With the French in France and Salonika Part 9

After the retreat from Serbia.

English Tommies intrenched in the ten-mile plain outside of Salonika.

"Are they down-hearted? No!"]

The next day we walked along the bank of the Vardar River to Gravec, about five miles north of Strumnitza station. Five miles farther was Demir-Kapu, the Gate of Iron, and between these two towns is a high and narrow pa.s.s famous for its wild and magnificent beauty. Fifteen miles beyond that was Krivolak, the most advanced French position. On the hills above Gravec were many guns, but in the town itself only a few infantrymen. It was a town entirely of mud; the houses, the roads, and the people were covered with it. Gravec is proud only of its church, on the walls of which in colors still rich are painted many devils with pitchforks driving the wicked ones into the flames.

One of the _poilus_ put his finger on the ma.s.s of wicked ones.

"Les Boches," he explained.

Whether the devils were the French or the English he did not say, possibly because at the moment they were more driven against than driving.

Major Merse, the commanding officer, invited us to his headquarters.

They were in a house of stone and mud, from which projected a wooden platform. When any one appeared upon it he had the look of being about to make a speech. The major asked us to take photographs of Gravec and send them to his wife. He wanted her to see in what sort of a place he was condemned to exist during the winter. He did not wish her to think of him as sitting in front of a cafe on the sidewalk, and the snap-shots would show her that Gravec has no cafes, no sidewalks and no streets.

But he was not condemned to spend the winter in Gravec.

Within the week great stores of ammunition and supplies began to pour into it from Krivolak, and the Gate of Iron became the advanced position, and Gravec suddenly found herself of importance as the French base.

To understand this withdrawal, find on the map Krivolak, and follow the railroad and River Vardar southeast to Gravec.

The cause of the retreat was the inability of the Serbians to hold Monastir and their withdrawal west, which left a gap in the former line of Serbians, French, and British. The enemy thus was south and west of Sarrail, and his left flank was exposed.

On December 3, finding the advanced position at Krivolak threatened by four divisions, 100,000 men, General Sarrail began the withdrawal, sending south by rail without loss all ammunition and stores. He destroyed the tunnel at Krivolak and all the bridges across the Vardar, and on his left at the Cerna River. The fighting was heavy at Prevedo and Biserence, but the French losses were small. He withdrew slowly, twenty miles in one week. The British also withdrew from their first line to their second line of defense.

Demir-Kapu, meaning the Gate of Iron, is the entrance to a valley celebrated for its wild and magnificent beauty. Starting at Demir-Kapu, it ends two kilometres north of Gravec. It rises on either side of the Vardar River and railroad line, and in places is less than a hundred yards wide. It is formed of sheer hills of rock, treeless and exposed.

But the fame of Gravec as the French base was short-lived. For the Serbians at Monastir and Gevgeli, though fighting bravely, were forced toward Albania, leaving the left flank of Sarrail still more exposed.

And the Gate of Iron belied her ancient t.i.tle.

With 100,000 Bulgars crowding down upon him General Sarrail wasted no lives, either French or English, but again withdrew. He was outnumbered, some say five to one. In any event, he was outnumbered as inevitably as three of a kind beat two pair. A good poker player does not waste chips backing two pair. Neither should a good general, when his chips are human lives. As it was, in the retreat seven hundred French were killed or wounded, and of the British, who were more directly in the path of the Bulgars, one thousand.

At Gevgeli the French delayed two days to allow the Serbian troops to get away, and then themselves withdrew. There now no longer were any Serbian soldiers in Serbia. So both armies fell back toward Salonika on a line between Kilindir and Doiran railroad-station, and all the places we visited a week before were occupied by the enemy. At Gravec a Bulgarian is pointing at the wicked ones who are being driven into the flames and saying: "The Allies," and at Strumnitza station in the mess-hall Bulgar officers are framing John McCutcheon's sketches.

And here at Salonika from sunrise to sunset the English are disembarking reinforcements, and the French building barracks of stone and brick. It looks as though the French were here to stay, and as though the retreating habit was broken.

The same team that, to put it politely, drew the enemy after them to the gates of Paris, have been drawing the same enemy after them to Salonika.

That they will throw him back from Salonika, as they threw him back from Paris, is a.s.sured.

General Sarrail was one of those who commanded in front of Paris, and General de Castelnau, who also commanded at the battle of the Marne, and is now chief of staff of General Joffre, has just visited him here.

General de Castelnau was sent to "go, look, see." He reports that the position now held by the Allies is impregnable.

The perimeter held by them is fifty miles in length and stretches from the Vardar River on the west to the Gulf of Orplanos on the east. There are three lines of defense. To a.s.sist the first two on the east are Lakes Beshik and Langaza, on the west the Vardar River. Should the enemy penetrate the first lines they will be confronted ten miles from Salonika by a natural barrier of hills, and ten miles of intrenchments and barb-wire. Should the enemy surmount these hills the Allies war-ships in the harbor can sweep him off them as a fire-hose rips the shingles off a roof.

The man who tells you he understands the situation in Salonika is of the same mental caliber as the one who understands a system for beating the game at Monte Carlo. But there are certain rumors as to the situation in the future that can be eliminated. First, Greece will not turn against the Allies. Second, the Allies will not withdraw from Salonika. They now are agreed it is better to resist an attack or stand a siege, even if they lose 200,000 men, than to withdraw from the Balkans without a fight.

The Briand government believes that had the Millerand government, which it overthrew, sent troops to aid the Serbian army in August this war would have been made shorter by six months. It now is trying to repair the mistake of the government it ousted. Among other reasons it has for remaining in the Balkans, is that the presence of 200,000 men at Salonika will hold Roumania from any aggressive movement on Russia.

To aid the Allies, Russia at Tannenberg made a sacrifice, and lost 200,000 men. The present French Government now feels bound in honor to help Russia by keeping the French-British armies at Salonika. As a visiting member of the government said to me:

"In this war there is no western line or eastern line. The line of the Allies is wherever a German attacks. France went to the Balkans to help Serbia. She went too late, which is not the fault of the present government. But there remains the task to keep the Germans from Egypt, to menace the railroad at Adrianople, and to prevent Roumania from an attack upon the flank of Russia. The Allies are in Salonika until this war is ended."

In Salonika you see every evidence that this is the purpose of the Allies; that both England and France are determined to hold fast.

Reinforcements of British troops are arriving daily, and the French are importing large numbers of ready-to-set-up wooden barracks, each capable of holding 250 men. Also along the water-front they are building storehouses of brick and stone. That does not suggest an immediate departure. At the French camp, which covers five square miles in the suburbs of Salonika when I visited it to-day, thousands of soldiers were actively engaged in laying stone roads, repairing bridges and erecting new ones. There is no question but that they intend to make this the base until the advance in the spring.

A battalion of Serbians 700 strong has arrived at the French camp. In size and physique they are splendid specimens of fighting men. They are now road building. Each day refugees of the Serbian army add to their number.

At four o'clock in the morning of the 14th of December, the Greek army evacuated Salonika and that strip of Greek territory stretching from it to Doiran.

From before sunrise an unbroken column of Greek regiments pa.s.sed beneath the windows of our hotel. There were artillery, cavalry, pontoons, ambulances, and thousands of ponies and donkeys, carrying fodder, supplies, and tents. The sidewalks were invaded by long lines of infantry. The water-front along which the column pa.s.sed was blocked with spectators.

As soon as the Greeks had departed sailors from the Allied war-ships were given sh.o.r.e leave, and the city took on the air of a holiday. Thus was a most embarra.s.sing situation brought to an end and the world informed that the Allies had but just begun to fight. It was the clearing of the prize-ring.

The clearing also of the enemy's consulates ended another embarra.s.sing situation. As suggested in a previous chapter, the consulates of the Central Powers were the hot-beds and clearing-houses for spies. The raid upon them by the French proved that this was true. The enforced departure of the German, Austrian, Bulgarian, and Turkish consuls added to the responsibilities of our own who has now to guard their interests.

They will be efficiently served. John E. Kehl has been long in our consular service, and is most admirably fitted to meet the present crisis. He has been our representative at Salonika for four years, in which time his experience as consul during the Italian-Turkish War, the two Balkan wars, and the present war, have trained him to meet any situation that is likely to arrive.

What that situation may be, whether the Bulgar-Germans will attack Salonika, or the Allies will advance upon Sofia, and as an inevitable sequence draw after them the Greek army of 200,000 veterans, only the spring can tell.

If the Teutons mean to advance, having the shorter distance to go, they may launch their attack in April. The Allies, if Sofia is their objective, will wait for the snow to leave the hills and the roads to dry. That they would move before May is doubtful. Meanwhile, they are acc.u.mulating many men, and much ammunition and information. May they make good use of it.

CHAPTER IX

VERDUN AND ST. MIHIEL

PARIS, January, 1916.

It is an old saying that the busiest man always seems to have the most leisure. It is another way of complimenting him on his genius for organization. When you visit a real man of affairs you seldom find him surrounded by secretaries, stenographers, and a battery of telephones.

As a rule, there is nothing on his desk save a photograph of his wife and a rose in a gla.s.s of water. Outside the headquarters of the general there were no gendarmes, no sentries, no panting automobiles, no mud-flecked cha.s.seurs-a-cheval. Unchallenged the car rolled up an empty avenue of trees and stopped beside an empty terrace of an apparently empty chateau. At one end of the terrace was a pond, and in it floated seven beautiful swans. They were the only living things in sight. I thought we had stumbled upon the country home of some gentleman of elegant leisure.

When he appeared the manner of the general a.s.sisted that impression. His courtesy was so undisturbed, his mind so tranquil, his conversation so entirely that of the polite host, you felt he was masquerading in the uniform of a general only because he knew it was becoming. He glowed with health and vigor. He had the appearance of having just come indoors after a satisfactory round on his private golf-links. Instead, he had been receiving reports from twenty-four different staff-officers. His manner suggested he had no more serious responsibility than feeding bread crumbs to the seven stately swans. Instead he was responsible for the lives of 170,000 men and fifty miles of trenches. His duties were to feed the men three times a day with food, and all day and night with ammunition, to guard them against attacks from gases, burning oil, bullets, sh.e.l.ls; and in counter-attack to send them forward with the bayonet across hurdles of barb-wire to distribute death. These were only a few of his responsibilities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The ruined village of Gerbeviller, destroyed after their retreat by the Germans.

Captain Gabriel Puaux, of the General-Headquarters Staff, and Mr.

Davis.]

I knew somewhere in the chateau there must be the conning-tower from which the general directed his armies, and after luncheon asked to be allowed to visit it. It was filled with maps, in size enormous but rich in tiny details, nailed on frames, pinned to the walls, spread over vast drawing-boards. But to the visitor more marvellous than the maps showing the French lines were those in which were set forth the German positions, marked with the place occupied by each unit, giving the exact situation of the German trenches, the German batteries, giving the numerals of each regiment. With these spread before him, the general has only to lift the hand telephone, and direct that from a spot on a map on one wall several tons of explosive sh.e.l.ls shall drop on a spot on another map on the wall opposite. The general does not fight only at long distance from a map. Each morning he visits some part of the fifty miles of trenches. What later he sees on his map only jogs his memory.

It is a sort of shorthand note. Where to you are waving lines, dots, and crosses, he beholds valleys, forests, miles of yellow trenches. A week ago, during a bombardment, a brother general advanced into the first trench. His chief of staff tugged at his cloak.

"My men like to see me here," said the general.

A sh.e.l.l killed him. But who can protest it was a life wasted? He made it possible for every _poilu_ in a trench of five hundred miles to say: "Our generals do not send us where they will not go themselves."

We left the white swans smoothing their feathers, and through rain drove to a hill covered closely with small trees. The trees were small, because the soil from which they drew sustenance was only one to three feet deep. Beneath that was chalk. Through these woods was cut a runway for a toy railroad. It possessed the narrowest of narrow gauges, and its rolling-stock consisted of flat cars three feet wide, drawn by splendid Percherons. The live stock, the rolling-stock, the tracks, and the trees on either side of the tracks were entirely covered with white clay. Even the brakemen and the locomotive-engineer who walked in advance of the horses were completely painted with it. And before we got out of the woods, so were the pa.s.sengers. This railroad feeds the trenches, carrying to them water and ammunition, and to the kitchens in the rear uncooked food.