The Balkan Peninsula Part 6

The whole machinery for that had been provided beforehand. But so great was the voluntary patriotism of the people that this machinery practically has not had to be used in any compulsory form. Goods were brought in voluntarily, wagons, cart-horses and oxen, and all the surplus flour and wheat, and--I have the official figures from the Bulgarian Treasurer--those goods which were obtained in this way totalled in value some six million pounds. That represented the surplus goods, beyond those necessary for consumption by the Bulgarian people, at the outset of the war. The numbers of the Bulgarian people represent half the population of London. The peasant population is very poor.

Their national existence dates back only half a century. But they are very frugal and saving; that six millions which the Government signed for represented practically all the savings which the Bulgarian people had at the outbreak of the war. I am told that the gold supply in the Bulgarian Treasury at the declaration of war was only three million pounds. So that there was an army of 350,000 men put into the field, and only three million pounds as the gold supply.

Kirk Kilisse, _November 7_.--The extraordinary simplicity of the commissariat has helped the Bulgarian generals a great deal. The men have had bread and cheese, sometimes even bread alone; and that was accounted a satisfactory ration. When meat and other things could be obtained, they were obtained; but there were long periods when the Bulgarian soldier had nothing but bread and water. The water, unfortunately, he took wherever he could get it, by the side of the route at any stream he could find. There was no attempt to ensure a pure water supply for the army. I do not think that, without that simplicity of commissariat, it would have been possible for the Bulgarian forces to have got as far as they did. There was an entire absence of tinned foods. As I travelled in the trail of the Bulgarian army, I found it impossible to imagine that an army had pa.s.sed that way, because there was none of the litter which is usually left by an army. It was not that they cleared away their rubbish with them; it simply did not exist.

Their bread and cheese seems to be a good fighting diet.

Seleniki, _November 13_.--The transport was, naturally, the great problem which faced the generals. I have seen here (Seleniki, which is the point at which the rail-head is), within 30 miles of Constantinople as the crow flies, ox wagons which have come from the Shipka Pa.s.s in the north of Bulgaria. I asked one driver how long it had been on the road; he told me three weeks. He was carrying food down to the front. The way the ox wagons were used for transport was a marvel of organisation. A transport officer at Mustapha Pasha, with whom I became very friendly, was lyrical in his praise of the ox wagon. It was, he said, the only thing that stuck to him during the war. The railway got choked, and even the horse failed, but the ox never failed. There were thousands of ox wagons crawling across the country. They do not walk, they crawl, like an insect, with an irresistible crawl. It reminds you of those armies of soldier ants which move across Africa, eating everything which they come across, and stopping at nothing. I had an ox wagon coming from Mustapha Pasha to Kirk Kilisse, and we went over the hills and down through the valleys, and stopped for nothing--we never had to unload once. And one could sleep in those ox wagons. There is no jolting and pulling at the traces, such as you get with a harnessed horse. The ox wagon moved slowly; but it always moved. If the ox transport had not been as perfectly organised, and if the oxen had not been as patiently enduring as they proved to be, the Bulgarian army must have perished by starvation. And yet, at Mustapha Pasha, a censor would not allow us to send anything about the ox wagons. That officer thought the ox cart was derogatory to the dignity of the army. If we had been able to say that they had such things as motor transport or steam wagons, he would have cheerfully allowed us to send it.

But after Lule Burgas, the ox transport has had to do the impossible. It is impossible for it to maintain the food and the ammunition supply of the army at the front, which I suppose must number 250,000 to 300,000 men. That army has got right away from its base, with the one line of railway straddled by the enemy, and with the ox as practically the only means of transport.

Arjenli (Turkey), _November 15, 1912_.--It is Friday, and we expect to-morrow the Battle of Chatalja. In the little Turkish village of Arjenli, situated on a high hill a little to the rear of the Bulgarian lines, is the ammunition park of the artillery, guarded by a small body of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Tchobanoff. Coming towards the front from Chorlu, the fall of night and the weariness of my horses have compelled me to halt at Arjenli, and this officer and Dr. Neytchef give 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 has 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. But there was in the nation one good Socialist who knew that war was an evil thing, and that it was better to sit down meekly under tyranny than to take up arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Underwood & Underwood_

OX TRANSPORT IN THE BALKANS]

I followed in the track of the victorious Third Army as it came down through the border mountains on to Kirk Kilisse, then to Lule Burgas, then past Chorlu to the Chatalja lines. At Arjenli I had overtaken them in time to see the final battle, and now sat looking out on the entrenched armies, talking over the position with a serene and cheerful artillery officer. The past week had been one of hardship and horrors.

From Chorlu the road was lined with the bodies of the Turkish dead, still awaiting burial. Entering the Bulgarian lines on their right flank that morning, I had tried in vain to succour a soldier dying of the choleraic dysentery which had begun its ravages. But here in the middle of the battle line the atmosphere of n.o.ble confidence is inspiriting.

The horrors of war vanish; only its glory shows. The men around me feel that they are engaged in a just war. They know that everything that man can do has been done. Proudly, cheerfully, they await the issue.

During the evening, a Turk suspected of being a spy is brought in for trial. He had attempted to rush past one of the sentries guarding the ammunition wagons. He is given a patient hearing, is able to establish his innocence, and is allowed to go. There is no feeling of panic or injustice among these Bulgarians. I see the trial and its end (having been asked to act as friend of the accused).

It is to-day forty days since the mobilisation. At the call this trained nation was in arms in a day. The citizen soldiers hurried to the depots for their arms and uniforms. In one district the rumour that mobilisation had been authorised was bruited abroad a day before the actual issue of the orders, and the depot was besieged by the peasants who had rushed in from their farms. The officer in charge could not give out the rifles, so the men lit fires, got food from the neighbours, and camped around the depot until they were armed. Some navvies received their mobilisation orders on returning to their camp after ten hours'

work at railway-building. They had supper and marched through the night to their respective headquarters. For one soldier the march was twenty-four miles. The railway carriages were not adequate to bring all the men to their a.s.signed centres. Some rode on the steps, on the roofs of carriages, on the buffers even.

At Stara Zagora, early in November, I noted a mother of the people who had come to see some Turkish prisoners just brought in from Mustapha Pasha. To one she gave a cake. "They are hungry," she said. This woman had five men at the war--her four sons in the fighting line, her husband under arms guarding a line of communication. She had sent them proudly.

It was the boast of the Bulgarian women that not a tear was shed at the going away of the soldiers.

Later, at a little village outside Kirk Kilisse, a young civil servant, an official of the Foreign Office, spoke of the war whilst we ate a dish of cheese and eggs. "It is a war," he said, "of the peasants and the intellectuals. It is not a war made by the politicians or the soldiers of the Staff. That would be impossible. In our nation every soldier is a citizen and every citizen a soldier. There could not be a war unless it were a war desired by the people. In my office it was with rage that some of the clerks heard that they must stay at Sofia, and not go to the front. We were all eager to take arms."

At Nova Zagora, travelling by a troop train carrying reserves to the front, I crossed a train bringing wounded from the battle-fields. For some hours both trains were delayed. The men going to the front were decorated with flowers as though going to a feast. They filled the waiting time by dancing to the music of the national bagpipes, and there joined in the dance such of the wounded as could stand on their feet.

There was no daunting these trained patriots.

These and a score of other pictures pa.s.s through my mind and explain Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas, and give confidence for the battle to come. Here was a people ranged for battle with the steady nerves and the stolid courage that come from tilling the soil, with the skill and the discipline that come from adequate training, with the fervent faith of a great patriotism. I have talked with Turkish prisoners and found infantrymen who had been sent to the front after two days' training, gunners who had been drafted into a battery after ten days' drill. Such soldiers can only march to defeat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BALKAN PEASANT WOMAN]

Ermenikioi (Headquarters of the Third Bulgarian Army), _November 17 (Sunday)_.--The Battle of Chatalja has been opened. To-day, General Demetrieff rode out with his Staff to the battle-field whilst the bells of a Christian church in this little village rang. The day was spent in artillery reconnaissance, the Bulgarian guns searching the Turkish entrenchments to discover their real strength. Only once during the day was the infantry employed; and then it was rather to take the place of artillery than to complete work begun by artillery. It seems to me that the Bulgarian forces have not enough big gun ammunition at the front.

They are ten days from their base, and sh.e.l.ls must come up by ox wagon the greater part of the way.

Ermenikioi, _November 18_.--This was a wild day on the Chatalja hills.

Driving rain and mist swept over from the Black Sea, and at times obscured all the valley across which the battle raged. With but slight support from the artillery, the Bulgarian infantry was sent again and again up to the Turkish entrenchments. Once a fort was taken but had to be abandoned again. The result of the day's fighting is indecisive. The Bulgarian forces have driven in the Turkish right flank a little, but have effected nothing against the central positions which bar the road to Constantinople. It is clear that the artillery is not well enough supplied with ammunition. There is a sprinkle of sh.e.l.ls when there should be a flood. Gallant as is the infantry, it cannot win much ground faced by conditions such as the Light Brigade met at Balaclava.

Ermenikioi, _November 19_.--Operations have been suspended. Yesterday's cold and bitter weather has fanned to an epidemic the choleraic dysentery which had been creeping through the trenches. The casualties in the fighting had been heavy. "But for every wounded man who comes to the hospitals," Colonel Jostoff, the Chief of the Staff, tells me, "there are ten who say 'I am ill.'" The Bulgarians recognise bitterly that in their otherwise fine organisation there has been one flaw, the medical service. Among this nation of peasant proprietors--st.u.r.dy, abstemious, moral, living in the main on whole-meal bread and water--illness was so rare that the medical service was but little regarded. Up to Chatalja confidence in the rude health of the peasants was justified. They pa.s.sed through cold, hunger, fatigue, and kept healthy. But ignorant of sanitary discipline, camped among the filthy Turkish villages, the choleraic dysentery pa.s.sed from the Turkish trenches to theirs. There are 30,000 cases of illness, and the healthy for the first time feel fear as they see the torments of the sick. The Bulgarians recognise that there must be a pause in the fighting whilst the hospital and sanitary service is reorganised.

Kirk Kilisse, _December 1_.--It seems certain now that peace must be declared, and that the dream of driving the Turk right out of Europe must be abandoned. These peasant peoples of the Balkans have done wonderful things, but they have stumbled on one point--the want of knowledge of sanitary science. I have seen only one attempt at a clean camp since I have been in the field, and that was a Serbian camp, north of Adrianople.

With the Bulgarian army there was not, at any stage of the campaign up to the Battle of Chatalja--that is, until after the outbreak of cholera--any precaution, to my knowledge, taken to secure a clean water supply, or clean camping-grounds, or to take the most elementary precautions against the outbreak of disease in the army. The medical service was almost as bad. I have seen much of the hospital work at Kirk Kilisse after the armistice; and it has been deplorable to see the fine fellows whose lives were sacrificed, or whose limbs were sacrificed, through neglect of medical knowledge. I am sure the Bulgarians would have saved many hundreds of lives if there had been anything like a proper medical service at the front.

At Chatalja the chief reason given for the stoppage of operations was the ravages of disease in the Bulgarian lines. The illness was of a choleraic type; it had, as usual, a profound moral as well as physical effect. The courage of the men broke down before this visitation. The victims howled with pain and terror, though the same men would withstand serious wounds without a complaint or a wincing.

The Turks are blamed for the outbreak in the Bulgarian lines. It is more than probable that their villages, inexpressibly filthy; the prisoners taken from their ranks; the infection of the soil abandoned by them, were contributing causes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BAGPIPER]

But it must be stated frankly that the almost complete absence of any sanitary discipline or precaution in the Bulgarian lines at this place earned for them all the diseases that afflict mankind. So far as I can ascertain after careful investigation, there were no sanitary police; no attempts to secure and safeguard a pure water supply; no latrine regulations. I have seen the Bulgarian soldiers drinking from streams running through battle-fields, though a few feet away were swollen carcases. I have seen no attempt in the field at a proper latrine service. Some hundreds of thousands of peasant soldiers, accustomed to the simplest life on their own farms, were collected together and left practically without sanitary discipline. The details can be filled in without my setting them forth in print. There is one fact, however, to be recorded of a pleasant character. In all investigations of the hospital services I never found a case of any malady arising from vice.

There was also a complete absence of drunkenness. This might be ascribed to the want of means to obtain alcohol. But in Turkey there was an abundance of wines and spirits, and some beer in the captured villages and towns; it led, however, to no orgies.

Naturally, the Bulgarian peasant is wonderfully healthy. His food is rough whole-meal bread and cheese; his occasional luxuries, a dish of the sour milk which is so well known in London, a little alcohol on Sunday, some sweet stuff, and, rarely, grilled meat or meat soup with vegetables. It is possible to judge that his alimentary tract differs widely from that of the Western European. I should say he was almost immune from enteric, unless attacked by a very virulent infection. He can live on bread and water alone without serious inconvenience for lengthy periods. His blood is very pure, and ordinarily heals in a way that astonished the British surgeons.

Here, then, was the best of material from an army medical point of view.

Given the roughest food, the simplest sanitary precautions, and ordinarily good field dressing, and the army would have marched without disease and the wounded would have dropped out of the firing line for a few days only. But there were no sanitary precautions; hence disease.

The hospital service as regards the first aid in the field was pitiably deficient; hence serious and unnecessary losses of wounded. Without seeking to pile up a record of horrors, I cite a few individual instances to ill.u.s.trate bad methods. At the front, punctured bayonet wounds were closely bandaged--in some cases st.i.tched up--without provision for irrigation, without even proper cleansing. This led to gangrene and often caused the sacrifice of a life or of a limb (which, to these peasants, was almost as great a loss as that of life: their feeling against amputations was very strong, and if they understood that amputation was intended, they sometimes begged to be "killed instead"). Bullet wounds also were often plugged up on the field. When proper treatment was at last available, it was sometimes too late to avoid death or amputation. No treatment at all on the field would have been preferable to this well-intentioned but shocking ignorance.

Of the purely Bulgarian hospitals those at Kirk Kilisse are very deficient: at Philippopolis, however, there were excellent Bulgarian hospitals, and also at Sofia. The Russian hospital at Kirk Kilisse is very good. The British Red Cross Hospital, under Major E. T. F. Birrell, of the R.A.M.C., is excellently organised, has the fullest possible equipment, and tries to specialise in serious cases. It is subjected locally (as is the Russian hospital) to the criticism that by insisting on perfection of system it unduly restricts its salvage work: that, in short, it could deal with far more patients if it consented to more "rough-and-ready" methods. I record this criticism, and acknowledge that it is based on facts. Yet it may be urged on the other side that it was ultimately far more useful to have a model hospital to show how things should be done than to sacrifice that valuable lesson for the sake of striving to cope in rough-and-ready fashion with the flood of wounded.

This hospital gives interesting proof that Great Britain is an Empire, not an island nation. I first encountered three of its doctors in a cafe. One was from the Mother Country, one from the West Indies, one an Australian friend, who set at once to talking of gum trees and of Melbourne University. Then a non-commissioned officer attached to the hospital--most of its Staff are army men--is a Canadian, who had had war experience in South Africa. His comments on the Bulgarian wounded are full of sympathy. "These chaps," he said, "take their gruel better even than the Tommies. The Tommy takes his all right, but he 'grouses' about it. These chaps never grumble. One of them had to have a very painful dressing. He winced a little. A comrade at once laughed at him. 'Ah,' he said, 'you learn new kinds of dancing here.'" Nurses endorse this evidence about the Bulgarian soldiers' patience, though one stated that she found the officers sometimes to be rather neurasthenic.

On the whole, the Bulgarian army is not strong on science. In spade work it was not good. I saw no perfect trenches--never a drained trench.

Undrained trenches caused some increase of mortality and of sickness. It is uncomfortable to stay for days, or even hours, in a trench which the rain has partly filled with water. In no case that I saw were there trenches with overhead protection against howitzer fire. Except at the Chatalja lines and around Adrianople the trenches were, of course, intended to be of a very temporary use, and would naturally not be elaborate. Gun-pits and emplacements were usually fairly good. It was the custom to dig a pit, or to put up a little sod wall for the gun-limber (most of the artillery work was from concealed and prepared positions). At Chatalja the trenches were masked with the stalks of the Turkish tobacco plants--about the only instance I saw of masking. It was rare to see a trench zigzagged as a precaution against enfilading fire.

The Turkish trenches I saw were hopelessly bad.

Sofia, _December 6, 1912_.--Sofia, in spite of the great victories which have been won, is neither joyous nor contented. The failure of the siege of Adrianople seems to rest heavy upon the people: and there are gloomy stories of the extent of the losses of the nation's manhood. So far no lists of killed and wounded have been published. "The Ma.s.s at St.

Sofia," which was the battle-cry of the first days of the war, is clearly not a possibility now. Some mystery attaches to the movements of the king. It is said that he had made a vow that he would not return to Sofia until a victorious peace was signed. The embittered relations with the Greeks, the signs of disagreement with the Serbians, suggest gloomy possibilities of future troubles.

Belgrade, _December 8, 1912_.--With the exception of the army before Adrianople, the Serbians have finished their share of the war with Turkey. Belgrade is satisfied, but not over-elated. Across the Danube, a broad gloomy waste of dun waters under the winter mists, a division of the Austrian army is mobilised. There is a fear, almost an expectation, that Austria will make war. But there seems neither panic nor war-fever in the city.

Business is creeping back to the normal state. At the Ministry for War there are to be seen pathetic scenes as parents and other relatives seek tidings of the soldiers. An old father, himself a captain of reserves, hears that his only son, a lieutenant, has been killed, and bursts into tears and tells to all around his sorrow. But generally tragic news is received stoically. Amid the congratulations on the results of the Allies' efforts there is an under-current of resolution to make a better bargain with Bulgaria than the _ante bellum_ part.i.tion treaty proposed.

Reports of envious and rude treatment of the Serbian army before Adrianople are current in the street: and there is some talk of recalling the men. This is the irresponsible talk of men in the street only: the authorities are very correct in their att.i.tude towards "our friend and ally," and express themselves as confident that Bulgaria of her own volition will suggest better terms for her partner in the war.

A Serbian politician, who patiently endures my bad French or makes a brave effort to talk in English, a tongue which he is learning to speak and can read quite well, politely excuses the English for being such bad linguists. "For you English who have all the poetry, all the romance, all the science, all the philosophy a man may want in your own language, it is not necessary to learn any other. For us in the Balkans, we must learn other languages or remain ignorant of much that goes on in the world."

In truth the Balkan peoples are astonishing linguists. It is not at all a rare thing to find that a man can speak Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek, Turkish, and French. Often he adds either English or German to this list. Bulgarian and Serbian, of course, are but differing dialects of Russian--a Russian can make himself understood in both tongues though he knows only Russian. But the grammar of one differs from that of the other, and many of the words are different. The Balkan people who know Turkish know it usually in its colloquial and spoken form and not the literary language, which is very difficult to understand thoroughly because it is really a blending of three languages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Underwood & Underwood_

SOME SERBIAN PEASANTS]

CHAPTER VIII

THE PICTURESQUE BALKANS

It is difficult to dissociate the Balkans with bloodshed and disorder.

Insensibly the mind is tempted at every turn to direct attention to the last battle or the future campaign which can be seen threatening. But if the storm-racked peninsula could be granted a term of peaceful development, there is no doubt at all but that it would be much favoured by voyagers seeking picturesque beauty and wishing to go over the fields which have been the scenes of some of the greatest events in history.