Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-01-28
SERBIAN REFUGEE
CAMP PITCHED IN
MUD AND WATER
1,200 Are Crowded Into Twen-
ty-Five, Ill-Drained and Dis
ease Haunted Tents
SUFFERING is DREADFUL
Have Insufficient Clothes and
Food; Winter Hits Them
Hard
SUFFERING IS DREADFUL

+, spondence of the Associated Press)-l
The temporary Serbian refugee camp
! lies in the vacant lot back of the Rus
sian hospital. For only short time
ago Saloniki was Turkish city, and
! as in all the leading towns of the
+ Ottoman empire each nation with any
important colony had its own hospital.
! its own schools, its own post Office, as
/, it had its own consulate. So there is
a Russian hospital at SalonilSi.
Il 1t is an imposing and well-equip-
Il ped building in an elaborate setting
, OF formal gardens - such as might
, surround the railway station of any
, prosperous American suburban town.
, In contrast, the vacant lot behind the
! hospital grounds is barren, a dump
ing ground, full of mud holes, un-
drained and morose.
Here are pitched some twenty-five
, tents that shelter over twelve hundred
men, women and children whose
whole stock of worldly possessions is
, what they carried with them on their
flight from war-fiayed Serbia. Some
came by train, before it was too late.
They have beds, a trunk or two of
clothing to family-possibly an
American sewing machine. But most
fled afoot in the last hours of Serbia S
agony, tearing their peasant hearts
reluctantly from their native soil.
They have the clothes they stand in.
between two or three.
From the inside, the canvas of the
oval tents shows yellow and Opaque,
under the rain of every day. The
ground Is wet with the continual
coming and going of muddy feet, shod
only with flimsy sandels. Badly gut
tered around the edges the canvas
walls of the tents let tiny rivulets
trickle across the floor. In some, the
women, haunting the allies docks and
Nfae1F NaWNC laN~ L. e..
torn from box tops. These nailed to-
gether serve to raise sleeping blankets
an inch or two above the ground.
Luxury. The greater part have
spread their wet blankets on the wet
earth.
| The men in the camp by day are
Iold-those too old to fight. Or they
are the manned relics of battle. The
Serbs who can fight did not fee. They
are with what is left of their coun-
try's army, still fighting in the noun
tains of Albania somewhere, or on the
Iborderland of Greece. The women do
not know where they are. They do
not even know If they live. And if
they be dead, they will never know
where they died-nor where they lie
buried.
misery indescribable. Around their
sides, in the pouring rain, feeble old
men clad in patched rags seek to dam
the torrents that continually break
Through the earth dykes and seep into
the tents. Others lie on he ground
within, wrapped in blankets, too |
wretched to move. The hospital is |
full of the more seriously ailing i
there is no room for those who are |
simply slightly ill, or weary.
At one end of a tent. seated on a |
petroleum box as if enthroned, is a |
hnv Hrox
her head. She is rocking to and fro, |
moaning. From time to time she |
buries her face in the torn rag of |
what was once a pillow slip, held |
clutched in her lap. Her shoulders |
shake with the rythm of expressed |
grief. Old women, squatting on the |
ground about her in a semicircle at |
little distance tumble at inconsequent /
tasks, chattering like a Greek chorus. |
No one speaks to her Only occasion |
ally the children come and stand star !
ing with the cruel curiosity of youth !
whispering among themselves.
Mother Goes Mad
Her baby was ill when she left |
Ghevgnei a week ago. There was |
no food for him on the journey afoot |
The bitter wind of the Vardar Valley |
bit through the inadequate shawl |
The boy died at last in her arms. She |
had to bury him there, in a shallow
Ill
Such fairly able-bodied men as
there are among the refugees are en- |
ployed by the allied armies in con- |
struction work, on the Notifications |
now hurriedly building around |
Saloniki. The French pay them four |
francs day, the British three =
princely wages. that help the little |
colony vastly. Meanwhile the Russian
relief committee has been busily at
work. A hundred and fifteen thou
sand drachmaes have been collected
la large part of the sum in Mace
donia itself-wherewith to feed and
clothe the more destitute. Princess
Demidof, the wife of the Russian
minister at Athens, is head of the
work, herself on the ground directing
everything with the assistance of the
Russian Consul at Saloniti. Her work
is the immediate relief of those whose
J misery cannot wait the long process
of the establishment of an elaborate
permanent refugee camp at Volo pro-
, jected by the British Serbian Relief
Committee
Night falls. The few men creep
in from their work on the French and
British trenches, covered with mud.
The lamp, hanging on a string from
the middle of the tent, is lit. A few
soldiers, Serbians, who have also been
at work, stroll in, followed by a Ser
bian policeman or two, who them
selves are the sole guardians of the
law in their own camp. The mass of
them heats up the tent notwithstand-
ing the dampness. Four unearth from
q corner curious, wierd-shaped in
struments-a huge bass viol that is
played with a pick, not a bow; a
mandolin strung, however, like a
guitar; a guitar-shaped instrument
whose doubled strings are those of
mandolin, finally tiny instrument no
bigger than a porridge bowl, with
long neck and a plaintive tenor voice
that sings the melody. The music be-
gins-the primitive music of a simple
people, in the minor, with poignant
reiterations.
Some one in the shadow starts to
sing softly. Others join, one by one
: the infinitely sad voices of those to
whom music is alone left. Songs,
cousin to the minor harmonies of the
Russian folk songs; Slav songs, race
songs-the voice of a people, one and
indomitable.
| And far at the end of the tent in |
the semidarkness, still rocking to and |
fro. to the beat of the music now, the
mother sits alone accustoming her
arms to their loneliness for the babv
she left by the somber road from |
: Serbia.