And finally, on August 12, 1914, the message flashed over the wires
that the outposts had seen boats in movement, full of soldiers,
behind an island on the Drina, opposite Loznitza. Near that town,
and in fact along the whole lower course of the Drina, the river
has frequently changed its channel, thus cutting out numerous small
islands, which would serve as a screen to the movements of troops
contemplating a crossing. Pontoon bridges could be built on the
farther side of almost any of these islands without being observed
from the other shore. This was exactly what the Austrians were
doing.
Suddenly, on August 12, 1914, there came a burst of rifle fire
and the boom of heavy field guns, and a fleet of barges, under
cover of this fire, emerged from around both ends of one of these
islands and made for the Serbian shore. The two battalions of Third
Reserve Serbians, stationed there as an outpost, trained their
old De Bange field guns, of which they had two batteries, on the
oncoming swarms and began firing. But the Austrian fire became
heavier and heavier; a blast of steel pellets and shells swept
through the cornfields and the plum orchards, tearing through the
streets of the village and crumpling up the houses. The breastworks
of the small Serbian detachment were literally the center of a
continuous explosion of shells.
When a full tenth of their number lay dead or disabled, the Serbians
began retiring across the cornfields and up the slopes leading
to the heights behind Losnitza.
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