Bulgaria Part 5

There was the vivid story of the battle of Chatalja. This story was started seven days too soon; had the positions and the armies all wrong; the result all wrong; and the picturesque details were in harmony. But for the purposes of the public it was a very good story of a battle.

Those men who, after great hardships, were enabled to see the actual battle found that the poor messages which the Censor permitted them to send took ten days or more in transmission to London. Why have taken all the trouble and expense of going to the front? Buda-Pesth, on the way there, is a lovely city; Bucharest also; and charming Vienna was not at all too far away if you had a good staff-map and a lively military imagination.

In yet another paper there was a vivid picture--scenery, date, Greenwich time, and all to give an air of artistic verisimilitude--of the signing of the Peace armistice. The armistice had not been signed at the time, was not signed for some days after. But it would have been absurd to have waited, since "our special correspondent" had seen it all in advance, right down to the embrace of the Turkish delegate and the Bulgarian delegate, and knew that some of the conditions were that the Turkish commissariat was to feed the Bulgarian troops at Chatalja and the Bulgarian commissariat the Turkish troops in Adrianople. If his paper had waited for the truth that most charming story would never have seen the light.

So, in a little book I shall one day bring out in the "Attractive Occupations" series on "How to be a War Correspondent," I shall give this general advice:

1. Before operations begin, visit the army to which you are accredited, and take notes of the general appearance of officers and men. Also learn a few military phrases of their language. Ascertain all possible particulars of a personal character concerning the generals and chief officers.

2. Return then to a base outside the country. It must have good telegraph communication with your newspaper. For the rest you may decide its locality by the quality of the wine, or the beer, or the cooking.

3. Secure a set of good maps of the scene of operations. It will be handy also to have any books which have been published describing campaigns over the same _terrain_.

4. Keep in touch with the official bulletins issued by the military authorities from the scene of operations. But be on guard not to become enslaved by them. If, for instance, you wait for official notices of battles, you will be much hampered in your picturesque work. Fight battles when they ought to be fought and how they ought to be fought.

The story's the thing.

5. A little sprinkling of personal experience is wise; for example, a bivouac on the battlefield, toasting your bacon at a fire made of a broken-down gun-carriage with a bayonet taken from a dead soldier.

Mention the nationality of the bacon. You cannot be too precise in details.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A YOUNG WIDOW AT HER HUSBAND'S GRAVE]

Ko-Ko's account of the execution of Nankipoo is, in short, the model for the future war correspondent. The other sort of war correspondent, who patiently studied and recorded operations, seems to be doomed. In the nature of things it must be so. The more competent and the more accurate he is, the greater the danger he is to the army which he accompanies.

His despatches, published in his newspaper and telegraphed promptly to the other side, give to them at a cheap cost that information of what is going on _behind_ their enemy's screen of scouts which is so vital to tactical, and sometimes to strategical, dispositions. To try to obtain that information an army pours out much blood and treasure; to guard that information an army will consume a full third of its energies in an elaborate system of mystification. A modern army must either banish the war correspondent altogether or subject him to such restrictions of Censorship as to veto honest, accurate, and prompt criticism or record of operations.

The Bulgarian army had not the courage to refuse authorisation to the swarm of journalists which descended upon its headquarters. Editors had argued it out that the small Balkan States, anxious to have a "good press" in Europe, would give correspondents a good show. But the Bulgarian authorities, anxious as they were to conciliate foreign public opinion, dared not allow a free run to the newspaper representatives.

Apart from the considerations I have mentioned, which must govern any modern war, there were special reasons why the Bulgarians should be nervous of observation. They were waging war on "forlorn hope" lines with the slenderest resources, with the knowledge that officers and men--especially transport officers--had to do almost the impossible to win through. Further, they had the knowledge that in some cases the correspondents were representing the newspapers (and the Governments, for newspapers and cabinets often work hand in hand on the Continent) of nations which were at the very moment threatening mobilisation against the Balkan States. To have specially excepted Roumanian, Austrian, and German press representatives from permission to see operations would have been impossible. The method was adopted of authorising as many press correspondents as cared to apply, then carefully pocketing them where they could see nothing, and inst.i.tuting such a rigorous Censorship as to guard effectively against any important facts, gleaned indirectly, leaking out. A few managed to earn enough of the Bulgarian confidence to be allowed to go through to the front and see things. But, even then, the Censorship and the monopoly of the telegraph line for military messages prevented them from despatching anything.

Some of the correspondents--one in particular--overcame a secretive military system and a harsh Censorship by the use of a skilled imagination and of a friendly telegraph line outside the area of Censorship. At the staff headquarters at Stara Zagora during the early days of the campaign, when we were all straining at the leash to get to the front, waiting and fussing, he was working, reconstructing the operations with maps and a fine imagination, and never allowing his paper to want for news. I think that he was quite prepared to have taken pupils for his new school of war correspondents. Often he would come to me for a yarn--in halting French on both sides--and would explain the campaign as it was being carried on. One eloquent gesture he habitually had--a sweeping motion which brought his arms together as though they were gathering up a bundle of spears, then the hands would meet in an expressive squeeze. "It is that," he said, "it is Napoleonic."

Probably the Censor at this stage did not interfere much with his activities, content enough to allow fanciful descriptions of Napoleonic strategy to go to the outer world. But, in my experience, facts, if one ascertained something independently, were not treated kindly.

"Why not?" I asked the Censor vexedly about one message he had stopped.

"It is true."

"Yes, that is the trouble," he said--the nearest approach to a joke I ever got out of a Bulgarian, for they are a sober, G.o.d-fearing, and humour-fearing race.

The idea of the Bulgarian Censorship in regard to the privileges and duties of the war correspondent was further ill.u.s.trated to me on another occasion, when a harmless map of a past phase of the campaign was stopped.

"Then what am I to send?" I asked.

"There are the bulletins," he said.

"Yes, the bulletins which are just your bald official account of week-old happenings which are sent to every news-agency in Europe before we see them!"

"But you are a war correspondent. You can add to them in your own language."

Remembering that conversation, I suspect that at first the Bulgarian Censorship did not object to fairy tales pa.s.sing over the wires, though the way was blocked for exact observation. An enterprising story-maker had not very serious difficulties at the outset. Afterwards there was a change, and even the writer of fairy stories had to work outside the range of the Censor.

We were all allowed down to Mustapha Pasha, and considered that that was a big step to the front. "For two days or so," we were told, it would be our duty to wait patiently within the town (the battle-ground around Adrianople was about twelve miles distant). Some waited there two months and saw no real operations. The Censorship at Mustapha Pasha was so strict that all private letters had to be submitted, and if they were in English the English Censor insisted that they should be read to him aloud; and he re-read them, again aloud, to see if he had fully grasped their significance. Then they could go if they contained no military information and did not mention guns, oxen, soldiers, roads, mud, dirt, or other tabooed subjects. An amusing "rag" was tried on the Censor there. A sorely tried correspondent wrote a letter of extreme warmth to an imaginary sweetheart. This began "Ducksie Darling," and continued in the same strain for two pages. He waited until there was a full house--the Censors had no private office, but did their censoring in a large room which was open to all the correspondents--and then submitted his ardent outburst. Other press-men did not see the joke at first, and began to sidle out of the room as, like a stream of warm treacle, the love-letter flowed on. But they came back.

"'Ducksie Darling,'" began the writer, "that, you know, is not a military term. It is a phrase of endearment used in England.--'A thousand, thousand kisses'--that has nothing to do with the disposition of troops." So he went through to the honeyed end, the Censor blushing and furious, the audience hilarious.

The Mustapha Pasha Censorship would not allow ox-wagons or reservists to be mentioned, nor officers' names. The Censorship objected, too, for a long time to any mention of the all-pervading mud which was the chief item of interest in the town's life. Yet you might have lost an army division in some of the puddles. (But stop, I am lapsing into the picturesque ways of the new school of correspondents. Actually you could not have lost more than a regiment in the largest mud-puddle.)

Let the position be frankly faced, that if one is with an army in modern warfare, common sense prohibits the authorities from allowing you to see anything, and suggests the further precautions of a strict Censorship and a general hold-up of wires until their military value (and therefore their "news" value) has pa.s.sed. If your paper wants picturesque stories hot off the grill it is much better not to be with the army (which means, in effect, in the rear of the army), but to write about its deeds from outside the radius of the Censorship.

Perhaps, though, your paper has old-fashioned prejudices in favour of veracity and will be annoyed if your imagination leads you too palpably astray? In that case do not venture to be a war correspondent at all. If you do not invent you will send nothing of value. If you invent you will be reprimanded.

Let me give my personal record of "getting to the front" and the net result of the trouble and the expense. I went down to Mustapha Pasha with the great body of war correspondents, and soon recognised that there was no hope of useful work there. The attacking army was at a standstill and a long, wearisome siege--its operations strictly guarded from inspection--was in prospect. I decided to get back to staff headquarters (then at Stara Zagora), and just managed to catch the staff before it moved on to Kirk Kilisse. By threatening to return to London at once I got a promise of leave to join the Third Army and to "see some fighting."

The promise antic.i.p.ated the actual granting of leave by two days. It would be tedious to record all the little and big difficulties that were then encountered through the reluctance of the military authorities to allow one to get transport or help of any kind. But four days later I was marching out of Mustapha Pasha on the way to Kirk Kilisse by way of Adrianople, a bullock-wagon carrying my baggage, an interpreter trundling my bicycle, I riding a small pony. The interpreter was gloomy and disinclined to face the hardships and dangers (mostly fancied) of the journey. Beside the driver (a Macedonian) marched a soldier with fixed bayonet. Persuasion was necessary to force the driver to undertake the journey, and a friendly transport officer had, with more or less legality, put at my command this means of argument. A mile outside Mustapha Pasha the soldier turned back, and I was left to coax my unwilling helpers on a four days' journey across a war-stricken countryside, swept of all supplies, infested with savage dogs (fortunately well fed by the harvest of the battlefields), liable to ravage by roving bands.

That night I gave the Macedonian driver some jam and some meat to eke out his bread and cheese.

"That is better than having a bayonet poked into your inside," I said, by pantomime. He understood, grinned, and gave no great trouble thereafter, though he was always in a state of pitiable funk when I left the wagon to take a trip within the lines of the besieging forces.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GIPSIES]

So to Kirk Kilisse. There I got to General Savoff himself and won not only leave, but a letter of aid to go down to the Third Army at the lines of Chatalja. But by then what must be the final battle of the war was imminent. Every hour of delay was dangerous. To go by cart meant a journey of several days. A military train was available part of the way if I were content to drop interpreter, horse, and baggage and travel with a soldier's load.

That decision was easy enough at the moment--though I sometimes regretted it afterwards when the only pair of riding-breeches I had with me gave out at the knees, and I had to walk the earth ragged--and by train I got to Tchorlu. There a friendly artillery officer helped me to get a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He insisted also on giving me as a patrol, a single Bulgarian soldier, with 200 rounds of ammunition, as Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the country. I objected that I had a revolver, and there was the driver, a Greek. "He would run away,"

said the officer pleasantly, and the patrol was taken.

It was an unnecessary precaution, though the presence of the soldier was comforting as we entered Silivri at night, the outskirts of the town deserted, the chattering of the driver's teeth audible over the clamour of the cart, the gutted houses ideal refuges for prowling bands. From Silivri to Chatalja there was again no appearance of Bashi-Bazouks. But thought of another danger obtruded as we came near the lines and encountered men from the Bulgarian army suffering from the choleraic dysentery which had then begun its ravages. To one dying soldier by the roadside I gave brandy; and then had to leave him with his mates, who were trying to get him to a hospital. They were sorely puzzled by his cries, his pitiful grimaces. Wounds they knew, and the pain of them they despised. They could not comprehend this disease which took away all the manhood of a stoic peasant, and made him weak in spirit as an ailing child.

From Chatalja, the right flank of the Bulgarian position, I pa.s.sed along the front to Ermenikioi ("the village of Armenians"), pa.s.sing the night at Arjenli, near the centre and the headquarters of the ammunition park.

That night at Arjenli seemed to make a rough and sometimes perilous journey, which had extended over seven days, worth while.

Arjenli is perched on a high hill, to the west of Ermenikioi. It gave a view of all the Chatalja position--the range of hills stretching from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora, along which the Bulgarians were entrenched, and, beyond the invisible valley, the second range which held the Turkish defence. Over the Turkish lines, like a standard, shone in the clear sky a crescent moon, within its tip a bright star. It seemed an omen, an omen of good to the Turks. My Australian eye instinctively sought for the Southern Cross ranged against it in the sky in sign that the Christian standard held the Heavens too. I sought in vain in those northern lat.i.tudes, shivered a little and, as though arguing against a superst.i.tious thought, said to myself: "But there is the Great Bear."

For by this time I had come to sympathise thoroughly with the Bulgarian army and its cause. The soldiers were such good fellows: their steadiness, their sense of justice, their kindness were so remarkable.

Just an incident of the camp at Arjenli to ill.u.s.trate this. It was on the Friday night of November 15, and on the morrow we expected the decisive battle of the war. At Arjenli (which was a little to the rear of the Bulgarian lines) was the ammunition park of the artillery, guarded by a small body of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Tchobanoff.

Coming towards the front from Tchorlu, the fall of night and the weariness of my horses had compelled me to halt at the village, and this officer and Dr. Neytchef gave me a warm welcome to their little Mess.

There are six members, and for all, to sleep and to eat, one room. Three are officers, three have no commissions. With this nation in arms that is not an objection to a common table. Discipline is strict, but officers and soldiers are men and brothers when out of the ranks. Social position does not govern military position. I found sometimes the University professor and the bank manager without commissions, the peasant proprietor an officer. The whole nation had poured out its manhood for the war, from farm, field, factory, shop, bank, university, and consulting-room.

Here at Arjenli on the eve of the decisive battle, I think over early incidents of the campaign. It is a curious fact that in all Bulgaria I have met but one man who was young enough and well enough to fight and who had not enlisted. He had become an American subject, I believe, and so could not be compelled to serve. In America he had learned to be an "International Socialist," and so he did not volunteer. I believe he was unique. With half the population of London, Bulgaria had put 350,000 trained men under arms.

We eat our simple meal of goat's flesh stewed with rice. Then, smoking cigarettes made of the tobacco of the district, Colonel Tchobanoff and I talk over the position as well as my bad French will allow. He is serene and cheerful. His chief care is to impress upon me the fact that in making war the Bulgarians had not been influenced by dynastic considerations nor by military ambition. It was a war dictated not by a Court circle or a military clique, but by the irresistible wish of the people.

Whilst we were talking the sound of a rifle shot came up from the village. A junior officer was sent out to make inquiries. Soon he returned with two soldiers leading between them a Turkish prisoner.

I learn the facts. The Turk had tried to rush past a sentry standing guard over the ammunition park. The sentry had fired, had not hit the man, but had grappled with him afterwards and taken him prisoner.

I nerved myself to see the Turk shot out of hand. The rules of war warranted it. He had tried to rush a sentry on guard over an important military station. But the Bulgarian officers decided to hear his story, and a kind of informal court-martial was const.i.tuted. The proceedings, which were in Turkish, were translated to me, as I was acting in a way as friend of the accused to "see fair play."

The Turk's story was clear enough. He had lived in Arjenli all his life and was not a soldier. When the Turkish army had evacuated the district he had not left with them, but had stayed in his old village. That night he had gone out of his hut to the village well. Returning, a sentry had challenged him, and he had become frightened and tried to run away.

It was clear that the man was telling the truth. The Bulgarians believed him, and let him go with a warning. This showed justice and courage, and a good "nerve" too. In some armies, I suspect, the Turk would have been shot, or hanged first and left to explain afterwards, if he could. And this was among the Bulgarians, who some insist are a bloodthirsty, cut-throat race, with no sense of justice or of mercy!