World's War Events Volume III Part 7

The sky was lightening and throwing into ghostly silhouette the line of the mountain ridge across the Vardar by the time we had pushed on out along the communication trench to the Greek Observation Post on the extreme brow of the hill. Since midnight the enemy "heavies" had been coughing gruffly under the mist-blanket that overlaid the plain, dappling it with alternately flashing and fading blotches of light till it glowed fantastically like a lamp-shade of Carrara marble; star-sh.e.l.ls, fired with a low trajectory, popped up and dove out of sight again, throwing a fluttering green radiance over the white pall which swathed the battlefield.

[Sidenote: The Bulgar preparing to go over the top.]

The mist-mask must have fended the day-break from the plain long after it was light upon the hill from where we watched, for it was not until the range of serrated peaks to the east of Doiran was all aglow with the red and gold of sunrise that the higher-keyed crack of the enemy's field-guns came welling up to tell us that the Bulgar was getting ready to go over the top. The flame-spurts--paling from a hot red to faded lemon as the light grew stronger--splashed up against the mist-pall as the jet of an illuminated fountain rises and falls, and down where the battered first-line trenches faced each other the dust-geysers of the exploding sh.e.l.ls rolled up in clouds to the surface of the thinning vapors as the mud of the bottom boils up through the waters of an agitated pool.

[Sidenote: The Allied artillery opens.]

For a minute or two the ragged line of the barrage wallowed forward through the outraged mist alone. Then, as a sudden flight of rockets spat forth from the Greek first line to warn that the enemy infantry was on the way, all the Allied artillery that could be brought to bear opened up and began dropping sh.e.l.ls just behind where the murky mist-clouds marked the swath of the Bulgar barrage.

For the s.p.a.ce of perhaps two or three minutes the fog-bank swirled and curled in swaying eddies as the sh.e.l.ls came hurtling into it; then--whether it was from a sudden awakening of the wind or through the licking up of its vapors by the first rays of the now risen sun, I never knew--almost in the wave of a hand, it was gone, revealing a broad expanse of trench-creased plain with a long belt of gray figures moving across it in a cloud of dust and smoke.

[Sidenote: Lively hand-to-hand fighting.]

"It isn't much of a barrage as barrages go on the western front," said Captain X---- half apologetically. "Their artillery won't do much harm to us, and, I'm afraid, ours not much to them. And we'll hardly be having enough machine guns emplaced to sting them as they ought to be stung for swarming up in ma.s.ses like that. But if it's only a second-cla.s.s artillery show, I still think I can promise you--if only the Bulgar has the stomach for it--a livelier bit of hand-to-hand fighting than you might find in a whole summer of looking for it in France. Do you see those little winking flashes all along where the infantry are moving? Some of them are from bayonets, but most are from knives. A great man with the knife is the Bulgar. Did you ever hear that song about him they sang at a revue the British 'Tommies' had at Saloniki? It was a parody on some other song that was being sung in the halls in London, and went something like this:

[Sidenote: A Bulgar song.]

I'm Boris the Bulgar, The Man With the Knife; The Pride of Sofia, The Taker of Life.

Good gracious, how s.p.a.cious And deep are the cuts, Of Boris the Bulgar, The Knifer--

"Now for it! Look at that!"

[Sidenote: The barrages lift and the Greeks advance to meet the Bulgars.]

I never did hear just what it was that Boris was a knifer of, for at that juncture the two barrages--having respectively protected and harried to the best of their abilities the advancing wave of infantry down to within a hundred yards or so of the Greek trenches--"lifted"

almost simultaneously on to "communications," and that lifting was the signal for the opening of the climacteric stage of the action. Without an instant's delay, a solid wave of Greeks in brown--lightly fringed in front with the figures of a few of the more active or impetuous who had outdistanced their comrades in the scramble over the top--rose up out of the earth and swept forward to meet the line of gray. The gust of their first great cheer rolled up to us above the thunder of the artillery.

"Now for it!" repeated X----, focussing down his telescope and steadying himself with his elbows. "I think you'll find the show from now on worth all the trouble of coming up to see."

[Sidenote: the Bulgars break and retreat.]

I do not attempt to account for what happened now; I only record it. It may have been that the Allied artillery had wrought more havoc in that advancing wave of men than had been apparent from a distance, or it may have been that the enemy artillery had done less to the entrenched defenders than it was expected to do; at any rate, the line of gray began to break at almost the first impact of the line of brown, and the great hand-to-hand fight that X---- had promised me was transformed into a Marathon.

[Sidenote: Greeks have always beaten the Bulgars.]

"As I expected," muttered my companion. "'Boris' has no stomach for a fight to-day with the man who licked him yesterday, and will lick him to-morrow and go right on licking him to the end if they'll only give him a show. The Bulgar never has stood up to the Greek, and he never will."

[Sidenote: The Greek Staff is in a mountain valley.]

[Sidenote: Scarcity of nurses.]

The Greek Staff shared a round bowl of a mountain valley, a few miles back from the front lines, with a clearing station. The equipment of the little hospital had mostly been provided by the British Red Cross, but the Venizelists had made a brave effort to furnish the staff themselves.

There were two French-trained Greek surgeons, a Greek matron, Greek orderlies, and two Greek nurses. Since the attack began there had been work for a dozen of the latter, but--as it had been impossible for the women of most of the Venizelist families to get away from Old Greece--no others were available. An English nurse, who had marched in the retreat of the Serbians, and a French nurse from a Saloniki hospital had volunteered to step into the breach, and these five women were courageously trying to make up in zeal what they lacked in numbers.

[Sidenote: Working double hours.]

"We are not enough for a double shift since the fighting began," Madame A----, the matron, had said to me the night of my arrival; "so we are accomplishing the same end by working double hours. We are working to atone for the dishonor our King has brought upon our country, just as our men are fighting to atone for it; and the harder we all work and fight the sooner it will come about."

The last thing to catch my eye as I looked back from the rim of the valley when I rode away at midnight had been the flash of a bar of light on a white uniform, as a tired figure had drooped against the flap of a hospital tent for a breath of air.

[Sidenote: Women nurses go without sleep.]

"If any one of those women has had a wink of sleep in the last three days," Captain X---- had said as we reined in to let a string of ambulances go by, "it must have been taken standing. I have been up most of the time myself, and never once have I looked across to the clearing station but I saw some sign of a nurse on the move."

[Sidenote: Venizelos at the nurses' mess.]

Madame A---- had asked me to drop in at the nurses' mess for luncheon in case I got back from the trenches in time, and this, by dint of hard riding, I was just able to do. Three or four powerful military cars drawn up at the hospital gate indicated new arrivals, but as to who they were I had no hint until I had pushed in through the flap of the mess tent and found M. Venizelos seated on a soap-box, _vis-a-vis_ Madame A---- at a table improvised from a couple of condensed milk cases. At the regular mess table, sitting on reversed water-buckets, were three French flying officers and a civilian whom I recognized as the private secretary of M. Venizelos. Two nurses were just rising from unfinished plates of soup in response to word that a crucial abdominal operation awaited their attendance at the theatre.

"Most of the Provisional Government has come out to pay us a visit this morning," said Madame A----, showing me to a blanket-roll seat at one end of the mess table, "and we are lunching early so that it can get back to Saloniki to take up the reins of State again. The General has carried off the Admiral and the Foreign Minister, but I have managed to keep the President for _our_ banquet. He has made the round of the hospital and spoken to every man here--that is," she added with a catch in her voice, "to all that could hear him. We've--we've lost three men this morning just because there wasn't staff to operate quickly enough."

[Sidenote: A strange banquet at which the guests contribute.]

That was, I think, one of the strangest little "banquets" I ever sat down to. Every one travels more or less "self-contained" in the Saloniki area, and whenever a party is thrown together the joint supplies are commandeered for the common good. The mess menu was a simple one of soup, tinned salmon, rice, and cheese, but by the time M. Venizelos's hamper had yielded a box of fresh figs, a can of the honey of Hymettus, and a couple of bottles of Cretan wine, and the French officers had "anted up" cognac, some tins of _flageolet_ for salad, and a tumbler of _confiture_, and the English nurse had brought out the last of her Christmas plum-cake, and I had thrown in a loaf of Italian _pan-forte_ and a can of chocolates, the little crazy-legged camp-table had a.s.sumed a pa.s.sing festal air.

[Sidenote: No one speaks of war at the feast.]

A number of toasts were proposed and drunk, but no one spoke of the nearer or remoter progress of the war. M. Venizelos adverted several times to the wonder of the spring flowers as he had seen them from the road, especially the great fields of blood-red poppies, and I overheard him telling Madame A---- some apparently amusing incidents of his early life in Crete. But it was not until, the banquet over, he had settled himself in his car for the ride to Saloniki that he alluded to any of the things with which his mind must have been so engrossed all the time.

"So you thought that our troops had all the best of the enemy this morning?" he said with a grave smile as he shook my hand.

"Incomparably the best of it," I answered.

[Sidenote: Why Venizelos is confident in the power of Greece.]

"Then perhaps you will understand why I felt so confident that the Bulgars would not have come into the war if they had known that Greece would stand by Serbia. And you will also understand why I feel so confident that our military help to the Allies will be a very real one, perhaps enough of a one even to save Greece from herself."

This was, I believe, the latest occasion on which M. Venizelos visited his troops at the front. Before another fortnight had gone by the forces of the "Protecting Powers" were moving into Old Greece, and in a month Constantine had abdicated and opened the way for the return of his former Prime Minister to Athens.

[Sidenote: The maker and Savior of Modern Greece.]

From the time of the Balkan wars of 1912-13 to the outbreak of the present one Venizelos was often referred to as "The Maker of Modern Greece." After this war he may well be known as "The Savior of Modern Greece"; and of the two achievements there can be no doubt that history must record that the one of "saving" was incomparably greater than the one of "making."

[Sidenote: What the influence of Venizelos may do.]

It is still too early to make it worth while to endeavor to forecast what is on the knees of the capricious war-G.o.ds of the Balkans, and there is no use in trying to deny that the Bulgar--just as long as Germany has the power and will to back him up--will take a deal of beating. But that Venizelos will be able to make the army of reunited Greece a potently contributive factor in bringing about that devoutly-to-be-wished consummation may now be taken as a.s.sured.

Copyright, World's Work, January, 1918.

We have seen in a previous narrative the difficulties which the Italians encountered in conducting their campaign against Austria. As a result of German falsehood and propaganda, the Italian line was weakened and penetrated by a great German army, and the Italian lines were swept back. They finally held, however, and the strength of their resistance is indicated in the following pages.

THE ITALIANS AT BAY