IN A BOMBARDED TOWN MONASTIR (Bitola) - December 12, 1916.

I am in Bitolj - Monastir, which the Allies have retaken from the Bulgaro - Germans on November 19th.

It is an open town, in no way fortified, and all military positions lie well outside its radius. Yet, since they have lost this town, the Bulgaro - Germans have not ceased to bombard it with guns and from aeroplanes. It is true that they have aimed specially at the outskirts and entrances of the town, where they might assume the presence of encampments or artillery positions.
A few days ago, how- ever, they changed their tactics. They have taken to sending their shrapnel full into the town, and since yesterday they have bombarded the centre of the town with large 210 shells. All the same, there is a paragraph in the Hague Convention of 1907, signed by the Central Empires, which formally forbids the bombardment of open towns.
But this Hague Convention is a scrap of paper which has been torn up by them like every other similar treaty.
I was roused this morning in my private house in the heart of Monastir, and far from every military establishment, by an appalling noise. A large enemy shell had wrecked a house quite close to mine. This first shell was followed by a dozen others which fell all round my house, causing a perfect hail of stones and shards of metal to descend upon our roof and walls. After this, the shells fell further off and finally, after a bombardment of about an hour, there came comparative silence, broken only from time to time by the " dry " sound of shrapnel exploding in the streets and public squares.
The inhabitants had " gone to earth " in their cellars, or rather, in what they call cellars, i.e. ordinary basements, not vaulted, but merely provided with a ceiling of boards.
A large 210 shell, such as those employed by the Bulgaro-Germans in bombarding Bitolj, penetrates them like a pat of butter after having cut through the whole of that flimsy construction which goes by the name of a stone house in the East. But in the meantime these " cellars " give at least a semblance of safety to this terrified population of old men, women, and children, and that is worth much in itself.

Many of the inhabitants of Monastir have taken shelter in the churches, which they believe to be safe from enemy projectiles, and day and night these places of worship are crowded with people who fancy they can escape death by making themselves as small as possible. 

I am profiting by the first lull to go out and make note of the damage. Only soldiers inured to " marmites " are walking calmly about the streets. Every now and again we meet a stretcher borne by two men. Upon it lies the body of some woman or child, all covered with blood and followed by a small knot of disconsolate relations.

These are the victims of Bulgaro-German disregard of the conventions and laws of war, and they are being taken to the Greek hospital. 

Here is a handsome building pierced from roof to cellar by a shell and with every window broken. I go in, and in the cellar, I find a great pool of blood. A mother had taken refuge here with her three children. She had an infant at her breast, and her two bigger babies had timidly hidden in her skirts. She was comforting them, telling them that they were safe in the cellar, when a great 210 shell came and wiped out four innocent lives.

I am now in front of the French hospital. I find them removing in haste. The shell-bursts had disturbed the surgeons in the middle of their work in the operating theatre. They are going to take up their abode in the cellars of the Greek hospital proper cellars, these, with vaulted ceilings.
The entrance to the last-named hospital is packed with people, and some of them are weeping distractedly.

A tall youth, a college student, timidly asks one of the male nurses who happens to be passing : 
" Those two young girls, are they very seriously injured ? "
Greatly embarrassed, the kindly nurse-Tommy replies :
" I'm afraid they won't live."
But his voice betrays the fact that they have already passed away.
" They were my sisters," says the college student sadly, and he goes away, sobbing. 

The bombardment begins again.
The few people who had ventured out into the street precipitately return to their " cellars." As for me, I resume my occupation of " keeping tally at the targets " from my window, which overlooks a large part of the town.
Again our house seems to attract the projectiles.
Houses are being hit all round us.
One shell falls within ten yards of me, and I take the opportunity to photograph the burst.
It is now noon ;
I must go out to lunch near by, at the Serbian officers' mess.
I go down the deserted street, where I meet nobody but a small boy who, in the midst of shell- bursts, offers Serbian papers to non-existent passers-by.
" Pravda,"
" Velika Srbija ! "
l cries the urchin, who braves the shells for the sake of bringing home a few coppers to his mother, who has fallen ill from the privations she has undergone.
The second phase of the bombardment has ceased.
A pope, followed by a man carrying a white coffin, has come to give a hasty burial to the old woman who has been killed next door to our house. He, too, is daring death in the pursuit of his calling, for a shrapnel shell, bursting just above him, sends down a bullet which pierces the empty casket intended for the dead woman.
Thus, all day and all night, the enemies of the Serbs continued their work of destruction upon an open town which used to be fairly wealthy, but is to-day in a miserable plight owing to the Bulgarian occupation and the bombardment.
The results of the day were : one Italian soldier, killed ; one Serbian soldier, injured ; some twenty women and children killed.
Neutral and all, one cannot help rinding all this abominable.
War is not made to exterminate harmless people, but to fight armies. The neutral States ought to abandon their reticence and protest against these massacres, because the judgment of history will be strict, and that not only upon those who have committed the crimes, but also upon those who allowed them to be committed without protesting.

Excerpt from the book:
THE KINGDOM OF SERBIA: INFRINGEMENTS OF THE RULES AND LAWS OF WAR COMMITTED by the AUSTRO-BULGARO-GERMANS: LETTERS OF A CRIMINOLOGIST ON THE SERBIAN
MACEDONIAN FRONT By Rudolphe Archibald Reiss
Published 1919