monsters-tanks in long rows coming down upon us. And what use-what use are knives against tanks ? "What use are knives against tanks?" he repeated and, his voice rising, slightly thinner, seemed to wait, desperately strained, for an answer-not from us, we didn't exist for him-but from some spirit guide. "So now," he cried, "I cannot say to my mother, 'What use are knives against tanks?'-she will not listen, she will never listen- never! What use are knives against tanks?" he demanded eerily again. "What use-are knives-against tanks?-A gun! A gun! A gun!" he cried desperately. And with a tigerishly liquid movement he sprang forward into the train and was gone. That man, if he is still alive, and hundreds, thousands like him are now, at this moment, fighting under General Mihailovich. They could not return home defeated, for their mothers would have shut the doors in their faces, would not have recognized them any longer as their sons-as did actually happen in a few cases. They are fighting now, as I write, with an inconceivable minimum of equipment, of medical supplies, of shelter, of clothes, of food. Yet they will fight on-be sure they will fight on and on-and on and on- until Serbia is free again, or until they all are dead. But when they return at last to the homes they have suffered such indescribable hardships to free, they will find only little piles of blackened rubble. When they descend again into the once busy, prosperous valleys, they will gaze upon a deathly still, depopulated land. For murderers, robbers, and the pestilence that creeps upon starvation will have been there before them: not one soul left in their humble homes. Through the walls of their desolate dwellings green grass and wild weeds will be growing. Now I knew, or thought I knew, that Allied co-operation had failed, that any hope of help from British troops in the south was definitely gone. I calculated that this man must have gone halfway across Macedonia. But if the tanks were already there, then the Germans had succeeded in their attempt to drive a wedge between Serbia and Greece. So now Serbia was completely cut off from the rest of the world. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel