......
"A subscription to a paper is a sheet of paper per week, because the editors are not able to get it. "
This unusual call for subscriptions appeared on December 2, 1916, in the first issue of the handwritten paper "Rovovac", whose editorial office was located at the positions of the Serbian army on the slopes of Kajmakčalan - "trench hair 150 meters from the Bulgarians".
Manuscript sheets were not an unknown phenomenon at that time, many student groups had their intellectual beginnings precisely through the publication of such sheets at a time when printing was a real luxury for poor high school students. In wartime, this type of information and interest for editors and collaborators becomes even more frequent. During the First World War, dozens of manuscripts were published in the Serbian language, and this time we will focus only on four characteristic examples.
......
BATTALION HOUSE AS A PRINTING SHOP
The very technology of creating such sheets implies a large amount of time, both for writing the articles themselves and for duplicating them. The mentioned "Rovovac" was copied by the battalion scribe in ten copies, with the fact that the editor had to subsequently refine the illustrations.
In other papers, we often notice different handwritings, and there are not rare cases when the "hand of the scribe" gets tired and some lines become more illegible than others. Thus, in the newspaper "Antena", which was published in the camp of the wireless telegraphy of the Supreme Command in Thessaloniki, the illustrations on the first pages were done in ink as a whole, while on the fourth page only the drawings shaded with ink were created with a graphite pencil. Formats are often uneven, depending on the available paper, which is sometimes hand-made. Where conditions allowed, above all in the territories of the French Republic, reproduction was done by machine with the help of the techniques of shapirography, lithography and hectography.
......
The content was primarily influenced by the wartime circumstances in which the newspaper was created. "Puls" was published in the Asach prison camp near Linz in Austria, under the editorship of the later famous Ranko Mladenović - an avant-garde poet and playwright, a captured corporal in the Battle of Kolubara. The paper was full of wistful, often depressing texts about the years spent in slavery, usually without the most basic necessities.
As the war progressed, the naval blockade of the Entente powers produced results, starvation became a normal occurrence in the countries of the Central Pact, and prisoners of war were at the very bottom of the list of priorities for rations, which most often had turnips as a base. But since the papers had the ambition to contain the concept of a real press, there were often "advertisements" for Styrian sausages, zacher cake or some other delicacies that they could only dream about.
......
The Easter issue of April 22, 1916 was particularly melancholic and sad, with the following addition: "I am a slave today. My name has been humiliated, but it is not my fault. I have been at war for five years, I am no longer healthy, my lungs have failed, look at me! I am no longer a father, I have forgotten my house, I have forgotten my poor children... And I loved my country too much, and yet it caused me the most pain. Now I am powerless and alien. An enemy bayonet is always hovering over my head. I am a slave, and yet, whenever I hear something comforting about my distant and suffering homeland, I would cry like a child with joy."
Contributions from the theory of literature and philosophy were not rare, announcements of concerts and military performances were regularly published. As one of the collaborators was the future academic painter Nikola Dzhanga, the paper was richly illustrated.
......
Despite the strict censorship implemented by the camp authorities, "Puls" managed to reach 52 issues when it was shut down with a farewell: "Our paper, our diary is ending again! The events around us forbid one to think. This is our own tragedy, a heavy condemnation, a condemnation without comment... Our ticket has still performed its duty until now. He was our diary…”
PROHIBITION DUE TO "HORSES AND DONKEYS"
The aforementioned "Rovovac" was edited by the second lieutenant of the 17th infantry regiment of the Drina Division, Stanislav Kraków, who, with his role in the propaganda apparatus of the Nedićev parastate in the Second World War, cast a thick shadow over his heroism during the wars of 1912-1918. year. Also, his artistic and literary qualities remain indisputable throughout his rich career.
......
As already mentioned, the paper was created in a front-line unit and therefore has a far different tone than newspapers that were created in a prison camp. The content is almost exclusively humorous, and the arrow of irony is almost always aimed at the so-called "background", who live far more safely and comfortably than the soldiers on the front line. There are numerous caricatures of "patriotic" poets who write battle marches in the shade of Thessaloniki hotels while ordering cold beer, and at the same time, a poem appears on the cover of the Christmas issue of "Rovovac". Christmas in the trenches which ends with the following lines: "Everywhere there is noise and noise / and the bayonet of Seva / hand grenades are flying / that's how a pedestrian welcomes Christmas in the trench".
The sheet itself was named after a French trench gun that worked on a principle similar to modern mortars. As colleague Nataša Jovanović nicely noted: "In the end, as a 'real' satirical and opposition paper, it was banned by the superior command, because it was judged that in one of the humorous stories about horses and donkeys, it exaggerated the allusions to the different status of soldiers on position on the one hand and the arrogance of the elite who are bragging in Thessaloniki on the other".
......
BEAUTY BACKGROUNDS
The newspaper "Antena", which bore the subtitle "a newspaper for reality and for jokes, for intrigue and praise", exuded a completely different atmosphere. It was published by military telegraphers at the Supreme Command in Thessaloniki, and as a privileged group of elite midshipmen, they were much more privileged than ordinary soldiers. This is clearly felt in the textual and visual contributions, jokes are made at the expense of cooks and officers and officers who "by mistake" wandered into Thessaloniki's Vardaris, a far-famed den of prostitution. In issue two, a humorous protocomic is also published, and all in all, from the preserved issues, one can see a far more cheerful mood of the editorial staff of the paper compared to the war comrades from the front line.
MATERIAL EXPENDITURES VS.. SCHOOLING
......
Finally, we will briefly describe the school newspaper "Srpski orlić", which was published in the lyceum in Bastia in Corsica. It was founded and edited by a school group whose task was to, with the help and supervision of teachers, spread literacy and patriotism among students. The paper was financed by the educational department of the Serbian embassy in Paris, and the paper was lithographed and thus reproduced much more easily. He imitated the literary magazines of that era, which were very popular among school youth, and the works were mostly original and represented the first literary steps of Corsican high school students. Night on Rožaje, From the road from Novi Pazar to Peć (memories from our retreat), Enemy entry into my birthplace (Sabac) are just some of the poems that could be read. Collaborators were Dragoljub Protić, Svetozar St. Nedok and Živojin Arambašić among others.
As the paper was under the supervision of teachers, there was no room for freer forms, all contributions were "strictly" patriotic and the language was suitable for such content. However, even this "correctness" did not save the paper from being shut down, and the editor Svetozar Stojanović announced in the fifth issue that the paper was ceasing publication "to avoid material expenses related to publication and not to distract students from regular school work".
No matter how foreign handwritten periodicals seem to today's generations, they played a big role in preserving the morale of the participants of the First World War, especially since the initiative rarely came from the competent authorities, but the actors themselves started the papers in order not to cut off their leisure hours and indulge in those gloomy times. It illustrates in the best way what was on their minds, what emotions prevailed and how they tried to forget about the everyday life full of worries for their own physical existence and the survival of their loved ones.
