Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-04-21
AMERICAN SAW
$4,000 MEN DIE
IN SERB RETREAT
Were Shot, Killed, Robbed and
Murdered Every Step
of Way


spondence of The Associated Press) -
Henry Haller formerly of the Fifth
United States Cavalry, who was one
of the few Americans in the Serbian
retreat, declares that during the jour
ney to Podgoritza in Montenegro in
four days snow storm more than
fifty thousand men died.
They died so fast" he said, that
they fell every few yards all along
the road. The wagons and carts went
right over their bodies. Nobody
thought of trying to turn out of the
way, but there were so many they
could not but drive over them. The
roads were full of mudholes. At one
place saw no less than seventeen
horses dying in one immense puddle,
unable to pull themselves out.
Il saw hundreds ana thousands of
ragged men, with their feet swollen
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. 1t would
not have been any use. Besides they
were too far gone, to know what they
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 nature
of the country we were IraversinA
with no shelter for but a compara-
lively few of us. There were even no
forests where we might have felled
trees and built temporary quarters.
Our fires for the most part were small,
with barely enough wood to heat
water"
Haller, who was on a visit to Buda-
pest when the war began, enlisted in
the Austrian army and was serving as
bugler when, six months later, he
was taken prisoner by the Serbs and
then finally was marched with $1,000
other Austrian soldiers across the
mountains into Albania and there
turned loose on the shores of the
Adriatic to fight for life against
cholera, fever and starvation"
I'VE were supposed to have started
on that retreat" said Haller, with a
Serb army of over two hundred thou
sand men and about sevenry-five thou
sand Austrian prisoners. Not many
more than a hundred ana nifty thou
sand of the whole lot got over the
mountains. 1t was not because the
Austrians or the Bulgarians pursued
us, however, with much activity. We
died merely because of disease, hun
ger and exhaustion.
THE worst part of the Journey he
gan at the Albanian frontier. The
Albanians have in times past been
badly treated by the Serbs, and they
took this chance to square old scores.
They shot, killed, robbed ana murder
ed us at every step of the way. For
instance, at Linn, some Serb officers
and com pany of stragglers on horse
back were met in the middle of the
road by few peasants ana ordered to
give up their horses and their money.
1t 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, kI1ring most of
the Serbs.
The food problem was terrific even
in Albania. A half pound of bread
was sold at ten dinars, about two dol
lars. As | had a little money AT
| Sturza I bought five pounds of Okla
beans. Had ] not been able to get these
| beans | would to-day be a dead man.
| had just said to myself: I can't go
any further when I persuaded a
peasant woman to sell me the beans.
I ate beans twice day making sort
| OF soup out OF them, putting in n little
salt At that 1 was far luckier than
the fellows who had to boil harness
| leather for five or six hours in order
to make the hot water taste like soup.
] saw men act like savages, eating
pieces of brown paper.
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.
have seen such men, gaunt, staggering
along, half-naked, with a rev 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, straighten up for a
moment near one of the womens carts
and smilingly tender their last mouth
ful 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
These poor women in their fight from
their homes had in many cases been
unable to bring enough clothes to
cover them. Often they were without
stockings or underskirts, or hats or
shawls or cloaks. | have seen time
and time again some freezing soldiers
take off his overcoat and force 1t upon
some one of these women, and seem
almost ashamed to look upon her
shivering body as he made the offer.
Then he would search along the road
for hours until he was able to strip
some dead man of his clothes to re-
place that which he had so freely
given"
What Haller regarded as his most
remarkable experience was the sight
Of mad soldier dying from starva-
ton. Clothed only in ragged un-
dershirt he was running barefoot
down a snow-covered Albanian road,
straight as an arrow, believing as he
ram" he said. HE ran on and on
down that road, seeing nothing, vet
wonderfully avoiding stumbling over
the bodies of other dead and dying
soldiers and the meat-stripped car
casses of the army horses which
blocked the way Suffering intensely
as I myself was, I turned and watched
this strange figure. At last a half
mile down the road he pitched for
ward and as 7 passed him later saw
he was stone dead.
"Other than that incident there Is
one other that will stick IN my mem
ory so long as I live" said Haller.
This was the hanging of a Serp
mother by the Austrian troops before
/ was made a prisoner. We were
marching across a rough country near
Lochnizter when we stopped near a
wayside hut at its spring to get n
drink. Colonel He'll of our regiment
also went to get a drink. AS he rose
from the spring a shot came from the
hl1t That shot was f1rad h1y a Nc