Page 42 - Stradanje i humanizam

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200,000 people with livestock“. Having invaded it, Austro-Hungarian military authorities saw many
of these refugees in Serbia and in their communications of 1916 sought instructions on how to treat
them. When the Austro-Hungarian army crossed the Drina and the Sava and ruthlessly murdered
civilians pillaging their property, a huge wave of refugees – domicile and those who had fled and
temporarily settled in Serbia – started to move. All the roads of refugees converged mostly in Valjevo
that kept growing with the received and wounded soldiers in hospitals, the army that headed for the
frontline, civilians... there were tens of thousands of souls in the city and around it always. During the
following months, immediately before and after the Battle of Kolubara, this number was much higher,
exceeding 100,000 persons at times. Not having any more accommodation in the city and in the village
houses, the refugees built shed settlements around the city. The majority of them did not want to go
inland hoping the war would stop and they would return to their hearths. The municipal authorities
invested superhuman efforts to ensure bread for all at the least. Bakeries and all the city services worked
almost non stop. The arrival of Supreme Command with the accompanying services, and of regent
Aleksandar on 15 August 1914, additionally changed the already dramatic life of the city. The Supreme
Command was placed in the building of today's Basic Court.
Though general knowledge that the issue of unification of South Slavs would be solved by the war
between Serbia – that avoided it – and Austria-Hungary that coveted it, it could not have come at a
worse time for the former. Exhausted by the Balkan wars and the high number of killed soldiers, with
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ruined military equipment and medical service, it was completely financially impoverished. Contrary
to it, Аustro-Hungarian monarchy with some 50 million inhabitants and encouraged by Germany
which wanted to secure its ”Road to the East“ and safe transport of petroleum from Mesopotamia to
Berlin, plunged into the war with Serbia quite heedlessly. Explaining the background of the conflict, in
his call to war the Emperor Franz Joseph stated that Austria-Hungary had ”invoked the nice right of the
stronger party“ on declaration of annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is with this same ”right“ that
it started the war against Serbia in order to remove the real danger from breaking of the state once and
for all. As we shall later see, the idea was not to defeat Serbia with military means but to remove this
danger forever by totally demolishing its economy and physically destroying or reducing at the
minimum its population. In addition, one must take into account the fact that the Austro-Hungarian
authorities possessed plans on annexation of Podrinje and Mačva to Austria-Hungary, and so set about
ethnical cleansing of these areas from the Serbs. A Czech soldier wrote in his diary that a military
commander had been permitted on 19 August 1914 to shoot 80 old men, men and primarily ”very young
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boys“. Exonerated from any punishment and then encouraged to kill innocent civilian population, the
Austro-Hungarian soldiers got the deserved name ”army of murderers“.
No matter to what extent had the Government, economy, medical provisions and the army itself
been sick prepared for the war – mostly due to the big losses incurred in the Balkan wars and the
increasing costs of organising the newly-liberated areas, Serbia had two advantages that the Austro-
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Hungarian command did not count with. One of them was a trained and extremely experienced Serbian
army and the second, the incontestable patriotism of the population. In the national enthusiasm, perhaps
the greatest that the Serbs ever had, at the time when the delighted youth in the cities and almost every
village founded reading rooms and different education and cultural associations, it was difficult to find a
citizen unwilling to sacrifice himself for the liberation of yet not liberated compatriots. It was a time
when the Serbian peoples gave or were starting to give their big contribution to global culture and
science through individuals such as Nikola Tesla, Mihailo Pupin, Jovan Cvijić, Ivo Andrić, Milutin
Milanković, Nikolaj Velimirović and many others.
The Austro-Hungarian command founded Balkan Army comprised of the Fifth and the Sixth Army
and – during the Battle of Cer also the Second Army – all under the command of Oskar Potiorek.
Commanding almost one half of the entire Austro-Hungarian army and its highest quality and elite
units, the general conviction was that they would easily take Valjevo by the birthday of Franz Joseph on
18 August 1914. They counted with the main Serbian forces being deployed in the direction of the
Danube and the Sava and on absence of any substantial organised resistance. With the fall of Valjevo
and a breakthrough towards Kragujevac and Niš, Serbia would surrender and the war in the Balkans
would end.
Valjevo was not supposed to become a big medical centre, and the place where the Supreme
Command of the Serbian Army would be accommodated as it was believed that only minor battles
would be waged in the direction towards the Drina and the Sava. It would turn out that big battles and
violence of the enemy soldiers were the fiercest from that direction, and led to several months of
national tragedy the epicenter of which was in this city. Tens of thousands of refugees and the wounded
Serbian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers and prisoners, each with their own personal drama, partook in a
general Calvary of a nation and its resurrection almost every day.
The city had already had ample experience with the organisation and treatment of the wounded, for
Valjevo had treated the wounded transported by trains to its hospitals from Kosovo and Macedonia
aduring the Balkan wars. Two hospitals existed in this city even before these wars: the District Hospital
for the Civilians and the permanent Drina Military Hospital for the army personnel. The Military
Hospital was located in Pop Lukina street where the directorate of the forested lands ”Boranja“ and the
Valjevo ”Erozija“ with several Auxiliary buildings are situated today. Valjevo District Hospital was on
the same street in what is today the building of Inter-Municipal Historical Archives and part of the
buildings where the military first aid unit is located. In the plans drawn by the first aid unit in early 1914,
in case of war Valjevo could house 2210 hospital beds with the public institutions serving as hospitals.
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The beginning of war changed these plans. First because far less casualties were expected as the main
attack was not forseen to come from the direction of the Drina and second, as some of the plans for
establishment of Auxiliary hospitals had to be relinquished. For instance, the building of the District
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