New Britain herald., 1916-03-24

ragged HlS1l, WIlQ tQ0lT 1OSI SW OilClI ! too much to wear shoes or to walk on them, crawling along for miles on their hands and knees through the binding snow, finally stopping and dying soon afterwards. They never made any appeals for help. It wouldn't have been any use. Besides, they were too far gone, to know what l they were about, that were dying. Their last effort to keep going was merely a mechanical operation. Of course the great mortality all along our route was due to the barren na- ture of the country we were travelling with no shelter for but a compara- lively few of us There were even no l forests where We might have fellcd | trees and build temporary quarters l Our fires for the most part were small with barely enough wood to | heat water"
 5O,OOO AuStrians.
 Haller, who was on q visit to Buda- pest when the war began, enlisted in | the Austrian army and was serving as 1 a bugler when, six months later, he 1 was taken prisoner by the Serbs and 1 then finally was marched with 75,0OO 1 other Austrian soldiers across the mountains into Albania and there l turned loose on the shores of the | Adriatic to fight for life against chol- , era, fever and Starvat:On."
 We were supposed to have started 1 on that retreat" said Haller with d Serb army of over two hundred thous- and men and about scTenty-tiVc thous- and Austrian prisoners. Not many I1o r1H and of the whole It got over the mountains. It was rot because the ] Austrians or the Bulsarians pursued us, however, with much activity. We died merely becauS of disease, hun ger and exhaustion.
 Murdere By Albanians.
 "The worst part of the journey be- gan at the Albanian frontier. AL | banians have in times past been badly treated by the Serbs, and they took this chance to suare old scores. They shot, killed, robbed, and murdered us at every step of the way. For instance, at Linn, some Serb officers and a company of stragglcrs on horseback were met in the m1Gd1e of the road by few peasants and ordered to give up their horses and their money. It was plain highway robbery and they refused. The peasants ran away and within a couple of minutes more than a thousand shots were fired out of the bushy hillside, killing most of the Serbs.
 "The food problem was terrific even in Albania A half pound of bread was sold at ten dinars about two 1o1I To Sturza I bought five pounds Of oka beans. Had I not been able to get these beans, I would today be a dead man. I had just said to myeslf: I can't go any further when persuad- l ed a peasant woman to sell me the beans. 1 ate beans twice d day making a sort of soup out of them putting in a little salt. Al that [ was far 1uckier than the fellows who had to boil harness leather for five Or six hours in order to make the hot water taste like soup. I saw men act like savages, eating pieces of brown paper
 Heroic to Women.
 There were perhaps not more than two thousand women among the re- treating horde with Us and it is a fact worth recording that they were kindly treated and given whatever comforts were available by soldiers who were otherwise dead to every feeling. I have seen such men, gaunt, staggering along, half-naked, with few pieces of cloth for shoes, unable to speak, with barely strength left to stop near a dying horse and cut a stringy steak from it's flank, l straighten up for a moment near one of the women's carts and smilingly tender their last mouthful Of food to some of the women.
 "The treatment of the women on ! this dreadful retreat was to me the ! most wonderful, the most moving. the most heroic part of the whole retreat. 1 These poor women in their flight from their homes had in many cases been unable to bring enough clothes to cover them. Often they were with out stockings or underskirts, or hats i or shawls or cloaks. I have seen time and time again some freezing sol l diers take off his overcoat and force it upon some one of these WOmen and 1 seem almost ashamed to look upon her shivering body as he made the offer. Then he would search along l to strip some dead man of his clothes l to replace that which he had so freely | given.'
 What Haller regarded as his most