The Balkan war : adventures of war with cross and crescent

HE BALKAN WAR

ADVENTURES OF WAR
WITH CROSS & CRESCENT

! BY

1 PHILIP GIBBS

AND

BERNARD GRANT

Presented to the

LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by

PROFESSOR
B.E. SHORE

ADVENTURES OF WAR

THE BALKAN WAR

ADVENTURES OF WAR WITH
CROSS AND CRESCENT

BY

PHILIP GIBBS

AUTHOR OF '« THE STREET OF ADVENTURE," ETC.

Special Correspondent of the London " Graphic" -with the Bulgarian Army

AND

BERNARD GRANT

Special Correspondent of the London " Daily Mirror "
•with the Turkish Army

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
AND A MAP

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

u

G if s

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAG*

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER I

PART I
WITH THE ARMY OF THE CROSS

I. — THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA 9

II. — THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 25

III. — IN THE GENERAL QUARTERS 46

IV. — THE VICTORIES OF THE ALLIED NATIONS . 56

V. — IN MUSTAFA PASHA 74

VI. — THE SIEGE OF ADRIANOPLE . . . ' . .97

VII. — THE BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS . . . .112

VIII. — THE WAY BACK FROM THE WAR . . . .129

PART II

WITH THE ARMY OF THE CRESCENT
I.— THE CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE . . . .137

II. — IN THE FIELD OF WAR 154

III.— TOWARDS LULE BURGAS ...... 163

IV. — THE GREAT RETREAT 177

V. — IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA 212

VI. — ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 225

v

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

(The following Photographs were taken during the War by
Mr. Bernard Grant, on the Turkish side, and by Mr.
Horace Grant, on the Bulgarian side, as Special Photo-
graphers of the Daily Mirror, by whose kind consent
they are reproduced in this book.)

THE BROKEN ARMY - .... Frontispiece
Returning with the Colours after the
Defeat at Lule Burgas.

PAGE

WAR CORRESPONDENTS AT THE FRONT 2

Mr. H. W. Nevinson, Mr. Horace Grant, and

Mr. Philip Gibbs.
Mr. Bernard Grant in Camp.

SCENES OF CONQUEST - 18

A Turkish Village abandoned and burnt.
Bringing the Guns through Mustafa Pasha.

THE SINEWS OF WAR - -34

Food for the Bulgarian Troops.
Siege Guns for the Bombardment of Adrianople.

SCENES ROUND ADRIANOPLE - -50

Sending Stores to the Bulgarian Fighting Line.
A Wounded Turk under the Red Cross.

THE CONTRASTS OF FATE - 66

Redifs joining the Colours in high Spirits.
Surrounding a Refugee bringing the first News
of Defeat.

viii ADVENTURES OF WAR

FACING
PAGE

THE RAILROAD OF RETREAT - 82

The First Refugees after the Defeat at Kirk

Kilisse.
Defeated Soldiers at Chorlu.

THE REAR- GUARD OF THE GRAND ARMY - 98

The 4th Army Corps evacuating Silivri on their
Way to Chatalja.

FUGITIVE FAMILIES - 114

Through the Mire on the High Road to Con-
stantinople.
The abandoned Home at Seidler.

THE LAST SQUADRON - 130

Turkish Cavalry retreating in Good Order from
Lule Burgas.

PICTURES OF MISERY - 146

The only Stretcher seen by Mr. Grant.
A Woman at Silivri Guarding the Wreckage of
Her Home.

THE PANIC AT THE BRIDGE - 162

The Wild Stampede across the River after the
Great Defeat.

THE BIVOUAC OF DESPAIR - 178

The 4th Army Corps halting on the Line of
Retreat.

THE SENTINEL AT SAN STEFANO - 194

Guarding the Fountains from Incoming Soldiers
stricken with Cholera.

THE PRICE OF WAR - 210

Dead and Wounded on the Field of Battle.
Captured by Cholera.

THE LAST LINE OF DEFENCE - - 226

Ready for the Bulgars at Hadem Kiou.
In the Strong Trenches at Chatalja.

THE THEATRE OF WAR IN THE BALKAN STATES AND TURKEY

(The shaded sections are Macedonia and Novi-Bazar)
Copyright, 1912, by the Review of Reviews Company, New York. Reproduced by permission

ADVENTURES OF
WAR

WITH THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
THE DRAMA OF WAR

THE story which is written here by myself and
my friend, from the Bulgarian and Turkish
sides of the great and amazing struggle in the Near
East, does not make any pretence of being a history
of the war. That must be written later, not by news-
paper correspondents, but by victorious and defeated
officers, who actually took part in the great battles,
or by men who have access to a mass of official infor-
mation regarding the strategy and tactics of the cam-
paign, and to the detailed despatches by the Generals \
which at present are unavailable. In this book
there are but meagre descriptions of the battles which
were fought with such startling rapidity by the Bul-
garians and their allies, and with that irresistible
courage and genius which has destroyed the power
of the Turk in Europe. The reason for this omission
is a simple one. Neither I nor my friend, nor any other
correspondents, were allowed to see very much of the
fighting, and as I shall have to tell later, we were
treated by the military authorities on each side, not

2 ADVENTURES OF WAR

as war-correspondents, but almost as prisoners of war —
not as friends, but as enemies of dangerous character.

To the reader it may seem, therefore, on first thoughts,
that there is no reason for this book, and that the story
we have to tell is not worth telling. But I hope to
show before the end of our tale is reached that we saw
things worth describing, and worth remembering.
For after all, paradoxical as it may seem, a battle is
not the most interesting thing in warfare. War, as
I know now for the first time, consists of more than
battles. The drama of war is not played out in those
few hours when the guns are firing, and the troops are
advancing upon the enemy's positions. It is not
merely a spectacle of bursting shells and of hills veiled
by clouds of smoke — which is almost all that one may
see on a modern battlefield. I have seen the shells
bursting, day after day, and the smoke rolling from
the batteries ; my friend, who writes this book with
me, was close to the guns at Lule Burgas, and was
for several weeks at the front, on the lines of Chatalja ;
but neither of us looks back upon those scenes as the
most memorable in our recent experiences.

A battle is soon fought, soon won, and soon lost.
It is, as a rule, on such an extended front that no man
may see but a little corner of it. But the drama of
war is more than that. It is in what goes before the
battle and what follows it. It is the strange amazing
drama of great peoples suddenly breaking away from
all the familiar toil and duties of their life, and plung-
ing into a fantastic and terrible adventure ; when all
that mattered to them before no longer matters, when
all the purpose of their previous life is altered to a new
purpose, which is escape from death, and the killing

MR. H. W. NEVINSON, MK. HOKACK (iKANT AND MR. l-HII.lr GlltBS

MR. BERNARD GRANT IN CAMP

WAR CORRESPONDENTS AT THE FRONT

THE DRAMA OF WAR 3

I

of men. It is a drama of innumerable small, acts of
courage, of fear, of hardships, of misery, of horror,
of despair, when death itself, so enormous a tragedy
in ordinary life, becomes a commonplace familiar
thing, so that living men hardly turn their heads to
glance at those who fall dead ; when death, so terrible
in days of peace, is indeed, to many men, a welcome
gift, ending the sufferings that are unendurable. All
that my friend and I have seen, and it is worth the
telling if any tale should be told.

There is much more in this drama of war. Before
the battle there is the business — the wonderful busi-
ness of calling peasants from the fields and making
soldiers of them, of so bewitching them by magic spells,
called by other names in official bulletins and news-
paper articles, that men of intelligence, who have
spent their lives scraping at the soil, laying by little
savings after long days of labour, and proud of their
small possessions, in farms and homesteads, are not
only willing but eager, and delirious almost with
enthusiasm, to abandon their work, to give UP their
oxen and their carts, to leave behind them all that
they held dear in life, and to go at the word of com-
mand, from men they have never seen, to fight a
death struggle with unknown enemies.

This business of war is the strangest thing in life,
and upon the efficiency of it lies the result of the battle. •
The Bulgarians, as I shall have to tell, did their busi- !
ness well and they had great intellects at work organis-
ing the war, with a practical skill and business genius,
which ensured victory before a shot had been fired,
and what is more important, after the shots had been
fired.

4 ADVENTURES OF WAR

The feeding of the army, the clothing of the army, the
doctoring of the army, the transport of the army, these
things were of paramount importance, and to my mind
of immense and thrilling interest. And, as some
historians of war forget, the real enduring drama of it
is to be found not in military facts and figures, but in
the human side of it. To students of history it is good
and necessary to know the exact disposition of troops
on the battlefield, the conduct of certain regiments, the
mistakes or brilliant actions of commanding officers,
the geography of the battle, and the statistics of victory
or defeat, but to most of us these things are dull, and
do not speak.

What is not dull, is the human psychology of war, the
spirit of a people, conquering or beaten, the emotions
of war and the adventures of war, when they are in the
midst of great perils, when they are trying to find a way
of escape from a pursuing death, when they are starving
and wounded, and tortured by disease. It is of this
human side of war that we have to tell, and although
many of the incidents in this narrative may seem trivial,
it is perhaps because of their triviality that the reader
may realise vividly the real meaning of war.

It is a trivial thing for instance to record the success-
ful cooking of a turkey or a pig, and the joy of the sub-
sequent meal round a camp fire. But in war a meal to
men who do not know when they will find another is an
incident which stands out in heroic proportions. It is
trivial to describe the overturning of a bullock waggon
on a dark night in the midst of a retreat ; but in war,
the righting of the wheels, the rescue of the stores, may
mean the one chance which lies between life and death.
This book is full of such small episodes, and yet I hope

THE DRAMA OF WAR 5

they will not be read with impatience, for if so the
narrative of any campaign is not worth writing, nor
worth reading. In numberless small episodes the
meaning, the misery and the spirit of war are to be
found.

In this narrative my friend and I have told our own
little adventures in an intimate and personal way, and
I hope that may be pardoned, because it seems to me
that our readers may find amusement and interest in
our troubles and trials, and see behind them the in-
numerable adventures of other men all playing their
parts in this great drama in the mountainous country
of the fallen Crescent. One part of this story is at
least uplifted by the immensity of its tragedy. My
friend, Bernard Grant, more lucky than I in the seeing of
things, more unlucky in personal hardships, was in the
full tide of the retreat after the battle of Lule Burgas,
and with pen and camera records that awful chapter
in the history of warfare when literally and symbolically
the Turk was broken in Europe, and staggered along
the way of death to the gates of Constantinople, his
last refuge. Nothing since the retreat of Moscow is
comparable to this, when cholera lay in ambush for
those who had escaped from the Bulgarian guns, and
when the remnants of a great army, panic-stricken,
leaderless, hopeless, staggered past in a rabble rout
leaving upon their track the countless bodies of dead
comrades and dead horses as food for dogs and birds of
prey.

The Turks, during those recent days, have paid the ?
price of their old sins, of their old cruelties, of their long
record of misgovernment, corruption and tyranny.
Pity now, and not hatred, is their due, even from their

6 ADVENTURES OF WAR

enemies. For the innocent have suffered with the
guilty, and the virtues of humble men have been out-
weighed in the scales of Fate by the infamies of a
ruling caste.

This story of personal adventure and of journalistic
impressions may obtain a little dignity because it
belongs to the chronicles of a campaign which has
altered the map of Europe and fulfilled the vengeance
of centuries.

Our cordial thanks are due to the Graphic, which I
represented with the Bulgarian army, and to the Daily
Mirror, for which Bernard Grant worked on the Turkish
side, for permission to use material obtained in their
service.

PART I

WITH THE ARMY OF THE CROSS

BY

PHILIP GIBBS

(SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE GRAPHIC)

CHAPTER I
THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA

IT was early in September of 1912 that Europe
became alarmed by the menace of war. In
all the newspapers there were reports of a general
mobilization in the Balkan States, of a martial excite-
ment becoming more noisy and clamorous among the
Christian peoples of Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro,
Macedonia and Greece, of a general challenge issued
to the Turk in Europe. Macedonia, that vague and
troublesome territory which for generations has been
the theatre of guerilla warfare, of vendettas, of mas-
sacres and murders between Christians and Turks, was
to be the cause of quarrel. The liberation of Macedonia
from Turkish rule was the watchword adopted by the
rulers of the Balkan States to give righteousness to
their cause, and to gain the sympathy of other Chris-
tian peoples. That each of the States, now joined
in an offensive and defensive alliance, had other and
more selfish interests to serve, was perfectly clear to
all but the simplest of souls. Sejvia had long set her :
heart upon an " open window " on the shores of the
Adriatic, Montenegro coveted.. the. Sanjak of-Hovi
Bazar, Bulgaria was ambitious to bring within her
frontiers the rich country of Thrace, and to thrust
the Turk back into Asia Minor, Greece would not be

io ADVENTURES OF WAR

baulked of Crete, and all these allies in the Balkan
confederation had old scores which they were eager
to wipe out in Turkish blood. Here, then, were
dangerous chemicals of human passions which, if
united, would create one of the biggest explosions in
history. But in spite of scare headlines in his news-
paper the man in the street, in London, Paris, or
Berlin, did not believe that explosion would take
place. ' The Great Powers will intervene," he said •
" The Great Powers are at work." That was perfectly
true. The Great Powers were at work in their usual
way, watching a dangerous situation, discussing it in
their council chambers, receiving reports from their
ambassadors, exchanging diplomatic notes, issuing
through " inspired " organs reassuring words which
seemed to promise peace. It is probable that the
diplomatic gentlemen who sit in the Council Chambers
of Europe as the representatives and wire pullers of
the Great Powers began to realize, rather painfully
as September waned, their own impotence, and became
aware that they were in the presence of strange and
passionate forces, beyond the control of old-fashioned
diplomacy, and breaking up all the rules of the game.
The words " too late " began to be spoken in the
clubs, and written in leading articles. The intervention
of the Great Powers came at the eleventh hour, and
was ignored by the rulers and organizers of the little
Powers, who for a long time had been making their
plans with a secrecy, a skill, and a swift energy which,
now that they have been revealed to the whole world,
are acknowledged as a marvellous work of organization.
They were playing a gambler's game, and the risks
were heavy. Upon the hazards of the game depended

THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA n

the life and death of their kingdoms, but they were
prepared to take the risks, having gone too far to draw
back and play for safety. From a business point of
view they were bound to force a war with Turkey
and to finish it, one way or the other, quickly. There
were financial gentlemen behind the scenes who had
advanced large sums of money for the supply of
war material, and would not be kept waiting indefinitely
for repayment. They forced the pace. The Kings of
Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece had pledged
their credit up to the hilt. They had drained their
coffers dry. They had called up all the resources of
their kingdoms to the last ounce of gold. War was
the only way out, and a successful war. The Great
Powers might issue as many diplomatic notes as
seemed good to them, but this situation had gone
beyond them. There was another and stronger reason
why intervention was too late. The peoples of the
Balkan confederation would not be held back in their
desire for war. All their pent-up hate against the
Turk for his oppression, for his cruelties, for his long
tyranny, all their heritage of vengeance, stored up in
the centuries, demanded satisfaction. They would
turn upon their own rulers and wreck their kingdoms
by wild revolutions if international diplomacy was :.
again to trick them out of their passionate desire. It
was a psychological moment in Europe when the pas-
sions of several peoples, united by a common bond of
hate, were ready to burst forth. The lid could no ;
longer be kept down upon these human cauldrons of
seething excitement. For once at least in the history
of warfare, the rulers, the diplomats, and the financial
gentlemen, the wire-pullers of war, had behind them

12 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the burning enthusiasm of the men whose bodies were
to bear the brunt of battle, and of the women who were
to make the greatest sacrifice.

One of the first signs of the inevitability of this war
was the assembling of the war correspondents, in " The
Street of Adventure," and their departure to the Near
East. These men, my comrades and friends, are the
harbingers of war, the " vultures " as they have been
called. Many of them had last met in the hot sun
of Tripoli, some of them came hurrying back from
distant countries, and now, with a grim cheerfulness,
they had their passportalfcdorsed in the Ser^|^
Bulgarian and Turkish embassies, and prepared for a
new campaign. I had the good fortune to be appointed
special correspondent of The Graphic and Daily Graphic,
with the additional and somewhat alarming task of
providing sketches for stay-at-home artists. I was
provided with an immense number of note-books and
pencils — sufficient to write a history of the world —
with credentials which should satisfy any suspicious
foreigner of my harmless and useful character, and with
sufficient money to ensure food and lodging in a long
campaign. I was, in fact, encircled with gold, for I
wore it in a digger's belt round my waist, and under my
waistcoat, so that I should lose it only with my life.
One article of equipment offered me by my editor I
looked at askance, and declined with thanks. It was
a heavy Browning revolver, which had been the
property of a former war-correspondent. I had an
uneasy feeling, however, that I might be the first
victim of its deadly powers, and decided that I would
keep strictly to the character of a non-combatant.
There were moments in the days that followed when I

THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA 13

rebuked myself for leaving behind that handy weapon,
and one of them was when I was attacked by a pack of
wolf -like dogs on the outskirts of a Turkish village.
Another time when I hankered after that abandoned
Browning was when the Bulgarian Censor refused to
pass my first sketches of Mustafa Pasha. Perhaps,
after all, however, it was a good thing that I went un-
armed.

I was almost the last war-correspondent to leave
London, and with my one companion, Mr. Bussey of
the Westminster Gazette, I hurried across Europe,
afraid that I might be too late to join the Bulgarian
forces, and even to get through by rail to their
headquarters. The journey was an easy one to
Belgrade, and here I halted, and was compelled to
wait for a few days before a train left on its way to
Sofia. Although impatient at the time, I do not
now regret this temporary delay, as I was able to
study the spirit of war in Seryia before making acquaint-
ance with 'the Bulgarians, who are very different in
their characteristics.

My first view of Belgrade was from the broad waters
of the Danube, as I crossed in the ferry boat from
the Hungarian bank. The white walls and red roofs
of this town were bathed in sunshine. Belgrade
seemed a city of peace secure from all enemies, and
unexpectant of war. At the sight of it three young
men on the ferry *boat raised their hats and cheered.
They were Servians who had come from Austria as
volunteers. One of them looked like a young actor,
with a pale face and long black hair. He pointed to
a soldier pacing on the fortifications, with the sun
glinting on his bayonet.

14 ADVENTURES OF WAR

" In a little while," he said, " we shall all be chasing
the Turks. We will show them how the Servians can
shoot ! " A girl by his side put her hand on his shoulder
v/ith a caressing touch and laughed airily, as though
he had spoken a good jest.

A good-looking man in a bowler hat and black
overcoat, like a city clerk, spoke to me in German.

" I am an agent for aeroplanes," he said. " I am
bringing over three biplanes. It is a wonder the
Austrians let them through." He laughed, and then
said with a queer catch in his throat, " I believe we
are going to surprise Europe. This war will be a
quick thing when it begins."

These words on a boat across the Danube set my
pulses beating. Simple as they were, they conveyed
to me a sense of the unnatural excitement which the
spirit of war had stirred in such men as the long-haired
boy with the pale face, and in this man with the bowler
hat like a city clerk. Then, when I landed, I plunged
into an excitement of my own, for on the quayside,
after my passports had been scrupulously examined
by a very fat officer with a very gorgeous uniform, my
luggage was pounced on by a band of hairy brigands,
who without paying the slightest attention to me,
proceeded to fight among themselves for my bags.
They shouted and cursed each other, and then ex-
changed lusty blows, and it was full twenty minutes
before the victors piled my luggage on to a miserable-
looking cab drawn by two lean horses, and allowed
me to depart after heavy payment. I now found
that I was in extreme peril, for my coachman whipped
up his sorry steeds and started off on a wild career
over the roads of Belgrade — that is to say over rock-

THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA 15

strewn quagmires, gaping pits, and ruts like deep
ditches. The carriage lurched now to one side and
now to the other, with its wheels deep in the ruts, or
perched high upon piles of loose stones, and at times
it seemed that only a miracle could save me from \
instant death. Never have I seen anything like the ;
streets of Belgrade before the war, when an elaborate
plan for repairing them had been checked in the midst i
of chaos by the calling out of all able-bodied workmen j
to the colours.

I found the city still waiting for the news of a war
which seemed so long delayed after the preliminary
challenge that many people were becoming sceptical
of its beginning. It was a city abandoned by all its
men except those too old and those too young to be
called up from the first reserves of the Servian army.
It was a citv of restless expectancy, full of peasant
women whose husbands had gone to the front, and
elderly shopkeepers who had no assistants behind the
counters and few customers. They were all waiting
for the declaration of war, and for the news of the first
battle, but no word had yet been published to relieve
the tension.

Yet there were crowds of men about the streets \
who slouched about in an aimless way, carrying bundles |
on their backs, or with their hands thrust deep into :
their breeches pockets. They were elderly men who
belonged to the last reserve, and were waiting for the
word to join their battalions. Many of them had
come from remote Servian villages, and their costumes
were of startling variety and colour. Some wore
sheep-skin coats, with the shaggy wool inside, and the
skin decorated with crude paintings or garish em-

16 ADVENTURES OF WAR

broidery. Others had brown woollen vests and a loose
under-garment of the same material, reaching to their
knees. Nearly all of them wore loose gaiters worked
with red stitches or woollen buskins of elaborate
patterns. Others wore flat oval sandals almost as
big as a tennis racket. It was curious to see the sentries
standing outside the Royal palace with these peasant
leggings and peaked shoes showing beneath their
military coats. Even their uniforms were things of
shreds and patches, for the whole supply of modern
uniforms had been used for the army on its way to
headquarters and the front, and the soldiers on garrison
duty in Belgrade had to be content with the blue coats
which had been discarded after the assassination of
King Alexander.

Soon after my arrival at Belgrade I saw a picturesque
cavalcade clattering through the streets. They were
mounted peasants from the country districts, and they
were as wild a set of men as one might find in Europe.
Their horses were lean and shaggy, with wooden saddles
made of sticks tied together, and with reins and stirrups
of coarse rope. The men had long black hair beneath
sheepskin caps or broad felt hats, and short brown
jackets with loose shirts tied about with coloured
cloths.

The women who had lost their husbands for a while,
some of them for ever, were doing the men's work in the
fields and in the market-place. I was interested to see
the immense crowds of women coming from the churches
where they had been praying for their men. They
seemed to carry their household goods about with them,
• like gipsies on the tramp. They were laden with great
bundles which were hung on to heavy notched sticks,

THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA 17

from which also were suspended earthenware bottles,
boots, and domestic utensils. These women were
ablaze with gaudy colour. They wore heavy woollen
kirtles, generally of red and blue stripes, tucked up
round the waist, and woollen or leather aprons embroid-
ered with floral patterns. Like the men, they wore also
coloured gaiters or red socks and flat leather sandals.
It was not an uncommon sight to see a woman walking
with bare feet and legs, though her body was clothed in
the thickest garments in spite of the warmth of the
October sun.

While I was in Belgrade the news came that Monte-
negro had fired the first shots in the war and was
advancing victoriously. But here in Servia there seemed
to be no hurry to begin. Their statesmen were tem-
porising with the great Powers, still " considering "
the diplomatic notes. Their chief anxiety was to gain
a little more time so that, they might assemble all their
fighting men and collect their munitions of war. Some
of the big guns had still to be delivered. The supplies
of shells had not reached the front. But the enthusiasm
of the people was wild and unrestrained, and they were
more impatient than their rulers. The call to the colours
had been answered by the peasants, by the townsmen,
by clerks and shopkeepers as though it were the invita-
tion to a national festival in which religion was
mingled with merry-making.

I saw a good deal of all this. A^holiday feeling was
in the air. In the villages the clangDf'ttHi UlfVll, l!Ws
sound of the saw, the call of the ploughman to his
bullocks ceased as though the Sabbath bells had rung,
for the blacksmith, the carpenter, and the labourers
in the fields left their work to join their battalions.

i8 ADVENTURES OF WAR

The men who had been called gathered in groups
outside the village inns and were surrounded by excited
women. It was the women who seemed to be urging
their men on and firing them with enthusiasm. Every
Servian sweetheart was eager for her lad to join in the
war against the Turk — the Terrible Turk, whom they
had been taught to hate in their nurseries and in their
churches, and in tales of old barbarities round the winter
hearthsides. Every Servian sweetheart had already
made her boy a hero, however stolid he seemed in his
sheep-skin coat, however dazed he looked at this sudden
call from the familiar things of daily toil. She put a
medal about his neck, blessed by the priest, and a proof
against bullets. As additional safeguard she gave him
a charm which he wore in a little bag next to his heart.
It was to be a Holy War, a new crusade against the
Crescent, and so these fighting men went to the front,
strengthened by the prayers of the church, by the
blessing of the priests or popes, as they are called — by
whispered words of old mothers who pulled their boys'
heads to their breasts, and said : " God is with you,
little one. He will shield you from all harm. He will
give power to His own side."

The women of Servia gave a brave example of courage
to their men. Four years ago they enrolled themselves
in a " League of Death," making a vow to die rather
than surrender the liberty of their country to Austria or
to any other enemy. They practised shooting, and old
women and young vied with each other in becoming
good shots. It was an extraordinary sight to watch
those peasant girls and women of good class standing
shoulder to shoulder, armed with rifles, and drilling like
men, and lying prone before the butts, with a shooting

A TURKISH VILLAGE ABANDONED AND BURNT

RKIN(;iNG THE GUNS THROUGH MUSTAHHA PASHA

THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA 19

instructor in command. A friend of mine, Mr. T. E.
Grant, the brother of my collaborator in this book, was
made an honorary member of the League of Death,
with much ceremony, and has in his possession the
silver medal with a design of the skull and cross-
bones, which is a proof of his membership. He was
warned solemnly not to be seen with this medal in his
possession by any Austrian or Turk, for it would lead
him into serious trouble. This women's League of
Death was perhaps a little theatrical in its object.
The Servian women did not join the fighting ranks of
their army in the war against Turkey. But their dis-
play of martial spirit increased the enthusiasm of the
men, and in Servia the spirit of war thrilled like an
electric charge to the most desolate farmsteads and to
the tiniest hamlets. Everywhere people gathered
together, not to work, but to talk. There were straggling
processions of peasants winding down the hillsides
and along the village roads, followed by women and
children. From afar one could hear the sound qf their
singing. In the market squares they gathered round
village orators who poured forth fiery eloquence,
praising these poor peasants as heroes and Christian
champions. Here and there before a wayside ikon or
Calvary a solitary woman bowed her head with clasped
hands, praying under the open sky and in the public
gaze for the man who was dearest to her in the world,
and who had gone forward with the fighting line.
Down some of the roads passed long lines of baggage
waggons and ambulance waggons lumbering slowly
along rough tracks as though already laden with
wounded, hidden by white canvas and marked by a
blood red cross ; and here and there I could see against

20 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the sky-line the silhouettes of mounted men, and the
flash of light on guns and wheels. Servia was collecting
its army, hurrying up its materials of war, abandoning
all the work of peace.

Yet in spite of these signs of martial preparation,
this turmoil of excitement in places where, as a rule,
there is a drowsy quietude, it was difficult for me to
realise that these people were preparing for a grim
and terrible struggle, in which death would be the
victor, whoever won. In Belgrade, in spite of so many
of its male citizens having departed, the normal things
of life seemed to continue. The business of the city
seemed to go on, quietly and languidly. A stranger
would not have known without his newspaper that
this was the capital of a State which was only waiting
for the last word before plunging into war. With
this knowledge I understood the significance of little
things, the feverish way in which a man seized upon
a newly-published paper, the emotion of two men
seated at a cafe table arguing with nervous, restless
hands, the groups of the last reservists standing at
the street corners as though waiting for some drama
to begin, the sudden rush to windows as a body of
infantry passed down a street, led by dapper officers
who smiled up to the windows as they passed ; the
cheers and shouts that greeted one of those straggling
bands of peasants who came in from the country,
without uniform and without arms, but with the look
of men who were spoiling for a fight.

I sat with Servian officers in a cafe* and found them
gay fellows, but it seemed to me, perhaps unjustly,
that, in those days before the war, when they laughed
and raised their glasses, and said : "To our first

THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA 21

dinner in Constantinople," their gaiety was a little
forced and covered a secret anxiety. They were not
quite sure then of the weakness or the strength of
the Turk. They were already wondering what Austria
would do in the event of Servian victories or defeats.
They were uneasy, also, with a tense expectancy, and
the delay in declaring war was setting their nerves on
edge. The ordinary citizens suspected Austrian spies
everywhere, and I happened to be one of the victims
of their suspicion.

Looking back upon the incident now I can laugh
at it, but it was awkward at the time. Shortly after
my arrival in Belgrade I was arrested as a spy, and
was lucky in escaping a night in the cells. In
company with two other war correspondents I went
to the railway station to enquire whether there was
any chance of a train to Sofia. The station had
become a camp of reservists waiting to go to the front,
and with their baggage piled about them they lay and
squatted on the station steps, sleeping, or waiting with
the patience of dumb animals. The doorways were
guarded by rough-looking soldiers in hairy coats, with
fixed bayonets. The scene struck me as strangely
picturesque, and I pulled out my note-book to make
a sketch of it.

I had scarcely roughed in the outlines of the station
when one of the soldiers came up to me, and after
watching for a few moments, tapped me on the shoulder,
pointed to the sketch, and straightway broke forth
into an outburst of language, the threatening tone of
which was the only sense I could make of it.

I spoke to the man in French, English and German,
but he knew nothing but Servian, and entirely mis-

22 ADVENTURES OF WAR

understood my wealth of gesticulation. It was clear
enough that he took us for Austrian spies, and we
looked at each other with smiles that were not altogether
cheerful, when after further speeches in Servian we
were placed under arrest.

We were promptly taken through the town, attract-
ing the unpleasant attention of passers by, and feeling
like criminals caught redhanded in crime, until after
a long walk over the abominable roads we arrived at
the police headquarters. Here we were taken before
one of the officers, a young man with a solemn face and
suspicious eyes, who bowed to us as we entered with
our guard, and then listened to the long explanation
which centred round my captured note-book. The
officer regarded my unfinished sketch upside down,
and it appeared to me that he took the gravest view
of it, as well he might, if judged as a work of art.
Unfortunately the language difficulty again presented
itself, for the officer could not speak one word of
English, French, or German. Undaunted by this he
interrogated me at length in his own tongue, and
seemed to imagine that my silence in answer to his
questions was due to my guilty conduct.

My friends and I pulled out our passports and other
documents and exhausted ourselves in the endeavour
to prove our identity as English correspondents.
The officer examined the passports, but it was obvious
that they only served to increase his horrible sus-
picions. He motioned us to our seats, spoke some
rapid sentences to the guard, and then, ignoring us
completely, smoked a cigarette and stared up at the
window. A long and painful silence reigned in that
room. My friends and I shifted in our seats, exchanged

THE WAR-CRY IN SERVIA 23

uneasy glances, whispered, coughed, smiled, but the
young officer smoked on with sublime impassivity.
I began to be seriously alarmed, not for my safety,
but for my dinner. I was already getting very hungry.

Finally our suspense was ended by the appearance
of a dirty, beery, and blear-eyed old fellow, who
spoke atrocious German and announced himself as
police interpreter. Through him we were interrogated
by the officer. The first question was, '' Are you
Austrian ?" which we answered with a chorus of " No ! "
The second question was " Are you Italian ? " Again
we protested our entire innocence of any blood but
pure English. After a great deal of questioning as to
our business in Belgrade and especially as to the
meaning and purpose of my unfortunate sketch, the
officer had a long and whispered conversation with
the snuffy old gentleman who had succeeded miser-
ably as interpreter, and finally told us, through that
medium, that we were free to leave Belgrade at the
earliest possible moment. It was a doubtful kind of
compliment, but we accepted it gladly, and after
having shaken hands soberly with the young officer
breathed again the air of liberty.

The affair was trivial enough, but it was a sign of
the times, when in Belgrade every foreigner was sus-
pected as an Austrian spy, until the contrary had been
proved, and where the nervous tension was so great
that the sketch of a railway station seemed to have
a most dangerous significance.

Belgrade during those days before the war was not
a cheerful city. There were no theatres, for the actors
had put aside their grease-paints and put on the
livery of war, and only in one restaurant was an

24 ADVENTURES OF WAR

orchestra, which played patriotic airs to the elderly
men who had been left behind. When darkness fell
the city was very quiet, only solitary figures hurried
through the ill-lighted streets, and after ten o'clock
no one seemed alive, except a few soldiers.

Outside the King's Palace — a new building which
has taken the place of the old building where the ill-
fated Alexander and his queen, Draga, were killed —
the sentries paced up and down with fixed bayonets,
and their footsteps echoed in the solitude. Away on
the hill above the Danube the great building of the
Headquarters Staff had lighted windows, across which
shadows passed. From the ramparts there came,
now and then, the shrill note of a bugle. The garrison
was awake and watching.

A Servian friend pacing by my side listened to the
bugle note, and grasping my arm said: " To-morrow,
I think, the war will begin."

" Are you nervous ? " I asked.

" War is a dangerous game," he said. " Who can
tell which way it will go ? "

At that moment there was no man in Europe who
could tell. But in a few days the revelation came,
for the Turks were already in retreat.

CHAPTER II
THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA

IT had been easy to reach Belgrade. It was
difficult to get away. Day after day all pas-
senger trains were held up while the lines were used for
the munitions of war, which were being sent along
in enormous quantities to the base of the Bulgarian
army, and to the Servian stations of Nisch and Sara-
brot. All this was done without undue haste, in
perfect order, and with magnificent organization. The
preparations for war were being made with clockwork
regularity and with splendid precision of effort. At
last it was notified that a train would go with passengers
to Sofia, and I said farewell to comrades in Belgrade.
Among them were Major McHugh of the Daily Tele-
graph, Mr. Charles Hands of the Daily Mail, Mr. Frank
McGee of the Daily Mirror, Captain Osborn of The
Times, and Mr. Norregard of the Daily Mail, famous
men in Fleet Street, and good fellows all. They wished
me God-speed and envied me, for wonderful stories .'
had reached them of the generous things in store for \
war-correspondents from the military authorities in j
Bulgaria. It seemed that we were to be provided j
with horses and servants, that we were to be fed by \
the army, and that we were to have full facilities to
go to the front. They did not anticipate such generous

26 ADVENTURES OF WAR

treatment from the Servians, and were busy searching
for their own horses, servants and provisions. Little
did they know the painful truth awaiting me.

I shall not soon forget that journey to Sofia. It
was not war, but it was still less magnificent. Before
the train started there was a wild stampede on the
platform by a battalion of peasant reservists and
all sorts and conditions of people who had been waiting
for the first and perhaps the last chance of getting
through to Nisch, and on to Bulgaria. I narrowly
escaped death from naked bayonets, which jabbed
about in the midst of a maelstrom of surging humanity,
storming the doorways and clambering upon the roof
of the train. When at last I got on board I found
myself wedged in the corridor between piles of baggage,
soldiers, peasants, and foreign journalists, with the
prospect of a long journey in the most uncomfortable
situation. " A la guerre comme a la guerre," and I
put up with the discomfort cheerfully, but was anxious
about provisions. I had only a piece of cheese and a
little drop of brandy, while fellow passengers prophesied
that it would be two days before we reached Sofia,
with luck. The prophecy was fulfilled, and if I had had
to stay fixed in between the baggage in my corridor,
without food, I think I should have died before reaching
the journey's end. But a lady was my good angel.
She had taken possession of a slip of a carriage, with
exit on one side only, and, with her little girl and one
friend, had made a private and comfortable sanctum
for herself in this overcrowded train by locking the
door and pulling down the blinds. To the honour of
all^the rough fellows who were wedged with us in the
corridor it must be said that they respected that lady's

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 27

compartment, and never attempted to open it. But
she took pity on me when I was nearly fainting with
exhaustion and invited me inside. I accepted with
gratitude and made friends with the lady's daughter,
an elfish little beauty of ten years, whose vivacity and
gaiety and unceasing interest in all the strange scenes
about her were delightful to see. She gave me my
first lesson in Bulgarian, done into French, and ac-
cepted, very gravely and graciously, a piece of my
cheese in exchange for chocolate. I sing the praises
of the little one, for she showed a fine courage when
grown-up men were faint of heart, and was still gay
when all of us were gloomy. For that train journey
was no joke. We stopped at every wayside station,
as it seemed interminably, and at last at night we were
turned out on to the platform of Sarabrot, hungry,
chilled to the bone with a biting wind and a hard frost,
and without a place on which to lay our heads. Here
we waited all night until the dawn, and the one room
in which there was a shelter from the wind was crowded
to suffocation by peasants lying asleep on their bundles
and filled with a warm, foul heat that sickened me.
It was a weird scene in the dim light of flickering
lamps. A few well-dressed ladies sat drowsing among
the hairy peasants whose snores made a rumbling
music through the room, and one gentleman excited
my admiration because among all the queer costumes
of the Servian villages, among these peaked caps,
leather coats, baggy white breeches and woollen
leggings he stood immaculate in a frock overcoat and
tall hat, as though he had just stepped out of the
Rue de Rivoli. He was a French journalist on his way
to the front. Outside the station door there was all

28 ADVENTURES OF WAR

night long the tramp of soldiers, as battalion after
battalion of Servian troops marched up to entrain for
their headquarters. Officers moved up and down the
ranks with lanterns which threw pallid rays of light
upon those grey-clad men. Presently a long troop
train came into Sarabrot and the soldiers were packed
into open trucks so tightly that they could not move.
Their bayonets made a quick-set hedge above each
truck, and for more than an hour these men were kept
waiting before the train carried them away through the
frosty night. They were very silent. There was no
laughing or singing now. They talked to each other
in low voices, as though the darkness held some terror
for them. For the first time I realized the grim
reality of all this business in the darkness. There
was something rather horrible in all those peasants
being carried away like cattle to the fighting lines.
They were like dumb-beasts going to the slaughter-
house.

It was a night of queer conversations. They come
back to my memory as though through the blur of
steam round the stove in the crowded waiting room.
One man slouched up to me in the dim light and said :
" I guess you're an Englishman, anyhow ? " I re-
turned the compliment and said " You're an American."
But I was wrong. He was a Bulgarian born and bred,
but had been in America for years and had now come
back in a thin flannel suit and a straw hat from a
township in the Western states.

" I heard the call," he said, " and was ready to take
my place in the firing line. I shall be glad to give Hell
to the Turks."

A strange fellow and a strange adventure ! As the

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 29

days passed I met many queer types of Bulgarian reser-
vists who had heard the call and answered it, because in
their blood there was the same hatred of the Turks.

The journey came to an end at last, and in Sofia I
said farewell to my little Bulgarian fairy who all through
the night had sung little songs to herself and smiled
with dancing eyes at the peasant soldiers in their heavy
blankets and at the passing battalions. To her war
was a curious and fascinating peep-show ; as yet she did
not know the horror of it, nor its tragedies. Her mother
knew, though she spoke bravely about the officer
husband who had gone with his comrades to the front.

Sofia at last ! In a little while I too would be on my
way to the front. So I fondly believed, though as the
days passed this belief began to wane. But I watched
the preparations for war with an absorbed interest, and
for a little while at least was content with my surround-
ings.

The war spirit reigned in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria,
which since the 'eighties has grown from a Turkish
village into a great city with many splendid buildings.
Outside the old white Mosque with its tall and slender
minaret, the one thing of beauty which has been in-
herited from the Turks, there passed all day long small
companies of soldiers heavily laden in their field kit,
and bands of Macedonian exiles who had volunteered ,
for the war. Smart Bulgarian officers drove about in
pony-carts, two-horsed drosckies, and rare automobiles,
or paced hurriedly about from the ministry of war to
the headquarters of the garrison, stopping only for
brief salutes and handshakes with their comrades in
arms. Through the streets there was the rumble of
bullock-waggons and forage-carts dragged by buffaloes

30 ADVENTURES OF WAR

who stared at all this activity with sullen eyes, resent-
ing their captivity and their labour. As in Belgrade,
there were more women in the town than men, and they
stood in the doorways or in the market-places with
children clinging to their skirts, as though, now that
their men had gone away, they had no other household
duties. These brown-skinned, black-haired, liquid-eyed
women in their embroidered skirts, striped kirtles, white
petticoats and red stockings were amazingly pictur-
esque. Their heavy aprons were worked all over with
fantastic patterns in coloured wools, and many of them
wore white scarves about their heads and shoulders,
almost like the women of Mohammedan towns.

With a grave and quiet dignity priests of the Ortho-
dox Church, wearing high black caps and long black
gowns, passed among these crowds of soldiers and
peasants and women and children, and now and then a
young soldier ran across the street to kiss the hand of
one of these bearded priests and to bend a knee before
his blessing.

I watched the army of Macedonian recruits pass
through Sofia and followed them on to the plain of
Slivmtza, the old battleground between the Servians
and Bulgarians, where with a patient enthusiasm they
were learning the simplest evolutions of military drill.
There were about five thousand of them, and they
seemed to me the most picturesque fellows in Europe.
They marched by with a long and swinging stride, old
men who remembered many a massacre of their brethren
by the Turks and many orgies of wild and terrible
revenge, with young lads who had inherited the tradi-
tion of hate against the Moslems, who had made
Macedonia a place of terror.

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 31

I was astonished to see girls from eighteen to twenty
years or so dressed in the rough sheep-skin jackets and
white woollen trousers worn by the men, and taking
their places in the ranks. The drummers beat their pig-
skins with wild passion which stirred the Macedonian
blood, and there was the squeal of primitive bag-pipes
as the little army of volunteers paraded on the plain.

For hours they went through their exercises and
never seemed to tire, and at intervals they shouted
strange war-cries, and gave vent to shrill and far-
carrying cheers, and flung up their fur caps into the air.
At a little distance in the shadow of the great mountain
which dominates Sofia, was one of the Macedonian en-
campments, with low tents of canvas on hoops, and huts
built of straw, in a corral of light carts with their shafts
thrown up like flag-staffs. Bullocks and buffaloes
roamed on the outskirts, and as the darkness fell the
light of camp-fires threw a lurid glare upon the scene.

Then I went into the peasant quarters of Sofia, ex-
ploring the old streets which still survive from the days
of Turkish rule, with wooden houses and carved door-
posts and high sloping roofs. The Bulgarian peasants -
were sitting in little wine shops, or cross-legged in the '
doorways of workshops, or standing in groups outside
the paper shops staring at highly coloured prints,
depicting the early scenes of the war. There was a
crowd of them in a gunsmith's shop, handling cheap
revolvers, and studying them with greedy eyes. I
do not think there were many men in Bulgaria, or many
women, who did not buy some kind of firearm or deadly
weapon. In some of the side streets I saw men sharpen-
ing long knives on their shoe leather and feeling the
temper of the curved blades.

32 ADVENTURES OF WAR

Presently, except for a few soldiers on garrison duty,
Sofia was abandoned by most of its active citizens and
by all the troops who had filled its streets.

Day by day as the war grew inevitably nearer all the
able-bodied men of Bulgarian nationality were called
to the colours and passed away to the wild country
which faced the Turkish frontier. I sat with men in the
cafes who a few weeks before had been teaching art,
history, or economics to University students, and with
men who had been busy with all the enterprises of a
modern and progressive city. They found their uni-
forms strange and uncomfortable ; they seemed to be
living in a fantastic dream, in which all that matters in
daily life became shadowy and insignificant. These
men of peace and learning and commerce were going to
fight, to lie out on wild hills, to suffer hunger and
fatigue under the great sky, in the darkness of mountain
passes, to kill or be killed. They did not pretend to
like the prospect. It was simply inevitable. They had
got to go through with it. They joked and laughed, but
in the midst of their laughter there came brief silences
and a joke ended in a sigh.

In a little while all these amiable, brilliant men,
most of whom spoke half the tongues of Europe, and
all of whom were wonderfully courteous to us war-
correspondents, left Sofia with the great battalions
of armed peasants, with the Macedonians in their
sheepskins and the Servian allies in their patchwork
uniforms. I saw the last troops of mounted infantry
ride past my windows. They had twined scarlet
flowers about their caps and upon their rifles, and in
the bridles of their horses. These flowers were as red
as blood.

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 33

Sofia became very quiet, so quiet that at night the
silence was unearthly. There was no clatter of horses'
hoofs, for there were few horses left. The theatres
and music-halls were shut, for there were no audiences,
but only a few poor companies who had been stranded
in this country when the war was beginning. No one
was allowed out of doors after eleven at night, but
often a little before that time I went for a lonely walk
and paced down utterly deserted streets, and then
retired before the quiet pad of wild-looking fellows
with guns slung across their shoulders and long shaggy
coats, who stood under the light of street lamps and
stared at me suspiciously before advancing.

The King's Palace was very silent, and no lights
gleamed in the windows. King Ferdinand, that man
of mystery who has baffled the world, left his capital
secretly on his way to his headquarters at Stara Zagora.
Few people knew of his going, for the Royal Standard
still floated above his palace and there was no crowd
to cheer the Sovereign-General of the Bulgarian army
in the field. In the same quiet way on the previous
night the Turkish Ambassador had handed in his
papers and driven away to the station where a train
was waiting for him. His departure was the most
significant event, for it was the first definite sign that
all arguments had ceased with Turkey and the Powers,
and that war was to begin.

But there were only one or two officials and a few
journalists to watch the solitary figure of the Turk
take his place in the train. There had been no pictur-
esque or dramatic scene with the mob as spectators.
Even the news that the King had signed a manifesto
declaring war was withheld for some time. Secrecy

34 ADVENTURES OF WAR

and silence were the watchwords of the Bulgarian

Ministers and officers. All the preparations for the

war were made with an intense and wonderful secrecy

never before achieved even by the Japanese. Upon

the eve of war all mails and telegrams were stopped,

and Bulgaria isolated herself from the rest of Europe

as though she had built an iron wall around her frontiers.

^ Journalists were unable to send despatches to their

"*" newspapers without having them so heavily censored

that they had no meaning or no interest. Even private

^letters were being censored, and correspondents had the

\painful duty of reading out affectionate missives to their

wives to serious men in uniform.

One scene in Sofia is worth remembering. It was
down at the old Turkish mosque which remains as a
relic of the Moslem domination. From the top of the
tall white minaret which rises above the old houses
straight into the clear sky the muezzin called to prayer
at sunset, and down below in the square a few Turks
of the lowest class took off their jackets, spread them
on the ground, and facing Mecca raised their hands
to Allah before prostrating themselves. The Bul-
garian peasants paid no attention to them as they
passed, and these Turks were able to pray to God in
their own way without fear of attack or insult from
people who were at war with the Moslem Power. There
was no attack upon the little Turkish community.
When I asked a Bulgarian official whether there was
any danger of this he seemed surprised at the question.
" We are not savages," he said. " That would be the
last thing possible in Sofia. Our people get on very
well with the Turks in Bulgaria."
It is a strange fact that in that town were ten Turkish

FOOD FOR THE BULGARIAN TROOFS

SIEGE GUN'S FOR THE BOMBARDMENT OF ADRIANOI'LE

THE SINEWS OF WAR

35

members in the Sobranje, or Bulgarian Parliament,
who voted for the war subsidies and for all the measures
preparing for the war against their own race. They
had been so long in Bulgaria that their interests were
closely bound up with the Balkan States. It is a
strange and pitiful thing that in this twentieth century
men will go out to kill other men against whom they
have no personal quarrel, and with whom in peace
" they get on very well."

But the Bulgarians had not forgotten the old blood-
feuds between Turk and Christian, nor the days of
their own subjection to the Moslem rule ; and though
they found the individual Turk a harmless fellow in
their own country, their hate was as active as ever
against the Mohammedan Power in Europe. " This
will be a cruel war," said a Bulgarian officer, as he
sat at my table in one of the cafes at Sofia. " There
will be no non-combatants and no quarter." Are not
all wars cruel ? Even before a shot had been fired
there was misery in the Balkans, for all the supplies of
life had been requisitioned for the army ; the horses,
the bullocks and the carts had been taken from the
farms ; and in the villages of Bulgaria the women and
children were staring at the desolation of their homes.

It was nearly twenty-four hours after King Ferdinand
had signed the manifesto proclaiming war that it was
published in the capital of Bulgaria. It was known
to me and to a few others an hour or two after the
King had put his signature to the fateful document,
and it seemed very strange that the Bulgarians in
Sofia should still be ignorant that their country was in
a state of war.

But I was startled in the early morning of Friday,

36 ADVENTURES OF WAR

October i8th, by the sound of shouts in the streets.
Cheer after cheer came faintly up to my windows
from the distance. The people knew at last. They
cheered as though wonderfully good news had come
to them with a promise of great gifts. But I confess
that believing then in the Turks' power of resistance,
and with an imagination more active and more morbid,
perhaps, than that of the peasants in Sofia, I seemed
to hear a melancholy echo of those cheers which sounded
like the cries of wounded men. It was the screaming
of the jackdaws which seldom ceased in the gardens
outside the Royal Palace.

Later in the day gangs of newsboys rushed through
the streets with papers containing the declaration, and
the manifesto itself was handed through a side window
of the War Office to thousands of people who clamoured
for it. It was strange how it seemed to give joy to
these people whose brothers and husbands and lovers
were, perhaps, already facing the Turkish guns. I
think the secret of this psychological phenomenon was
the enormous relief that action had taken the place of
words after weeks of doubt and nervous tension. At
ten o'clock the bells of Sofia began to ring. There were
the big, deep bells of the old cathedral, in which a
Te Deum was to be sung, and the silvery chimes of
many Greek churches, and together they all blended
into a vague and beautiful harmony of clashing notes
like Debussy's " Cloches a travers les feuilles." It
was market day, and thousands of peasant women
had come in from the country districts laden with great
bundles of produce and great milk cans slung across
their shoulders on big poles, glistening like quicksilver
in the brilliant sunlight. The women's white head-

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 37

dresses and short embroidered kirtles and lace petti-
coats made a charming picture, as they all made their
way to the great cathedral. The cathedral square
itself was filled with Macedonian peasants, still waiting
for their rifles before going to the front, and in their
sheepskins and white woollen breeches they stood in
long ranks, bare-headed and reverent before the church.
There were remarkable faces among them, young men
with long flaxen hair parted in the middle and waving
out each side, who looked like pictures of John the
Baptist by Italian primitives, and also men with brown
rugged faces and white beards and bent backs who,
in their ragged skins and fur caps, looked like a collec-
tion of Rip Van Winkles just down from the mountains.
Here and there stood a smart Bulgarian officer in a long
blue cloak and top boots, and here and there a tall priest
in his high black cap and long black gown with sleeves
immensely wide at the end, and forked beard. The
banner of the Macedonian volunteers was wreathed
with flowers, and women gave posies to all the soldiers
who passed.

Presently a tremendous outburst of cheering rose
in great waves of sound to the high domes of the cathe-
dral. They greeted the arrival of Queen Eleonore, who
drove through the crowds in a motor-car. She passed
quite close to me, and I saw how pale she was as she
bowed to her people. For weeks she had been presiding
over Red Cross Committees, and I think that when she
went to the cathedral she was thinking how soon it
would be now when all those bandages and dressings
would be needed.

In the cathedral itself the scene was solemn and
beautiful, and even foreigners like myself were uplifted

38 ADVENTURES OF WAR

and stirred by the emotion of a service in which the
help of God was invoked for Christian nations who once
more declared a crusade against the Turk. There was
but a twilight in the church, in spite of the bright sun
outside, but shafts of light struck between the massive
pillars and played about the enormous candelabra of
cut glass suspended from the roof, and glinted upon the
gold leaf of the ikons and holy pictures on the screen
which hides the altar. The Queen knelt down before
the sanctuary steps, and all around her were kneeling
men and women of the highest and lowest classes of
Bulgaria — Ministers of State, public officials, generals
and staff-officers, peasants of the poorest kind, all
mingled without distinction of rank, all deeply moved,
even to tears, when from the Metropolitan and his
priests there came words of appeal to God for those who
were fighting under the Cross against the Crescent,
and, for the first time in the history of Bulgaria,
prayers for the rulers of the four Balkan Powers who
had put aside all jealousies and enmities to join in
a general advance against the powers of the Turk in
Europe. From the west end of the church the music
of the choir throbbed under the roof, so softly at first
that it seemed very far away, as faint as angelic voices
heard in dreams, but swelling and rising into a great
volume of beautiful sound, and wailing at times plain-
tively in Oriental half-tones which have a strange and
haunting effect upon the senses. The sermon was
spoken by a young priest from the high pulpit outside
the sanctuary, and his voice was very clear and strong,
as in the Bulgarian tongue he called to the patriotism
of the people and to the spirit of their faith. " We have
done," he said, "all we could to obtain justice for our

39

Christian brothers, and yet to obtain Peace. Peaceful
methods have failed, and now we must obtain justice
and peace with the sword. God calls us to help our
brethren, and He will aid us now that we answer the
call. It is the Cross against the Crescent. The great
Christian Powers have failed to obtain justice, and so
to us falls this mission to wipe out from Europe the
last remnants of the stain of barbarism and oppres-
sion."

Once again the Christian Church blessed her soldiers,
spoke no word of anger against those who went out
to kill, inflamed the ardour of men who needed no
spur when the smell of blood was in their nostrils.
Oh that this tragedy of war, so bloody and so damnable,
should still be mocking at the spirit of love and peace
preached by the ministers of the Christian Church,
always trying to console themselves that the cause is
just, that God is on their side ! But — who knows ?
Those who have been working behind the scenes for
interests which may only be whispered ? The peasants,
who know no politics and are but dimly aware why
war has been declared, but rely just upon the sim-
plicity of their hatred for the Turk ? Such thoughts
came to me, foolishly perhaps, for after all I think this
war was justified, if any war is just.

No such doubts, I think, crept into the mind of those
who knelt in the old Cathedral of Sofia and who crossed
themselves when the Metropolitan in his high-domed
cap, in his robes of cloth of gold, a dazzling figure
enframed in the glitter of the ikons, raised his great
cross and held it up before the people.

They went out again into the sunlight and cheered
themselves hoarse again, and then waited for news.

40 ADVENTURES OF WAR

It was long in coming. For a day and a half there was
no word from the front. All the war-correspondents
were still kept back in Sofia awaiting orders to move
forward, chafing at the long delay. Then came the
first few facts, welcomed greedily by hungry souls.
The Bulgarian troops had driven back the enemy.
Turkish villages had been occupied. King Ferdinand
himself had entered Mustafa Pasha, and had decor-
ated his wounded with the cross of valour. The grim
business had begun in deadly reality, and the Cross
had gained the first fruits of victory.

Meanwhile the war-correspondents were getting
anxious, impatient, despondent. The war had
begun, history was being made, and we, who are the
chroniclers of history, were still being kept back from
the scenes of action.

Upon the first day of our arrival we were all very
busy and hustling in the task of obtaining an outfit
for the great campaign, and the Minister of War warned
us that it would be necessary to take a good supply of
provisions, and next, if not first, in importance the
warmest clothing to guard against the cold, which
would not be long delayed. So the war-correspondents
went out on foraging expeditions, and I encountered
many of my confreres in the shops, struggling with a
barbarous mixture of tongues in the endeavour to
explain their necessities to Bulgarian shop-keepers.

There was a great raid on blankets, sleeping-rugs,
tinned provisions, cheeses, chocolates and other articles
likely to be of precious value in a severe campaign ;
but as the officers of the Bulgarian army had obtained
a good start, prices had advanced to famine rates, and
the stock of such things as water bottles, kit-bags and

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 41

tinned meats was already exhausted. Some of the
foreign war-correspondents were already in field kit,
and walked about a civilised city in heavy coats,
riding breeches and leggings, with slouch hats and
pouches, like brigands in a comic opera.

The Hotel Bulgarie, in Sofia, was for more than a
week the headquarters of the war-correspondents of
Europe. Some of them had broken their way through
to the capital of Bulgaria, after journeys in troop-
trains which had put a severe strain upon their powers
of endurance before the campaign had begun. Then
there were greetings between men who had last met
each other on former fields of battle or on other camp-
ing-grounds of history. Their numbers increased at
an alarming rate. The war-correspondents made a big
battalion in themselves! inere were enough of them
to "guard a mountain pass. Men of the old school who
had gone on the lone trail in ancient wars — men like
Frederic Villiers and Bennet Burleigh — shook their
heads in dismay at this new-fashioned assembly of
young journalists, photographers, artists, cinemato-
graph men, and descriptive writers, who came to
make a Barnum and Bailey circus in the Balkans.

They were all desperately eager to get to the front.
With anxiety and haste they applied to their respective
legations and to the Ministry of War, and to the
official censor, for the necessary permission to follow
the army. A photographer's shop in Sofia did a good
trade, because each correspondent had to present two
copies of his photograph to the military authorities,
one of which was to be attached to his permit. But
the man with the camera was unduly hustled. Beads
of perspiration broke from his brow when, in all the

42 ADVENTURES OF WAR

languages of Europe, determined men insisted upon
having their portraits within an hour.

"It is impossible ! " said the photographer in
Bulgarian, German, French and English. " To-morrow
you shall have them."

" To-morrow ! "

We were aghast. Perhaps we should have to start
to the front that night. Had not the Minister of War
said : " Gentlemen, hold yourselves in instant readi-
ness " ? Had not there been a wild stampede for sheep-
skin jackets, sleeping rugs, provisions, and the thousand
and one things which seem absolutely necessary to
maintain life in a country without shops, away beyond
the mountains ?

But after all the photographs were in time. There
would have been time enough for oil paintings of the
correspondents to be presented to the Bulgarian War
Office, as a souvenir of stirring tunes. For a week we
were kept on tenter-hooks, and six times a day each
correspondent made his way to the Censor's office to
inquire whether the permits would be given and when
the train would go to the front. He received us most
politely. All his assistants — Bulgarian officers, poets and
professors — received us most politely. They invariably
clicked their heels together, bowed, shook hands and
said : " To-morrow, almost certainly."

It seemed as though to-morrow would never come.
The cheeses which we had packed into our baskets
against the time when we should be hungry in the field
began to scent our clothes. Our sheepskin jackets
hung upon the pegs and looked silly. Our water-
bottles mocked at us, for was there not good wine at
the table d'hote of the Hotel Bulgarie ? The luxury

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 43

of this hotel life disgusted men who had prepared for the
hardships of a campaign and would not be ^balked^of
them.

Time passed in expectancy and in despondency.
It was futile staying in Sofia abandoned by all but
foreign Jews, wolfish dogs, Macedonian exiles and pea-
sant women. We had almost time to learn the Bulgarian
language — at least as far as the alphabet — and mastered
mysteries which make a Bulgarian newspaper a thing
of terror, and our own name in the characters of the
country, a strange and fantastic thing.

Yet laughter rang out in the Hotel Bulgarie, called
the I.C.C. or the International Club of Correspondents,
for there were gay fellows here. The merriest and
brightest of them was a party of Italian journalists,
who had been comrades in Tripoli, led into conversa-
tional adventures by Marinetti, the master Futurist,
and a fellow of infinite vivacity, of explosive eloquence,
of declamatory genius. At the slightest provocation
he would recite one of his Futurist poems, or uphold
the ideals of his destructive creed. There were other
men of renown and character ; the handsome sleepy-
eyed Ludovic Nodeau, one of the most famous of French
journalists ; the Marquis de Segonzac, a chic type of
the French officer and sportsman ; Dr. Zifferer of the
Newe Freie Presse, a man of infinite resource, with a
schoolboy's laugh, and a spirit of adventure ; Henry
Nevinson, with his quiet dignity and paladin lookj
Percival Phillips, who leaves Fleet Street only for
a stirring scene of history and comes back only to
await another ; S. J. Pry or of The Times, with a host
of humorous little anecdotes gathered in the Western
States, in South Africa, and in other streets of adven-

44 ADVENTURES OF WAR

ture ; and many more men worth meeting and worth
knowing.

But the laugh the men enjoyed was that of men who
find their position farcical. For after all there was no
war in Sofia. It was a deserted city, as peaceful as a
churchyard. Away at the front men were killing each
other in heaps. The Red Cross was very busy. But
to Sofia the news came only on the wings of rumour
and very late. I began to doubt whether it was worth
while to go to the theatre of war. For to a journalist
it is only an additional exasperation to see things which
he cannot describe, and by official orders we were for-
bidden to describe anything. I read the regulations
for war-correspondents and their severity was appalling,
We were forbidden to describe the disposition of troops,
to give the names of generals, the names and numbers
of the wounded, the success or failure of Bulgarian
troops, the state of the soldiers' health, the conditions
of the climate.

I put a polite question to the Censor :

" Will you tell me, sir, if there is anything about
which we shall be allowed to write ? "

He thought deeply for a moment, and then answered
with great gravity :

" There is much interest in Bulgarian literature."

" Perhaps I may also be permitted to describe the
song of the birds ? " I inquired.

" By all means," said the Censor, very cordially.

I felt like a man in a dream. Was this war real ?
Surely it was merely an illusion, a fantasy. It had no
reality for me, because I had not yet heard the sound of a
shot, and in the Hotel Bulgarie at Sofia journalists were
playing billiards and telling stories of ancient things.

THE TOCSIN IN BULGARIA 45

At last, however, the call came. Most of us were
given permits to join the Second Army. Each of us
donned a red brassard bearing the letters B.K., which
being interpreted meant war correspondent, and a
train was in readiness to take us to the army head-
quarters at Stara Zagora. A crowd assembled to see
our departure, and some of us blushed with embarrass-
ment outside the Hotel Bulgarie where our great horde
assembled with bag and baggage, like the touring com-
pany of a melodrama with its theatrical properties.

But it was good to be on the way to the front ; good
to look forward to those adventures with the troops
which now seemed assured to us.

CHAPTER III
IN THE GENERAL QUARTERS

MY journey to Stara Zagora, the general quarters of
the Bulgarian army, lay between the long chain
of the Rhodope Mountains and the distant range of
the Balkan Mountains. The prospect was enchanting,
and I forgot at times the spectre of war which haunted
this country, while I gazed upon these mountain slopes
with the leaves of their stunted oak trees glistening with
the gold of autumn tints, and here and there on the
high peaks the pure beauty of new-fallen snow.

Great flocks of sheep tended by shepherds dressed
in skins or wrapped in long cloaks moved in the plains
below the hills like white clouds lying upon the grass,
and down the rock gorges little rivers rushed through
overhanging foliage. But when the twilight came,
and the darkness, the scene changed and became
sombre and wild as the mountains rose to greater
heights and loomed through the shadows like great
fortresses. All along the line of the valley peasant
soldiers guarded the bridges, sometimes standing soli-
tary— black figures silhouetted against the glimmering
sky — sometimes in small camps where they had built
up dwelling places of twigs and straw, and where
their camp fires glowed red through the darkness.
Now and again I saw a distant glare in the sky, where

46

IN THE GENERAL QUARTERS 47

a village was on fire below the crest of the hills. As I
came near to Philippopolis I was not many miles from
the Turkish frontier, and I saw crowds of refugees,
Turks as well as Bulgarians, who had come into the
town for safety. These poor people, who had aban-
doned their homes, seemed to carry all their household
goods on their backs, and the women, especially, were
beasts of burden and heavily laden with great packs,
while their children clung to their skirts wailing and
frightened at all the mystery and terror around them.

Stara Zagora, for a time the general quarters of the
Bulgarian army, is in appearance of a typical Turkish
character. The tall and slender minarets of Turkish
mosques rise as white as columns of snow above the
little old houses of a town where the memory of a
terrible massacre in the Russo-Turkish War still haunts
the imagination of its inhabitants. In the wild retreat
from the Russian guns the Turks swept the town of
human life, and those who came to it afterwards found
the corpses of women and children lying in the snow
as they had been cut down. The wells were choked
with dead bodies, and the horrors of that slaughter
cannot be told.

Now I found many Turks in Stara Zagora living
on peaceful terms with their Bulgarian neighbours. ;
Indeed, apart from the soldiers and the women and
children, most of the people here were Moslems, and it
is much to the credit of the Bulgars that these Turks
had no anxiety as to their lives and property, but
continued their ordinary business with quiet cheerful-
ness in the market square and in the lines of small
booths along the streets.

I watched many groups of them curiously, for it

48 ADVENTURES OF WAR

seemed a strange thing to see these people in the red
fez of the Mohammedan Power sitting cross-legged in
the public thoroughfares cooking hot cakes over open
ovens and chaffering their wares as though there were
no war between the Cross and the Crescent. Through
the public gardens of Stara Zagora moved silent figures
in the white yashmak with which the Turkish women
veil their heads, long robes wrapped about their bodies,
and revealing, as they walked, baggy trousers tightened
at the ankle.

The town is as picturesque as an artist's dream of
old Bagdad in the time of Haroun al Raschid, and as I
wandered about its streets, among Eastern types of
people with liquid-eyed women glancing above their
white veils, and hook-nosed old men squatting on
boxes outside their booths, I found it difficult to believe
that I was still in Europe. It was one of my first
glimpses of the Near East, and in spite of all its squalor
and all its smell it seemed to me worth a far journey
from home. In the twilight time enchantment stole
into the town, and it was good to sit under one of the
trees outside the barely-furnished cafe" or under the
vines that trailed across the street from roof to roof,
while there was a pearly glamour of light upon all the
walls, and strange figures lurked about in the hiding
places of the shadows.

Here, in Stara Zagora, I saw some of the business
of war and many of the personalities who were behind
the business, and little scenes of tragedy, which were
the first signs of the price that must be paid for war.
I watched battalion after battalion of peasant soldiers
tramping over the uneven ways, through the mud and
the slush, on their way to the trenches, to feed the

49

guns. They trudged along with silent feet in their
soft leather shoes, and slouched past without a word
to that mysterious front, from which many would never ;
come back to their little homesteads in the hills.
These were the men who have shattered the power of
the Turk in Europe, the men who were the heroes of
the war. They were not professional soldiers, they
were just rough, simple, ignorant peasants, with many
fine qualities of endurance, indifferent to pain and hun-
ger and hardships, grim and resolute in their way of
warfare, careless of death. Like all peasants also, they
had qualities of brutality which do not belong to people
of the cities. The killing of men was no more to them
than the killing of pigs. The stench of blood did not
sicken them, and with old savage instincts they
were infuriated by modern methods of fighting — the
shooting of an unseen enemy at long range, but were
eager to see into the whites of their enemy's eyes, and
to use the knife upon him. The history of this war
would have been very different if the Bulgarians had
set out to fight a nation less utterly demoralized than
the Turks, for their bayonet charges when the peasant
soldiers flung off their sheepskin coats and rushed
forward in the full fire of the guns would have been
checked by walls of dead. As I watched the armies
of reservists pass in a never-ending tide, the faces of
thousands of men seemed to blend into one face, the
typical face of the Bulgarian soldier, square-cut, with
a short beard, sullen eyes, and the look of one of his
own oxen — beast^Iike and menacing. With them
went great guns drawn by long teams of buffaloes,
and flocks of sheep, and tremendous convoys, all part
of a great scheme of organization carried out with that

4

50 ADVENTURES OF WAR

1 business genius which was the whole secret of the
Bulgarian success. No men were sent to the front with-
out the supplies of food necessary for their fighting
strength. None of these reservists were sent to places
where they were unsupported by artillery and un-
\ provided with ammunition. It was only the Turks
\ who were sent out to fight without food, to die anyhow.
Other processions passed through Stara Zagora day
by day, and they told the other side of the story. For
they were the prisoners captured by the Bulgarians in
their victorious advance. These Turkish soldiers came
in with a hang-dog look, spent with fatigue, their faces
drawn and pinched by hunger and despair. One of
the officers told me stories of the sheer starvation in
the Turkish army — a pound and a half of bread between
ten men each day, and afterwards no bread at all, but
only uncooked maize and roots in the fields.

The first batch of prisoners who were brought in had
been taken after a desperate skirmish in which most
of their comrades were slain.

" The Bulgarians cut us up into small pieces," said
the officer, as he calmly lighted a cigarette.

There were no insults levelled at them as they passed
through the streets, and they were treated with kind-
ness by their captors who provided them with food
and cigarettes. They ate the food like famished
animals, and then as though utterly indifferent to their
fate squatted down against the prison walls or in the
open courtyard, staring back at the people who came
to look at them, with grave inexpressive eyes.

Now and again in Stara Zagora a crowd gathered to
see the King. He came driving down in his automobile
with his two sons, the Princes Boris and Cyril, from a

SENDING STOKES TO THE BULGARIAN FIGHTING LINE

A WOUNDED TURK UNDER THE RED CROSS

SCENES ROUND ADRIANOPLE

IN THE GENERAL QUARTERS 51

brewery on the hillside, where he had taken up resi-
dence. I saw him several times, a tall handsome man
with a soft grey beard and the Bourbon nose and eyes
that smiled with a strange inscrutable smile. I tried
to read in this face the genius of a man who comes of
the blood of the Coburgs and the Orleans, who gained
his kingdom by the hazard of fate, who kept it by
personal ability, courage, and subtle diplomacy, who
as a foreigner won the favour of his people after years
of unpopularity, who nourished secret ambitions which
he prepared to realise by years of quiet intrigue, of
organising, of industry, and who at last, when all was
ready, flouted the Great Powers who were suspicious of
him, and made the great move which put all to the
hazard.

He was an imposing figure in his general's field
uniform, and as he raised his hand to the salute all
heads were bared before him. But the people did not
cheer him. They stood very quiet as though over-
awed by the sovereign presence, and they whispered
to each other as he passed by. These people of the
Near East had the Oriental attitude in the presence of
kingship, the attitude of fear rather than enthusiasm,
as though there was a terror in his power. And King
Ferdinand treated them as an Oriental monarch,
ignoring them utterly after the first grave salute.
He passed among them as a Sultan.

The military attaches of many nations were with us
in general quarters — a gallant little group of men in
a strange variety of uniforms, and holding converse
with each other in a strange variety of tongues. All
but one of them walked, dined, and I almost fancy
slept with their swords, which clanked in a fine martial

52 ADVENTURES OF WAR

way at every turn they took. The exception was
Colonel Lyon, our own attache1, and one of the most
charming gentlemen it has been my good fortune to
meet. He was shy of his sword, and kept it well in
the background. These attaches were billeted in
private houses, but dined at the villainous little shanty
called the Zlaten Lev, or Golden Lion, where I had
a small cell called a bedroom (with a nest of mice
playing great games with me at night) in a coffin-like
box called a bed. The catering was supplied by a
German Jew, who charged enormous sums for the
vilest food ; but the soldier men had the first call, and
correspondents like myself had to be content with
licking our lips and scenting the meats from afar until
the attaches had satisfied their appetites, when we
partook of the crumbs that fell from the rich men's
table. The sight of the attaches at dinner was satis-
fying from a picturesque point of view, though not
from a material standpoint, for the great bare room,
which in the days of peace had been used for cinemato-
graph shows, was dimly lighted by candles stuck into
wine bottles and shedding flickering rays upon the
brilliant uniforms.

The attaches, in spite of being well fed, were very
restive, because the authorities would allow them to
see nothing of the war. To all their protests evasive
answers were returned, with a promise that later on
they would be personally conducted over the battle-
fields— after the battles. To the Roumanian attach^
who asked why he was not allowed to see anything
worth seeing a plain answer was at last given.

" Do you think," said one of the Bulgarian officers,
" that we are going to show you our way of making

IN THE GENERAL QUARTERS 53

war, when your people may be the next we have to
fight ? "

The same reason stood good for the Austrian emissary
who made extensive reports to his own Government
of all that came within his range of vision. The
American attache, a smart young officer named
Sherman Miles, son of a famous American General,
complained to me that he was becoming fat with over-
feeding, and craved for starvation diet and the rigours
of a real campaign. My reply was that while he fed
so sumptuously I was in the gravest danger of a linger-
ing death from hunger.

Fortunately I discovered another restaurant, fre-
quented by junior officers of the headquarters staff,
by magistrates, Red Cross ladies, and secret police,
who kept their ears wide open for the conversation of
special correspondents. It was a place of tumult,
where people almost fought for food and seized upon
dishes that had been ordered by others. But here in
the din of many tongues one might talk to Bulgarian
officers who became more communicative as the wine
passed, and from whom I obtained many details of the
campaign of which, so far, I had not seen very much.
I became an habitue of the place, though I was dis-
concerted for a time by seeing the plates licked up by
a man with a great tongue who stood receiving them
through a little window.

My only adventure in Stara Zagora was on the out-
skirts of the town, where I wandered one day alone in
search of a gypsy encampment. This was one of the
most extraordinary places I have seen in my travels,
and I was glad to escape with my money and my life.
The Romany folk — those queer people who have no

54 ADVENTURES OF WAR

nationality, no patriotism, no bond with any ruler
among whom they stay for awhile, who never take part
in any war beyond their own private feuds, and who
pay no tribute to any state, had built up a temporary
village on some marshy ground beyond the town.
There were streets of mud huts not bigger than pig-
sties, and so small that to get inside they had to crawl
through the doorways like beasts. The place was filthy
beyond description, and it was pervaded by pestilential
smells which seemed to rise from the very ground upon
which the hovels had been built. Hundreds of children,
many of them stark naked, played about the open
patches, fighting and screaming like a forest full of
monkeys ; and squatting in the shadows of the walls,
or drawing water from the wells, or pacing slowly
through the Liliputian streets was the adult population
of this Romany camp. There were many beautiful
women and girls among them, dressed in loose trousers
tight at the ankle and in cotton jackets tied loosely
with gaudy sashes. One of them came running up to
me, showing her white teeth and flashing her black eyes
at me, and then seizing me by the wrist made signs to
me that she wanted to tell my fortune. I resisted her
blandishments, but in less than a minute I was sur-
rounded by half the population, mostly women and
children, all clamouring for backsheesh, all plucking at
my clothes, while here and there among them stood
tall gypsy fellows armed with long sticks. I was in a
tight corner and had anxious thoughts about the money
belt round my waist. But by good luck a police officer
came riding through the village, and suddenly at the
sight of him there was a shrill whistle and a general
scamper like rabbits frightened to their holes. I

IN THE GENERAL QUARTERS 55

followed the mounted policeman until I was clear of the
village, and though he could speak nothing but Bul-
garian I understood his questions to mean that the
gypsy camp was not a nice place for a Christian gentle-
man.

When I went back into Stara Zagora I received the
welcome news that once more we were to move on, and
that this time we might see something of the fighting
in Turkish territory.

CHAPTER IV
THE VICTORIES OF THE ALLIED NATIONS.

FOR some days after the first shots in the war
had been fired Europe outside the fields of
war was kept in suspense by the amazing secrecy with
which the operations were being conducted by the allied
nations. Even when the first successes were reported,
in scanty messages heavily censored, they were re-
ceived with scepticism by the critics in most nations
and classed as " frontier skirmishes." That was true
enough, but as later events showed they were the begin-
ning of a masterly plan by which the allies, working as
though under the dictation of one supreme intelligence,
closed in upon Turkey, massing their troops upon lines
which led straight to her most vulnerable points*
Gradually it became known that on all three lines the
Turks were falling back, abandoning position after
position, town after town, without standing for any
decisive battle. That surprising withdrawal did not
yet awaken the suspicion of the arm-chair critics as to
the weakness and hopelessness of the Turkish armies.
They saw in this falling back a subtle scheme of strategy
devised by Nazim Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the
Ottoman armies. He was merely, they thought, entic-
ing the allies into a frightful death-trap. The jubila-
tion that was heard in the capitals of Montenegro,

56

VICTORIES OF ALLIED NATIONS 57

Servia, Bulgaria and Greece, seemed but the hysterical
enthusiasm of people rejoicing too soon and too much
for successes which would not count when at last the
Turks reached their own vantage ground and hammered
their enemies with deadly and irresistible might. The
military stay-at-home correspondents of the world's
great newspapers were almost unanimous, with a few
brilh'ant exceptions, in their belief that the Turk would
prove victorious in the long run, and none of the small
victories reported by the allies would make them yield
up this view. They clung to it almost desperately at
last, until the utter rout at Lule Burgas compelled them
to admit the strange reality of things.

The first successes seemed too easy and too swift.
Even little Montenegro, which with a theatrical im-
petuosity had plunged first into the fray, had not found
the Turk so terrible as he was painted in the world's
imagination. Montenegro took so many prisoners that
like the old woman who lived in a shoe she had so many
of the children that she didn't know what to do. The
town of Podgoritza was filled with them, and they made
a public spectacle for people in holiday mood, among
whom in the most democratic way the King moved
like a peasant king, embracing and decorating his son
in the public gaze. On October i8th the troops of the
Montenegrin main column under the Crown Prince
Danilo and those of General Marturovitch's army
effected a junction before Scutari and began the invest-
ment of that town, while the bombardment of the
Tarabosch fortifications was carried on across the
lake by the Montenegrin artillery with great vigour.
This little corner of the war with its mountain fighting
was the most picturesque of all, though not the most

58 ADVENTURES OF WAR

important, for the Montenegrins were helped by the
wild Christian tribes of Albania, who for four years had
already been carrying on a sporadic warfare with the
Moslem tribes with intermittent success, so that Moslem
and Christian villages were delivered to the flames as
each side gained the upper hand.

Meanwhile the Greeks were attacking Turkish ports,
occupying Turkish islands in the ^Egean Sea, and
advancing northwards to join hands, if possible, with
the Servians at Monastir and Salonica. In that part
of the map Turkey was harassed at many points.

But it was upon the Servians and the Bulgarians
that the fate of the Balkan Confederation depended,
and the Servians showed quickly that they were
carrying out their part of the contract with almost
incredible success.

As I have already said, the Servian headquarters
were at Nisch, where I had an opportunity of seeing
the entrainment of the troops, and from this point
their columns struck straight down into Turkish
territory — to Kumanova, where they had their first
great battle, after the fall of Prishtina — to the west,
where another column pressed back the Turkish front.

The real battle began with fighting to the south of
Prepolatz, preceding the capture of the important
position of Rujanatz, commanding the road towards
Kumanova and Uskub.

Early on October i8th Servian outposts reported
that a Turkish military movement was being effected,
and the Servian troops took up defensive positions.
They had barely reached their places when a force of
Arnauts, supported by Turkish regular soldiers, opened
a heavy fire upon them. A great artillery duel followed

VICTORIES OF ALLIED NATIONS 59

and the Turks attempted to press back the Servians
but failed. The fighting lasted all day, and as dark-
ness fell the enemy had forced their way within close
range of the Servians. It seemed as if the battle
were lost, but the Servian commander ordered a
bayonet charge. It was one of the first of those
charges which struck terror into the hearts of the
Turks. The Servian soldiers sprang from their
trenches, hurled themselves with desperate and exult-
ant courage upon their foes, and in the darkness a
terrible carnage took place until the Turks fled in hot
retreat. Upon the following days the Servians cap-
tured other positions, until the way lay open to
Kumanova.

That battle-ground was the scene of the first great
tragedy which befell the Turkish forces. They had
twenty-five thousand men, a large number of guns of
the most modern type, enormous stores, and a formid-
able position. But the Turkish generals were men of
no ability, without intelligence of their enemy's strength
and dispositions, and utterly lacking in decisive spirit.
One of them, Sara Raid Pasha, came up from the
south with three divisions when the battle had been
raging some time, and when the Servians had cap-
tured many important positions ; but instead of flinging
his forces upon the Servian flank he drew off in retreat.
The commander-in-chief of the Servian army was
General Patnik, and it was to his genius that a great
victory was achieved for the allies. The fighting,
except for short intervals at night, lasted continuously
from Tuesday, October 22nd, to the afternoon of Thurs-
day, the 24th. The Crown Prince Alexander was at
least nominally in command of the troops and repeatedly

60 ADVENTURES OF WAR

exposed himself to danger with an almost reckless
courage. But he inspired a similar valour among his
men, and they charged with the bayonet to the very
muzzles of the Turkish guns in spite of having to
advance over the dead bodies of their own comrades.
For two days the Turks resisted this attack, and the
guns were well served by men who in the end died at
their posts. But the Turkish infantry could not
withstand the bayonet charges, and, as though at a
given signal, they broke and ran. In a little while
the remnants of an army became a frightful rout.
The men flung away their rifles and ammunition with
swift flight only in their thoughts, the guns were
abandoned, there was no attempt to save the stores,
and utterly demoralised they stampeded along the
road to Uskub. Here, according to all accounts, a new
panic seized upon them, increased by the terror of
soldiers who had taken no part in the battle at Kuman-
ova, but heard the accounts of the terrible bayonet
charges from those who fled. Uskub was abandoned
also, and the Servians entered it in triumph, upon a
road strewn with dead bodies, with all the litter of a
great rout, and ending at a city deserted by its garrison,
who with inconceivable cowardice had left behind
them a mass of artillery, ammunition, and weapons.
Not yet has the secret of that panic been fully told,
but as I write I have before me one little object picked
up upon the battlefield which seems to reveal one
reason for that orgy of fear. It is one of those wooden
bullets found in thousands at Kumanova as they were
flung away by Turkish soldiers. This story has been
denied by those who have a powerful interest in deny-
ing it. But the evidence is too strong for denial, and

VICTORIES OF ALLIED NATIONS 61

my wooden bullet bears silent and terrible witness of
the guilt by which fraudulent contractors and bribed ;
officials betrayed the lives of men and the fate of our
Empire. Eye witnesses report also that the bayonets
and swords which lay strewn in thousands on the way
from Kumanova to Uskub were all blunt, so that
they were useless in the hands of men faced by Ser-
vians with weapons sharp to kill. Perhaps the wild
retreat of those Turks was not due to mere cowardice,
but to the knowledge that they were betrayed by
their own Government, incorrigible in corruption.
From the lips of dying men, from those who staggered
hopelessly away from the battlefield on the way of
retreat there must have been many curses for those
who had sent them to fight with bayonets that
would not pierce, and swords that would not cut, and
bullets that would not kill.

It was from the time of that defeat that the Turks
became paralysed, as it were, by the fear of Servian I
and Bulgarian bayonets ; the very name of " La nosche,"
or the knife, as they call those weapons, was like a
dreadful spell which scattered a Turkish force even ;
before a man had died. In Uskub the cry of the :
" Servians are coming with the knife " made it impos-
sible for the officers to rally their troops or to check
the retreat, and later in the war I heard a hundred
times from Bulgarian officers that when a bayonet
charge was ordered the Turkish lines would begin to
waver and break. Towards the middle of November
the Servians advanced upon Monastir, in which a
remnant of the army defeated in Uskub had taken
refuge. The Servian Crown Prince demanded the
surrender of the city, and on the i8th the Turks capitu.

62 ADVENTURES OF WAR

lated with 50,000 regular troops. Among them was
Fethi Pasha, formerly Turkish Minister in Servia, who
in the beginning of the war had said : " We shall soon
invite our friends to dinner at Belgrade."

Another section of the defeated army had fled to
Salonica, and they also became prisoners of war in the
hands of the Greeks, who took possession of the city.

These astounding successes cleared the western
part of the war area from Turkish troops, destroyed
the last trace of Turkish power in Macedonia, and
enabled a large body of Servian troops to reinforce the
Bulgarians in the direction of Adrianople. The strategy
which had been devised in the war councils of the
allies had been worked out with magnificent accuracy,
determination and efficiency. There had been no
flaw in a plan which depended upon the courage of
many individuals and the skill of many generals.

I must now turn to the Bulgarian army, which after
all was the most important part of this united attack.
There were, as a matter of fact, three Bulgarian armies,
and it was my bad luck to be appointed, with most of
the other correspondents, to the Second army, which
was entrusted with the siege of Adrianople. At first,
to amateur strategists it seemed that this second
army would have to do the hardest and most interest-
ing work — carrying Adrianople by storm and then
smashing their way down to the lines of Chatalja.
That was a plan of campaign which seemed simple,
direct and necessary, especially to the ordinary English
intelligence, accustomed in the South African war to
frontal attacks and " bee-line " advances. But the
Bulgarian intelligence, subtle as the Japanese, and
controlled by a master mind in the person of General

63

Savoff, thejj^rjiiriajader^^ had quite a different

plan. The First and Third armies operating from the
two bases of Jamboli and Harmanli, were to pass to
the eastward of Adrianople while it was securely
held by the Second army, and to strike down towards
Constantinople by way of Kirk Kilisse, Bunarhissar,
and Lule Burgas, cutting the Turkish lines of communi-
cation to Adrianople and so completing the isolation
of that great city and the impotence of the army within. .
This plan of campaign was put into practice with a I ,
power of organisation which has never been surpassed
in the history of war. With astounding celerity, in ^
spite of the apparently slow method of transport by ,
ox-waggons, the Bulgarians brought up their munitions
of war, food for the armies, and all their convoys,
crossed the Turkish frontier, made a new base at
Mustafa Pasha, advanced to Adrianople and rushed
the first positions which guarded the city. In a later
chapter I shall tell the story of that siege in some detail,
as I watched it from the hills, but here it is sufficient to
say that the Turkish garrison was securely held on the
west, north and south. On the east the main army of
the Bulgarians advanced to Kirk Kilisse, which was
on the extreme right wing of the Turkish front, so that
its capture would turn their position on the east.
The Turks themselves considered the position of vital
importance and entrusted its defence to Mukhtar Pasha,
the son of the Grand Vizier.

Fighting began in the surrounding country of Kirk
Kilisse on October i8th, and continued persistently
for a week. The Bulgarians fought with an enthusi-
asm and reckless courage which caused them to suffer
severe losses, but also gained for them steadily, as the

64 ADVENTURES OF WAR

days passed, the most important positions command-
ing the city. Then shell fire was directed upon the
Turkish forts, which they finally carried by assault,
and supported by a tremendous artillery fire the in-
fantry rushed the trenches and carried some of the
Turkish batteries. At eleven o'clock on the morning
of October 24th the city fell and the Bulgarians
entered in triumph. Nearly two thousand prisoners
were taken, though a great part of the garrison had
retreated in disorder to Bunarhissar, and there fell into
the Bulgarian hands a large number of quick-firing
guns and other pieces of artillery.

A Bulgarian officer who was wounded during the
last assault upon Kirk Kilisse gave me some vivid details
of its capture. To the music of the " Slivnitza March "
regiment after regiment advanced to attack the chain
of hills which stretches out before the city to the north,
and after a long series of struggles when they were swept
by artillery fire which inflicted severe losses upon them
the storming column established itself on the heights.
The occupation of these hills secured the Bulgarian
advance and enabled other great bodies of troops to
be brought up from the rear. King Ferdinand came into
the firing line one night and his presence inspired his
troops with fresh enthusiasm. The Turkish outposts
in small villages adjacent to the city made but a feeble
stand, and many surrendered as the Bulgarians closed
in. Before the town the Bulgarian army dug trenches
and thek heavy guns bombarded the old fortifications.
The Turkish artillery fire was at times strangely in-
accurate and their shells dropped either too short or
too far. At eleven o'clock in the morning of the final
assault the peasant soldiers left their trenches, and

VICTORIES OF ALLIED NATIONS 65

with incredible gallantry made repeated bayonet
charges. Those reservists flung off their heavy coats,
and threw down water bottles, knapsacks, and all
impedimenta, so that they might have a free play with
the bayonet j and again and again, reckless of death,
charged with fierce exultant shouts, only to be swept
back by a withering fire. Seven times the Bulgarians
swept up to the Turkish position and seven times they
were driven back by the enemy's battalions. When for
the eighth time the Bulgarians began to storm the
positions, the Turks, whose far-extended artillery was
almost silenced, were so shaken that only a crippled
resistance was offered.

" We came up in waves," said my friendly officer,
" and my own men were like tigers in their fierce
courage. They were utterly indifferent to the storm
of bullets, and advanced over hundreds of their dead
comrades as though their corpses were but paving
stones to victory. They were animated by one thought
— victory or death. I was struck down in the last rush,
and knew no more until the business was over and the
Bulgarian flag flew over Kirk Kilisse."

The Turkish retreat now began, a disorderly panic, a
sauve qui peut. The main body fell back on Adrianople,
but many were cut off and captured. Others fled south
and south-west. Others were attacked by the Bul-
garian column advancing from Mirko Tirnovo, to the
east. The Bulgarians who entered the captured city
in triumph still had some sharp fighting in the streets
and vineyards before they were absolute masters of a
town which was strewn with the dead and dying. A
great deal of booty fell into their hands. Seven bat-
teries of quick-firers, eighteen guns of old pattern,
5

66 ADVENTURES OF WAR

twelve siege guns, many depots of munitions of war,
immense stores and a great quantity of forage, were
rewards of victory. The Commandant of the de-
fending army, Mahmoud Mukhtar Pasha, left all his
personal kit in a military club as a sign of his desperate
and hurried flight. Two aeroplanes, which the Turks
had never used for lack of trained pilots, were also left
behind.

This great battle was a triumph for the Bulgarian
reservists, the peasant soldiers whom I had seen padding
on the way in their leather sandals and heavy coats.
They had the honour of filling the places of greatest
danger and of bearing the heaviest shock of battle. It
was due to their irresistible spirit and reckless courage
that the formidable positions had been so swiftly taken.

In spite of the great exhaustion from which the victors
were suffering the pursuit of the Turks was immediately
undertaken. One of the Bulgarian columns began an
advance on Bunarhissar to cut off the line of retreat,
while another pushed along the coast to Viza in order
to bar the way to Constantinople.

The greatest battle of the war, the most crushing
defeat of the Turks, one of the most terrible scenes in
history, took place on the Bunarhissar and Lule Burgas
line, where the Turks made their last stand before break-
ing into panic-stricken flight which shattered for a time
the hope of Turkey in Europe.

The Turks under Abdullah Pasha lost, it is reckoned,
not less than 50,000 men and almost all their guns, and
in their retreat became such a rabble that they had no
further fighting value until they had re-formed at
Chatalja.

After Kirk Kilisse, the Bulgarian columns advancing

REDIFS JOINING THE COLOURS IN HIGH SPIRITS

SURROUNDING A REFUGEE BRINGING THE FIRST NEWS OF DEFEAT

THE CONTRASTS OF FATE

VICTORIES OF ALLIED NATIONS 67

in perfect order and co-operating with splendid dis-
cipline took possession of Baba Eski, and then with
forced marches made a great wheeling movement by way
of Bunarhissar towards the road from Lule Burgas to
Chorlu.

The great battle began on October 2gth, and lasted
for nearly three days.

The town of Lule Burgas lay in a cup-like hollow
surrounded by hills, and the first sound of the Bul-
garian advance came from the crackling of the rifle
fire as their infantry advanced upon the farthest
ridges. Abdullah and his general staff were quartered
at the village of Sazikoy in a little four-roomed hut,
from which they directed the operations of the army
which lay scattered along a wide front. A powerful
rear-guard remained to hold the town, and two squad-
rons of cavalry rode out to the hills.

Upon the ridges nearest to the town the Turks had
massed their infantry and guns, and early in the
morning of Tuesday, October 29th, they became ex-
posed to the Bulgarian shell-fire, which was hurled
with deadly accuracy.

For some time the Turks held their ground, but
they were being killed in large numbers, and a con-
tinual stream of wounded men came down the hills
into the town if they had strength to reach that refuge,
while others dropped and died upon the way, without
doctors to attend to them or stretcher bearers to carry
them. The thunder of the guns, the bursting of the
shells, the continual fusillade of musketry made an
inferno of noise, and presently the storm of lead which
swept the ridges demoralised the infantry so that on
some of the most exposed positions they broke, fell

68 ADVENTURES OF WAR

back in disorder, and then came rushing towards the
town in panic.

Other battalions of Turks still held to their trenches
and defended themselves with a grim courage, but the
Bulgarians now considered the time ripe for a general
advance, and they could be seen clearly outlined on the
ridges which faced the Turkish trenches, rushing up
in open order and in enormous numbers.

They were received by an outburst of musketry, and
the Turkish guns played upon them, but though many
fell their comrades still advanced, and the Bulgarian
batteries unlimbered on the crests of the hills as coolly
as if they were in manoeuvres, and^set to work with
magnificent precision.

One column of Bulgarians made a right flanking
movement with the obvious intention of cutting the
railway line and breaking the communication with
Adrianople. They were held in check by a large force
of mounted and dismounted cavalry, but after a des-
perate defence these men had to retire with great loss.

The Bulgarian right whig now made a determined
attack upon the town of Lule Burgas, where among
the inhabitants there was already a reign of terror,
and where the rear-guard was already becoming de-
moralised by the wild confusion in the streets owing
to the pouring in of wounded men and the frantic
efforts of refugees to escape from the shells which
now began to burst over them.

A great force of Bulgarian infantry swept down one
of the hills and advanced upon the trenches in face of
them, supported by their artillery firing from higher
ground. They were reinforced by other battalions
who made their way through clefts in the hills, and

VICTORIES OF ALLIED NATIONS 69

together in one great body they swept forward, un-
deterred by the fire from the trenches and almost
unhurt by the Turkish artillery, which at this supreme
moment failed to get the range of the advancing
hordes.

The Turkish rear-guard fell back, and abandoned
the town of Lule Burgas, which was entered by the
Bulgarians, whose first action was to hoist their flag on
the mosque.

This success was important, but the Bulgarians
had by no means gained a complete victory, for the
right of the Turkish army was still in position, and
still of formidable strength, and the Bulgarians them-
selves in Lule Burgas were severely tested by a counter-
attack led by Bourk Pasha, the commander of the
Fourth Army Corps. Many of the Bulgarian infantry
were forced to retire, and only darkness put a stop to
the conflict, in which for a time the Turks regained
some of their ground.

The night passed almost silently. The sky for
miles around was illumined by the glare of villages
burned by the Bulgarians in their advance, and
on the Turkish side wanderers in the night came upon
signs which gave no promise of success next day. For
the countryside was covered with bands of men who
had lost their regiments, with wounded men crying in
vain for help, and dying for lack of attention, while
those who had strength to walk searched vainly for
any Red Cross camp or military hospital.

Worse still, for those who were to fight again, the
Turkish army was already starving, for with an utter
lack of organisation the transports had gone astray,
and the Turkish soldiers were left to their fate without

70 ADVENTURES OF WAR

food except such nourishment as they could get from
raw maize.

Abdullah Pasha, the Commander-in-Chief at Sazikoy,
was a gloomy man, receiving ominous reports from
different army corps that ammunition was running
out, that the men were exhausted with cold and hunger,
and that they had no confidence in their troops. On
the morning of Wednesday the battle was renewed
along the whole Bulgarian front by a terrific shell fire
to which the Turkish artillery could only respond in a
feeble and ineffective way as their ammunition was
almost spent.

Abdullah Pasha hurled his Second Corps, which
formed the centre of his army, at the advanced posi-
tions of the Bulgarians in the hope that the attack
might be pressed home by the Third Corps coming up
from Viza under Mahmoud Mukhtar.

The attack was made with heroic courage, but as
the Turkish artillery were almost out of action, except
in the case of isolated batteries who still had some
ammunition, the Bulgarians found new victims for
the fire which they hurled unceasingly upon their
enemy's lines. The last of the batteries of the
second corps were destroyed, and the Turkish infantry
died literally in heaps before the living remnants
of their forces rushed back through a very hell of
bullets.

Abdullah watching the battle from a high graveyard
saw that his second corps had failed.

He then gazed despondently upon his left wing
extended far away, over twenty miles of ground. No
messengers came to him, no telephones kept him in
touch with the commanders of the army corps ; he was

VICTORIES OF ALLIED NATIONS 71

a commander-in-chief without means of communica-
tion with his scattered divisions. But through his
glasses he could read the tale of defeat which was
annihilating the hopes of Turkey in Europe.

The First and Fourth Corps of the army were receiv-
ing the brunt of a tremendous attack by the Bulgarians,
and it was clear once more that the Bulgarian artillery
was immensely superior in numbers of guns and in
wealth of ammunition. The Bulgars captured the
railway line, swept back the Turkish cavalry, and out-
flanked the Fourth Corps.

One last chance remained, and it belonged to Mah-
moud Mukhtar, who was now forcing his way forward
with the Third Army Corps. He came with men not
yet spent with hunger and fatigue, not yet demoralised
by the enemy's shell fire. He came also with guns and
ammunition. It was just possible that he might turn
defeat into something like a victory.

I was told afterwards by a wounded Bulgarian officer
that he had never heard anything so terrific as the noise
of the guns that broke forth when Mahmoud Mukhtar's
corps came within range.

The Bulgarians saw their danger, the supreme im-
portance of this critical time in the progress of the battle,
and at great risk to their position they withdrew many
of their batteries from the centre and concentrated
them upon the new line of attack. They also swung
round battalion after battalion of infantry and sent
them forward to check the Turkish Commander's
advance.

Those men, said my informant, were the greatest
heroes of the war. They exposed themselves to death
with a valour unsurpassed in history. Officers and

72 ADVENTURES OF WAR

men threw away their lives in a kind of passionate
frenzy in order that those who came after them might
reap a victory out of death. During these hours there
was a rich harvest of deaths, which made widows of
hundreds of women in Bulgaria. But the Turks were
beaten, Mahmoud Mukhtar's guns were silenced. His
ranks broke. His divisions fell back. Many of his
battalions were annihilated.

Abdullah Pasha and the general staff knew in their
hearts that the battle was lost, but they made one more
despairing effort. The Second Corps had been severely
handled, but it still remained a fighting force. Once
more the men who belonged to it, who were more hungry
now than when in the early morning they had gone
hungry into the battle — who knew the full terror of the
Bulgarian guns, who had retreated over the bodies of
their dead comrades, were again sent forward to the
firing line.

Their heroism deserves a tribute. Spent as they were
they obeyed the order to advance. Even for a little
while did they stay, facing a fire more frightful in its
concentrated fury than anything that had yet burst
out. But this was beyond human endurance. With
cries of despair, the Second Corps, a mass of shattered,
bleeding men, turned and fled. When the news came
to Abdullah Pasha he knew that he could no more than
save the wreckage of his great army by collecting them
in a general retreat.

That retreat from Lule Burgas was in its accumula-
tion of horror one of the most tragic episodes in the
history of human tragedies. It began in something
like order. It degenerated into a fierce, wild and
chaotic flight. Its way was marked by dead bodie s

73

It escaped from one foe, but found another and even
more terrible one in ambush. Not even the shells of
the Bulgarians were so deadly as the cholera which now
attacked the retreating Turks.

But this story will be told later in this book by an
eye-witness of its horrors, and this chapter may end at
this point in the war between the Cross and the Crescent
when the decisive battle round Lule Burgas revealed
to the world the miracle as it seemed of the Bulgarian
victories.

CHAPTER V.
IN MUSTAFA PASHA.

ON October 28th, 1912, 1 arrived in the Turkish town
of Mustafa Pasha from the Bulgarian head-
quarters at Stara Zagora, through the valley of the
Maritza.

The scene that lay on my way was full of fascinating
interest. I saw endless convoys of bullock waggons
and buffaloes with transports for the army besieging
Adrianople. It was a strange sight these league-long
caravans crawling along the roads deep in mud up to
the axle-spokes. I passed trains carrying an enormous
amount of war material. Some of the trucks were
laden with great siege guns whose muzzles were thrust
upwards like chimneys. On the frontier was a solitary
little house in Turkish territory, once a Custom House
of the Ottoman Empire, now with the Bulgarian flag
flying from the roof as a symbol of conquest.

It is impossible to describe the desolate aspect of
the countryside. It was abandoned by all human
interest save the business of war. It was given over to
the invading soldiers, and there were great camps for
forage and provisions, with thousands of bullock wag-
gons corralled so that they were like villages or gipsy
encampments.

My arrival in Mustafa Pasha was a queer experience.
The town lay four miles away from the station, and

74

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 75

from what we heard of its conditions and the difficulty
of obtaining any kind of lodging in a place which had
been captured by an invading army, it was urgently
necessary to get there quickly, as it would be a ques-
tion of first come first served.

The little battalion of war-correspondents raced each
other from the station on horseback, in ox-waggons,
and on foot, in friendly rivalry. With Mr. Horace
Grant, of the Daily Minor, renowned as a sprinter, I
arrived panting in advance of the others, and hastened
to interview the Mayor, in whose hands I was told all
the arrangements for lodging rested.

At that time the Mayor was a Greek who had stayed
after the flight of Turks. He was a grave, handsome,
bearded man with an enigmatical smile, and he smiled
upon me in this way when I asked for rooms.

" There are empty houses," he said, " with broken
walls and roofs and windows. If you care for one of
them, and if the soldiers will let you "

He did not complete his sentence, but raised his
hands with a gesture of helplessness.

In spite of my rush from the station I had to wait
many hours before any kind of lodging could be found
for me. I used the time to make a hurried exploration
of the first town taken by the Bulgarians.

It seemed deserted by all its former inhabitants.
Many of the houses seemed to have been broken by
some earthquake. Those still standing had been
stripped bare. Little gardens, which once perhaps had
been beautiful with flowers and trailing plants, had all
been ruined and trampled down. Soldiers were camp-
ing on bare boards in the houses once belonging to
Turkish notabilities, surrounded by their baggage. The

76 ADVENTURES OF WAR

Mosque, where many prayers had gone up to Allah, had
been filled with sacks of flour and other stores.

I mounted the winding stairs of the minaret and
stood where the muezzin had called to prayer. Below
me was a wonderful view adown the valley of the
Maritza, with its broad and shining stream running
straight to Adrianople, the beleaguered city.

Standing there alone, as it seemed, in the blue sky, I
looked down upon the old town, and saw battalions of
troops marching across the great bridge by which the
Bulgarian army had entered the town. The Turks had
tried to blow it up before their retreat, but had only
succeeded in smashing a part of the parapet, which
was now mended with a wooden rail. From a high
tower in the centre of it waved the Bulgarian tricolour,
and a reservist soldier hi his sheepskin coat stood
there as a sentinel.

Afterwards I stood on this bridge as the soldiers
passed on their way to the front. They had wound
flowers round their bayonets, and had put garlands
about their caps. A priest of the Bulgarian Church, in
a long black gown and high black cap, cheered them
and waved his arms as battalion after battalion marched
past him. He was delirious with enthusiasm for
the war against the Crescent, and they answered his
wild and exultant cries by waving their caps on
their bayonets and bursting out into some religious
chant.

That evening after dark I was allotted quarters in a
little farmhouse a mile outside the town. I was to
share it with three other Englishmen — Mr. Pryor, of the
Times, Mr. Horace Grant, of the Daily Mirror, and
another special correspondent selected haphazard by

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 77

fate and the authorities, but good comrades all. We
went to our new home with a bullock-waggon laden
with our baggage, amidst which I had a big clothes
basket containing all my worldly goods.

Would that I had the space to write the epic of that
preposterous basket, which was a terror to all my com-
panions, a horrible anxiety to myself, and an endless
nuisance. It got lost on wayside stations, it became
the resting-place of hairy savages, it disappeared and
reappeared in strange ways and strange places, and
with my name in Bulgarian characters, it attracted
the astonishment of the porters in Charing Cross
when I brought it home, after many vicissitudes, in
triumph.

On the night journey to the farmhouse outside
Mustafa Pasha it was nearly upturned in a quagmire,
where I had already plunged up to my knees, and
then I abandoned it to its fate, as hugging stone walls,
stumbling over boulders, losing my goloshes in the
mud, and following a man with a lantern in a dazed
way through a maze of winding lanes choked with
bullock convoys and with soldiers carrying naked
bayonets, I made my way to our new home.

It became our house of refuge for many days, and
barn as it was, I loved the place as a quiet retreat from
the hurly burly of the town. That night and for many
nights we slept in our clothes upon Turkish divans,
with caps pulled down about our ears and rugs heaped
upon us to keep us sheltered from the cutting draughts
and the intense coldness of the night.

In our ears was the solemn music of great guns boom-
ing like distant thunder claps. It was a music which
thrilled my pulses and called me out to the hills next

78 ADVENTURES OF WAR

day on the road to Adrianople where the siege had
begun.

Looking back upon the days that passed I seemed to
have been living in a continual nightmare full of black
and white beasts, of curly horns, of trampling hoofs, of
armed men surging like a living tide, through narrow
streets incessantly by day and night, of gun-carriages,
and bullock-waggons in a great tangle of spokes and
wheels and shafts, of bayonets glistening like silver, of
bearded faces and black eyes staring at me as a great
army passed onwards through the town of Mustafa
Pasha.

It was more than an army ; it was a nation.

Across the bridge which the Turks tried to blow up
before they retreated upon Adrianople Bulgaria passed
on its way to war. All its manhood, its young boys
and its elderly men, its peasants and professors and
business men and poets came pouring across that narrow

Jway which spans the shining Maritza. The tide never
stopped for one moment. Convoys more than two
miles long, piled high with forage and ammunition and
provisions and surgical appliances and all the necessities
of life and death converged from many country roads
upon this single bridge, followed by great battalions of
peasant soldiers, shouting and singing as they saw their
flag upon the Turkish tower, or silent and breathing
heavily after a long march which tested all their
strength. In the main street of Mustafa mounted
officers tried to control this traffic, to disentangle a
wild chaos of sullen oxen and plunging horses. There
were shouts and curses and slashing of whips as the
heavy carts lurched over the boulders and deep ruts.
The noise of all this struggling mass of men and

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 79

beasts stunned my ears, made me dazed, almost drunk.
I tried to dodge it all, to get back to my little farm-
house outside the town by quiet ways. But there
were bullocks in all the lanes up to their bellies in mud
and water, and after darkness fell it was a perilous
adventure to get back to that little place in the middle
of a maze of winding ways where I had found shelter.

For as I stumbled through the pitch blackness of the
night, groping along high walls, staggering over heaps
of stones and timber, splashing up to the knees in
puddles as deep as ponds, the dogs of Mustafa Pasha
began to bark, snarling and snapping their teeth. I
saw the glint of their eyes, and waved my stick at them.
In dark doorways shadows moved, and I heard whispers
about me. Now and then a figure crossed my path
calling out something in a language I did not know.
Suddenly I felt warm breath upon my face. I had
stumbled again upon a bullock-waggon.

I clutched one of the great curly horns, and saved my-
self from being trampled to death. It was good to get
inside the wooden gate of the farmhouse, and very
good to take off my mud-caked boots, flinging myself
upon one of the divans in a big bare room, where a tall
Bulgarian peasant came to give me a greeting in his
strange tongue.

He found me a curious thing. As I sat writing he
stood, a mild eyed giant, staring at me, like a man
watches a peculiar animal.

But the town had a call to me. I wandered out again
to see the fantastic pictures which have etched them-
selves into my brain. I went deliberately once more
into the middle of the nightmare. In most of the little
houses abandoned by the Turks, Bulgarian soldiers

80 ADVENTURES OF WAR

were crowding round ovens and wood fires. The
light flickered upon them luridly, upon those tired,
hungry men who clamoured for chunks of black bread
and coarse red wine. They wore belts crammed with
cartridges, and propped their guns between their knees
and got a little respite from the long march forward to
the front.

Outside the Mosque there were camp fires burning.
Except for the ruddy glare of the burning embers all
was blackness below the roofs, and there were black
figures, like devils, sitting on their haunches in the
warmth ; but above, very white and ghostly, like the
tall tower of a dream palace, rose the slender minaret,
reaching to the stars. In the alley- ways and courtyards
other black figures were squatting in the darkness. I
heard a strange, sucking, gurgling noise. It was the
noise of soldiers drinking soup before they lay down
to sleep in their heavy sheepskins and woollen cloaks.

So it was in Mustafa Pasha. Beyond lay the hills
which billowed down in waves to the plain of Maritza
and away to the besieged city of Adrianople.

I walked that way, pressing on to get nearer to
those rolls of thunderous sound which told the tale of
a great siege. For hours that noise had been in my
ears, vague and murmurous, with low and sullen
vibrations. But as I walked to the hills, past rows of
shattered houses, where a hot fight had taken place
when the Bulgarian army made its first advance, past
buildings reduced to mere heaps of brick and dust,
the booming of the guns was more intense, coming in
great shocks of sound across the countryside.

Far away I could see little black dots, moving along
the ridges of the hills, b'ke armies of ants. They were

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 81

Bulgarian soldiers pressing forward to the besieging
army. And away eastwards, in little valleys that
dipped down below the ridges of the hills, there were
clouds of white smoke, which rope up into the clear
sky like wisps of cotton wool. They were burning
villages fired by the Turks before their retreat to the
fortifications of Adrianople, or by the Bulgarians who
followed them.

Through my glasses I could see one of them clearly,
in every detail, as the village stood silhouetted on the
crest of one of the ridges. A tall mosque stood like a
black finger pointing up to the sky, and below it the
smoke curled up from all the roofs of the Turkish
houses. I counted four villages on fire, but as I
watched another not far away began to smoke, and for
miles around the white wreaths of smoke curled like
feathers above the ridges.

I had a companion, and we two were hushed to
silence as we gazed upon those fires, and read into that
smoke the tale of destruction, of ruined homesteads, of
blackened farms, perhaps of death. The sun was
warm upon our faces, the Maritza river glistened like
gold, there were little flowers in the clefts of the rocks,
and Turkey had the beauty of enchantment on this
autumn morning. But tall, black pillars of smoke,
westward of the burning villages, rising suddenly,
lingering for a moment, and then fading away, showed
that the work of war was in progress, and that man
was spoiling the beauty of the world.

For those black pillars were the smoke made by the

bursting shells from the Turkish batteries. Between

the sullen booming of the great guns I heard the

staccato note of the Maxim guns with swift, rushing

6

82 ADVENTURES OF WAR

reports that struck the air like the tattoo of drums.
I had an almost irresistible desire to get nearer to those
death-machines, to see more than the smoke of them,
to watch their bloody work, to see the shells bursting,
to gaze upon the dreadful beauty of their destruction.
But the military authorities forbade me to go beyond
a fixed limit, and on that day I had to be content with
this vague and distant view, with imagination to
pierce through the veil of smoke.

I went back into the mud of Mustafa Pasha.

Mud ! I had heard the word before, but never
knew the meaning of it until I came to this Turkish
village, after its capture by the Bulgarians. Now I
understand. It was a terrible thing, this mud through
which I stumbled ankle deep along the roads, and
sometimes knee-deep in the lanes.

I could never escape from it. All day long, wher-
ever I walked, the filthy slime splodged over my
boots, so that I slipped and staggered like a drunken
man. It caked one's clothes, splashed one's face, was
gritty between one's teeth. It was horrible and dis-
gusting and shook our nerves, because it was impossible
to walk a yard in a straight line or to avoid plunging
into quagmires. The bullock waggons as they crossed
the bridge of Mustafa Pasha flung the mud away
from their wheels. The gun carriages and the ammuni-
tion carts churned it up. Officers galloping towards
Adrianople were followed by spurting fountains of
mud.

It was bad before the great rains of mid-November.
Afterwards it became a slimy horror. The Maritza
rose higher and higher, and its broad stream, flowing
swiftly towards the besieged city, was thick with

THE FIRST REFUGEES AFTF.R THE DEFEAT AT KIRK KII.ISSE

DEFRATRD SOLDIERS AT CHOKI.U

THK RAILROAD OF RKTRKAT

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 83

yellowish foam, a mixture of mud and melted snow,
brought down from the mountains.

Then the Maritza overflowed its banks, and Bul-
garian officers watched with increasing alarm the
rapid advance of those sweeping waters. They were
destroying cart tracks, barring the way between one
force and another by breaking down the pontoon bridge.
The military camp which guarded it was swamped out.

For miles along the winding road to the besieged
city the fields around were turned into lakes, above
which the naked arms of great trees stretched out as
though for help. Villages which I had seen burning
two weeks before were now encircled with water, and
had become wet, black ruins.

Then gradually the torrent of the Maritza slackened
its force, and officers watching the measuring rod
below the bridge saw with joy that the water was sink-
ing again steadily.

But the flood had brought new volumes of mud
which overspread the town and the countryside, and
on the southern side of the river there was one great
quagmire, a dangerous place for horse and man, as I
learnt when I rode there one day up to the stirrup
leathers at times in water. A friend of mine on a
bigger horse sank deep into the swamp and had great
trouble before he reached safer ground.

The mud there could not be escaped, and out in the
trenches the Bulgarian soldiers ate and slept and lived ,•
in mud, and cursed it fiercely. This slush, which oozed \
between their sandals and their leggings, and which I
bespattered them from head to foot and got into their '
food, and kept them wet and miserable, was more
hated by them than Turkish shells and Turkish bullets,

84 ADVENTURES OF WAR

at which they laughed, until perhaps their laughter
turned into a groan.

Mustafa Pasha, once a prosperous little Turkish
town, was, indeed, little better than a mud-heap,
for, as I have said, many of its houses were battered
to pieces, and rats played about in the ruins of the
homesteads.

I wandered round the back part of the town peeping
through casement windows or through gaping holes
in the adobe walls, at the piles of refuse which lay
scattered on the floors. They had been picked over by
Bulgarian soldiers and Bulgarian peasants, but yielded
but little booty. Thousands of letters written in
Turkish characters, perhaps with love letters among
them, full of Oriental passion and poetry — I could not
read them — were littered in those broken and deserted
homes, where horses were then stabled, or where cattle
wandered in.

Strolling about in this deserted quarter I came
suddenly upon a little building which seemed to tell
the whole tale of human life, and the terrible irony of
it all.

It was a tiny Roman temple, the tiles showed through
the crumbling plaster outside, afterwards converted
into a Christian church, and later into a Mohammedan
Mosque. Before the Bulgarians came it was already
a ruin, but for two thousand years and more it had
stood here in Mustafa Pasha, a witness of civilisations
coming and going, of one religion giving place to
another, of life and death.

And there Bulgarian soldiers were feeding their
horses under the shadow of its walls, a telegraph
apparatus was propped against its buttresses, and rats

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 85

played about its dark chambers, among the litter of
cattle.

All the refuse lying about the town had a strange
attraction for me. I had become a rag-picker, and
like Autolycus, a snapper up of unconsidered trifles.
One day I captured a Turkish flag, without a shot, from
a street corner, and a dainty fez spangled with tin.

I was forbidden to go in search of loot, and the
military police had no mercy on peasants who prowled
round the deserted shops or among the muck heaps
with sharp eyes for anything of value. I have seen
many men and women marched away between bayonets
for this offence. But the chief commodity of Mus-
tafa Pasha was the wealth of mud which poured
over its stones, and squelched over the roads. Wend-
ing through the muck of it soldiers and transports still
passed on their way to Adrianople, that city of tragedy
beyond the hills that frowned upon the valleys.

Across the bridge one day came King Ferdinand
with his general staff, and for once the roadway was
cleared of the transport waggons, and swept clean of
mud. The King proceeded to the Bulgarian church,
a simple old building just outside the town, where a
private service was held for his Majesty and his staff.

Returning afterwards over the bridge the King
stopped and examined the damage done by the Turks
when they attempted to destroy it in their retreat.

I happened to be standing near, and seeing that I
was an English correspondent, the King walked to-
wards me and shook hands. He asked the name of
my paper, and when he heard that it was The Graphic
said that the paper was an old friend of his. He
spoke almost perfect English and was very genial and

86 ADVENTURES OF WAR

cordial in his manner, although as I shall have to tell
later, he had no desire to encourage war-correspondents
in their anxiety to watch the operations of war.

Of the Press photographers he had a special dislike,
amounting almost to a dread, and one of his remarks
to me, when he perceived that he was being snap-
shotted, was an epigram which amused me a good deal.

" This photography," said the King, " is not a pro-
fession but a disease."

He continued to chat with me in an informal way,
and I remember one sentence which revealed a touch
of triumph at the Bulgarian successes.

" The first time I came over this bridge," said his
Majesty, " I was received in state by the Turkish
authorities, who conducted me over the town. Now
I come "

He did not finish his sentence, but laughed and made
a significant gesture indicating that he came as a con-
queror, and in very different circumstances.

He walked with me a little way to the parapet of
the bridge and pointed out the beauty of the scenery
on the banks of the Maritza, upon which the sunlight
gleamed.

"It is a beautiful country," he said, " perhaps one
of the most beautiful views in the world."

Then he referred to the Batak atrocities which had
occurred five years ago, and remarked that the Turks
were as brutal now as they were then.

" Intelligence has come to us," said his Majesty,
" of horrible deeds committed by the Turks in their
retreat, of children found decapitated and women
mutilated."

This conversation with the King was very interesting

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 87

to me and gave me the opportunity of studying the
personality of a man who has changed the map of
Europe, and organised one of the greatest wars in
history. Simple as his words were there was an air
about the man which impressed me as the sign of a
strong, dominant, and able character, with the simpli-
city and directness that belongs to those who do big
things in a big way, and rise above the trivialities of
ceremony and self-assertion.

Before describing in detail the progress of the siege
of Adrianople I must narrate the impressions that came
to me when for the first time I looked down upon the
beleagured city. My first view of the city was from
the last ridge of the long range which sweeps from the
north down to the valley of the Maritza. I drove part
of the way with three comrades, in a three-horsed
carriage with loud tingling bells, which by much schem-
ing and not a little money I had managed to bring
from the Army Headquarters at Stara Zagora.

It was nearly the death of me, for my driver was a
reckless fellow who urged his sorry steeds forward over
boulders, ruts and swamps, careless of the laws of
gravity, and drove recklessly upon the edge of little
precipices, with yells and shouts. Sometimes for half
an hour at a time we crawled slowly at the tail of long
convoys of bullock-waggons, and sometimes had to
pull up for long waits while there passed a train of ox-
carts bringing back wounded men under the Red Cross.
I peered under the hoods of these jolting carts and saw
human forms lying huddled up in straw.

Not a groan came from them, though the agony of
that road over loosely strewn stones and in deep ruts
must have shaken the life out of many a poor devil

88 ADVENTURES OF WAR

who had been picked up in the trenches. Some of the
men were sitting up in the straw with bandaged heads
and arms, while others walked, trudging bravely along
with their arms in splints, though their faces showed
the extremity of their suffering and weariness. Two
convoys and ambulance waggons became tangled up
with a long linejof gun-carriages and limber- waggons
bringing up howitzers and siege-guns for the great
attack on Adrianople.

I was glad to escape from all the hurly-burly of the
road, and especially from the sight of the wounded,
which sickened me with pity. Leaving my carriage
in a loop of the road, I climbed, with my companions,
afoot, to the crest of the hill, and after slipping down
and struggling up again, came at last to a ridge which
looked straight down the valley. There, not very far
away, was the besieged city, Adrianople, its minarets
and turrets glistening in the sun.

It lay outspread in a dip of the valley at the far end
of the Maritza, which ran like a gold snake across the
green carpet of the landscape. Immediately below
me, nestling at the foot of the ridge on which I stood,
was a Bulgarian camp. Here were the Macedonian
volunteers, not of much use in the trenches, but ready
for bayonet work and hand to hand fighting, and
away across a white winding road which ran almost
parallel with the river, in a hollow of the billowy slopes,
was the main body of the Bulgarian army, a huge black
patch on the grass, but plainly visible as a great camp of
armed men, with many guns and waggons. On the other
side of the river were other masses of Bulgarian troops,
crossing by pontoon bridges and sweeping in a wide devour
to the main army beyond the reach of the Turkish guns.

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 89

Now and again from the ridges just above Adrianople
there came a little cloud of white smoke, appearing
at first like a puff ball but gently wafted into thin wisps
along the hill-sides. I could hear the loud crash of the
great guns, and now and again the quick rattle of
machine-guns.

The spectacle around me was grim and terrible, and
when the sun began to sink into a great blaze of blood-
red light overspreading the western sky above the
sombre line of hills, it assumed an awful grandeur and
beauty. Four, five and then six villages a little way
across the river began to burn with a fierce and swift
destruction. The Bulgarian troops had fired them,
not I believe out of mere blind hatred of the Turk, but
strictly for military purposes. They burned like
flaming torches, great tongues of fire licking from roof to
roof until the villages were burning furnaces of red
light, intense and vivid as molten metal, with black
patches breaking through the glare where houses had
once stood, and with trees in the foreground silhoutted
as black as ink. Those great bonfires were of an
indescribable beauty, and I gazed at them fascinated
by a land of joyful terror difficult to define.

When the darkness came, wrapping me about like a
velvet cloak, I could see nothing but the shadow forms
of the hills, and in the blackest pits of them twin
cascades of fire and volumes of rosy smoke. Above,
the heaven was spangled with bright stars, and a pale
moon looked down from a sky still shimmering with
faint light. All the beauty and majesty of the
universe seemed to be gazing down upon the theatre of
war, where the homes of men were being burned and a
body of men was stealing across the countryside with

90 ADVENTURES OF WAR

deadly weapons to attack a city in which there was a
living terror.

But before the darkness came, in the beauty of this
day upon the hills, I sat down to a picnic luncheon to
the music of the guns and afterwards played a game of
chess with a German confrere, while a big black-
bearded Professor — a Gargantuan in size and appetite
— played patience with a tiny pack of cards while he
drank Erbswurth soup and munched tablets of
chocolate.

After that game, played in the strangest surroundings,
I walked towards an adventure. Two miles away from
my hill was one of those burning villages which have
followed the retreat of the Turks and the advance, of
the Bulgarian army.

It was a place called Pashachivlik, once a place of
Turkish homesteads, with neat little wooden houses and
big farms enclosed by a circle of great hay-stacks.
Turkish peasant farmers had gone home to this place
after their long day's work in the fields, glad to see the
lights twinkling in their windows ; women had brought
children into the world in those old cottages ; from
generation to generation small black-eyed boys
and girls had played in the barns and in the gar-
dens.

Now it was all just a black, blazing ruin.

The peasants had fled with their children, and the
only living things left were lean dogs, who howled
around the relics of their old homes, and one miserable
donkey with singed hair and burnt feet, as black as the
cinders upon which it lay.

I wandered about the small streets, half suffocated
by the poisonous smoke which rolled out of the gaping

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 91

windows and shattered roofs, scorched by the intense
heat of this horrible bonfire.

Now and again there would be a clatter and rumble,
and down would fall a pile of bricks, or a great beam,
scattering sparks as it hit the earth.

At some hazard I went into one or two of the ruined
houses, and picked up the pages of Turkish books, and
scraps of letters written in Turkish script. Afterwards
I found that looting was going on in a more serious way.
Peasants were creeping about the heaps of burning tim-
ber filling their sacks with the relics of these homesteads.
One old man and woman had laden a donkey with grain
seized from a barn which had almost escaped destruction.

But they started back panic-stricken and tried to
hide their booty when a couple of soldiers came running
up and shouting. Long guns were slung about them,
and one of the soldiers poked his bayonet at the old
man and threatened to run it between his ribs if he
did not unload his sacks.

I managed to convince the soldier that I was a man
of blameless character and good-will, and in return for
cigarettes he led me away to a camp on the banks of
the Maritza, where I was introduced to a Bulgarian
officer who spoke perfect English, learnt in America.
He was in command of a cyclist corps guarding a pon-
toon bridge across the Maritza, with orders to blow it
up and ride away if any Turks happened to break out
of Adrianople in strong force.

In this little camp by the shining waters of the
broad river I was regaled with good soup and baked
pumpkin, and other gifts, offered with delightful friend-
liness by men who looked very savage in their sheep-
skins and mud-stained uniforms.

92 ADVENTURES OF WAR

Later I got into my carriage again, and in a spirit
of recklessness and folly drove far along the winding
road until it seemed that I must soon have reached the
gates of Adrianople. My comrades and I were well
within the firing zone, and as the shadows fell we were
surrounded by the sullen booming of the guns. At last
we turned and followed the long procession of Red
Cross carts, little hay-carts stuffed with straw, upon
which lay Turkish and Bulgarian wounded, with a red
cross flag trailing behind.

It was the long trail of blood away from Adrianople,
where the Bulgarians had suffered heavier losses than
they care to tell, in spite of their victorious advance.
The sun glowed red above the western hills, and the
mountain ridges were a deep purple and velvet black
against the translucent sky, as I drove back to the tune
of my jingling bells.

When I came back into Mustafa Pasha, walking the
last part of the way, the searchlights of Adrianople
swept across the country, touching the crests of the
hills with silvery rings and searching into the hollows
of the valleys. Then waving arms of light enveloped
me for a moment in their glory. It seemed as if the
eyes of Adrianople had searched me out, a little, lonely
figure in the great darkness, stumbling over the rock-
strewn ground.

On Friday, November i5th, when the afternoon sun
turned the Maritza into a broad stream of shining gold,
I turned out of the main street of Mustafa Pasha to
watch an incident in a back-yard. In a war where
thousands of men have been killed it was but a trivial
affair, merely the hanging of two Turks who had been
caught red-handed after murder. But to them it was

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 93

important enough, this episode in a back-yard, where
they were to play the final act of life, and to the Bul-
garian spectators it was invested with the dignity of
vengeance, for many massacres and many murders
done by the Turks in the days of their power.

To me, a man unfamiliar with such sights, it was a
strange and dreadful lesson in human psychology.

I had seen, some days before, the two prisoners
brought into Mustafa Pasha by an escort with fixed
bayonets, and had heard the tale of their deeds. They
were Bashi-Bazouks, renowned in their district for
many murderous acts upon defenceless Christians.

It is said that one of them, the elder of the two, had
murdered twenty-three people with his own hand, and
that the other had cut up women and children. The
crime for which they had been taken and condemned
was the cold-blooded murder of three Bulgarian
soldiers billeted in their house.

They were to be hanged, and the ropes were ready
for them, dangling from the branches of a stout tree in
a ruined garden at the back of some deserted houses.
An old ladder was propped up against the tree, and a
few packing-cases had been piled up insecurely beneath
one of the nooses. There was nothing beneath the
other noose, but at the last moment a soldier brought
up a cabinet about a yard high, with broken panes and
feet. It seemed to him good enough to support a
Turk during his last moments.

There was a little crowd in the ruined garden,
trampling over the bushes and refuse and rubbish
heaps which smelt horribly. Among them were photo-
graphers, a few journalists, Bulgarian peasants, soldiers,
and police. One soldier drew his sword and obligingly

94 ADVENTURES OF WAR

hacked down some of the boughs which stood in the
way of the cameras. The gentlemen of the Press were,
for once, to have a close view. I wondered what was
the fascination which made men eager to see other
men die, which prevented me from turning away from
the approaching horrors.

Before I could get an answer to the riddle there was
a sudden hush, and through the back-yard the con-
demned men came with their guards. Their wrists
were tied tightly behind their backs, and their feet were
also bound, but loosely, so that they could shamble
forward. They were pushed on between a quickset
hedge of bayonets, like beasts, but as they came near
to where I had stood I was struck by the dignity of
these two murderers, and by the courage with which
they faced their doom.

One of them was an old man with white hair and
beard, a thick bare neck, and great shoulders. His
companion was a younger man, though perhaps fifty
years of age, very tall, and with a long, lean, aquiline
face, and a short black beard. Both of them wore the
Turkish fez, and were well dressed as men of some
rank.

It was clear that they accepted their fate. Both of
them stared up at the gallows tree, and their eyes did
not flinch from the sight of those dangling ropes.
Then they looked round upon the crowd about them,
at all those watching eyes and pointing cameras and
pitiless soldiers.

An officer read out their indictment and condemna-
tion. It was a long document of several pages and
many paragraphs, and it seemed to me too long while
men waited for death. At the end of the oration there

IN MUSTAFA PASHA 95

was a movement among the soldiers, and a young officer,
speaking to the condemned men in Turkish, said that
they would be allowed five minutes to say their prayers.

They had more than five minutes. I think it must
have been fifteen minutes while those murderers pre-
pared themselves for death. Their bonds were cut
from their wrists and feet, and they used their time
busily, and as calmly as though they were making
ready for a night's rest, or a morning's work. I saw
the older man most clearly.

It was the strangest, most fantastic, most tragic
thing I have ever seen. This old fellow, with the mild
eyes, who was accused of almost unspeakable crimes,
prepared to go to Allah with a clean body and a prayer-
ful mind. He took off his shoes and washed his feet
very carefully in water brought to him by a soldier in
a tin can. Then he washed his face, hands and arms
v>vvigorously, and afterwards, in fresh water, rinsed out
his mouth. Raising his hands to his ears with that
gesture which is characteristic among Oriental people,
and familiar to us in stage caricatures of old Jews, he
listened for the voice of God, and then prostrated
himself upon the ground.

An officer had his watch in his hand, counting the
minutes, but before he had called out the time limit
the old man was on his feet again, and walked under
the gallows tree. He took off his silver ring and flung
it on the ground, with a gesture of disdain, as though
wealth were but dirt now, and then handed other small
objects of value — a silver box, a cigarette holder, a
watch — to a young officer standing close to him. The
second man was ready too — and a moment later the
dreadful work began.

96 ADVENTURES OF WAR

An officer called to the crowd for any man who
could tie a good knot. Two peasants at the back of the
garden volunteered with smiling faces, and showed
their skill by trussing up the condemned men as they
would poultry for the market. Not a murmur of
anguish or of anger came from the lips of those two
strange beings.

I had one last glimpse of their faces, grave, imper-
turbable, almost beautiful in their mournful dignity.
I had to repeat to myself the tale of their crimes to
prevent the surging up of a great pity for these two
criminals. They had the look of martyrs. Then swift
hands thrust white sacks over their heads, and drew
them down almost to their feet, so that they were
terrible and grotesque forms, like dummy figures.
Even now, when darkness came upon them and their
fate was very near, no cry escaped from them.

The old man bent his head forward so that the noose
might be slipped over it. Two moments more, and
the bodies hung from the gallows tree. Powerful men
sprang to them, and dragged at their feet and swung
free with them so that death might be quick. I think
they died quickly, though the tall man's body jerked
more than that of his old comrade in crime. The
crowd laughed a little at those dummy figures. It
seemed to them amusing to see how grotesque they
looked — those two Turks who could no longer murder
defenceless Christians. It seemed to them good to see
the dogs die, and when they were cut down and flung
upon the ground with sprawling arms and feet, men
could not restrain their mirth. My God, what^a
comedy, in the sunlight of a beautiful afternoon !

CHAPTERLVI

THE SIEGE OF ADRIANOPLE

IT was obvious, even before the war had begun,
to all those people who, with a little military
knowledge, were studying their war maps, that Adrian-
ople would be one of the most important points in the
great campaign. It was the strongest fortified position
on the main line to Constantinople from Bulgaria, and
its strategic position was of immense significance to
the Turkish army. It would be necessary for the
Bulgarians to invest the city with a very powerful
army before they could attempt any flanking move-
ment from the north-east. Neither the Turks nor the
Bulgarians under-estimated the supreme importance
of this position, and long before the war had been
declared they were both making secret preparations,
on the one side for defence and on the other for attack.
For some months, fully anticipating the war which to
the general public in Europe seemed to be so sudden,
the Turkish military authorities, under the direction
of Nazim Pasha, the Commander-in-Chief, had been
gradually strengthening the Ottoman defences, and
concentrating troops in the area between Adrianople
and Kirk Kilisse, behind a chain of forts built up in
1909 by Field Marshal von der Gottz. In spite of the
Oriental railway having only a single track of line,
7 97

98 ADVENTURES OF WAR

its capacity was tested to the utmost, and there was a
steady stream of war guns and munitions pouring up.
At the general mobilisation of the Turkish army the
troops were sent forward at the rate of 20,000 a day,
great bodies of cavalry and infantry being sent along
by road. They contained some of the pick of the
Turkish army, but the majority of them were Redifs
or reservists from Anatolia, wiry men and good fighters,
with a fanatical hatred of the Christian and an Oriental
carelessness of death, but untrained in the use of arms
and very poor shots. The garrison of Adrianople
before it was closed by the siege amounted roughly
to 50,000 men, the officers of whom were quite con-
fident of being able to defend themselves against any
force of Bulgarian and Servian troops which could be
hurled against the network of forts, field works and
mines. The whole strategy of the Turkish commanders
seems to have been based upon the assumption that the
Bulgarians would not take the risk of advancing south
on the eastern side of the city while they contained
such a great army in their rear, to cut them off in case
of retreat. If this assumption were right, the Turkish
army in Thrace, numbering at least 100,000 men outside
Adrianople, would be free to take the offensive and
drive the Bulgarians down the valley of the Maritza.

On the other hand, the Bulgarians had no intention
of making a dead stop outside Adrianople. As the
world now knows, their strategy was much more daring.
They also had been laying their plans to concentrate
heavily and swiftly upon the Turkish city, and were
confident that they could at least close in upon three
sides of it with such irresistible strength that the
garrison would be unable to dislodge them from their

THE SIEGE OF ADRIANOPLE 99

positions and drive them back through the pass of
Mustafa Pasha into Bulgarian territory. Having
established themselves to the west, north and south
of Adrianople, they would smash their way down from
the north to the eastern side, and by a formidable
attack upon Kirk Kilisse cut the communication
between the grand army of the Turks and the garrison
inside the city, thus completely isolating it, and render-
ing its force impotent for the rest of the war, even if it
were not compelled to surrender. As the story of the
war shows, the Bulgarian plan was entirely successful,
and General Savoffs strategy was justified in the most
brilliant way.

No sooner had war been declared than the Second
Army of the Bulgarians advanced towards Mustafa
Pasha, from which the outposts of the Turks fell back.
The town was deserted by most of its inhabitants, all
but the Christian population flying in terror to the
shelter of Adrianople, abandoning their shops and
the heavier furniture of their houses, and taking with
them only what they could load upon their bullock
and donkey carts. The soldiers before retiring made
an ineffective attempt to blow up the great bridge
over the Maritza which leads into the town, but did
their work so badly that very little damage was done.
It was one of their fatal acts of incompetency. That
one bridge was worth a victory to the Bulgarians, for
it became the passage way of thousands of troops, of
vast convoys, and of all their siege guns, and the
destruction of it would have made a great deal of
difference to the rapidity and success of their advance.
It was with a joyous triumph that the Bulgarian
officers found it safe and sound and passed over

ioo ADVENTURES OF WAR

it for the first time to take possession of the town.
General Ivanoff, in command of the Second Army,
installed himself and his staff in the Turkish Municipal
Buildings, which were then used henceforth as the
headquarters. The Bulgarian flag was hoisted over it
as a sign of conquest, and the Turkish flag of the
Crescent was hauled down and torn in half. By a
curious act of fate the remnant of it is now in the
possession of an English writer, and hangs as a trophy
in his study. It is the property of the man who writes
these words.

The first battle which the Bulgarians had to en-
counter in their attempt to seize the advanced positions
on the way to Adrianople was at Kadikoi, on the right
bank of the Maritza, and on a high plateau led up to
across the valley by hills rising to various heights, the
elevated ground forming a wedge between the Maritza
and Arda rivers, at the junction of which is Adrianople
itself. The battle took place on October 22nd, and the
Turks, who were entrenched, fought stubbornly. But
the Bulgarians showed an irresistible determination
and that marvellous spirit of gallantry which inspired
their peasant soldiers from the outset. In spite of the
strength of the Turkish positions the Bulgarians swept
them from their trenches, and afterwards established;
themselves here in a most formidable manner. Down
below the Arda valley runs at the foot of the Rhodope
mountains to the west, and a few days later the Bul-
garians advanced in this direction and established
themselves victoriously after severe fighting, main-
taining a perfect line of communication with their
main army. A number of Turkish villages were burned
around Adrianople, so that they might not afford

THE SIEGE OF ADRIANOPLE 101

cover for the Turks in any sorties which they might be
able to make. Fighting was also going on to the
north-east of the city by the Bulgarian army coming
southward in preparation for their great plan of cam-
paign. The Bulgarians found these positions much
harder and suffered considerable losses. I was told
by some of the Bulgarian officers that these losses
were increased by the treacherous behaviour of Turkish
soldiers who raised the white flag on several occasions,
and having deceived the army fired upon them from
close range. Eventually, however, the Turks had to
retire, and in one part of the retreat, which took place
in a great hurry, abandoned two batteries with their
ammunition waggons and accoutrements . At the village
of Jenidze, between Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse, two
depots of arms, cartridges, and equipment, were found
by the Bulgarians.

The Bulgarians advanced their howitzer and field
guns to closer positions under the cover of night, but
they were still awaiting many of their heavier guns
which had not yet been brought up to the front.

The position of Adrianople during the last days of
October and throughout November became very
serious to the garrison and the inhabitants. The
Turkish defeat at Kirk Kilisse had completely isolated
the city and cut it off from all means of receiving
new supplies. Their gravest danger was starvation.
In ordinary times the population of the city numbers
about 100,000 ; this had been considerably reduced by
the panic-stricken flight of many of the citizens before
the war, the richest among them travelling to Con-
stantinople, others taking refuge in Kirk Kilisse, which
in their innocence they believed to be a safe place of

102 ADVENTURES OF WAR

retreat. Both these withdrawals were more than
made up by the great garrison, and the task of feeding
such a vast number of people must have taxed the
brains of those in charge of the victualling department.
Fortunately for them, a siege had long been contem-
plated, and stores had been piled up in the city in vase
quantities, but even with that foresight it was impossible
to ensure food for a long time. Refugees from the
town told us that the water supply had been cut off,
and that no water could be obtained except from the
Maritza, which was a dangerous source for people
without the most elementary knowledge of sanitation.
The desperation of their position after the battles
of Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas urged the Turks to
make sorties in the attempt to turn the Bulgarians out
of their entrenched positions and break a way through
to the main army. Some of these repeated sorties
were of a formidable character, and although repulsed
cost the Bulgarians a heavy list of casualties. In one of
them, during the first days of November, the Turks
opened fire from all their forts round the city and
tried to retake a position in the north-west. Twenty
battalions of Turkish troops advanced with great
courage, but the Bulgarian artillery, directed in its fire
by a captive balloon and an aeroplane, obtained their
range, and eventually turned them back on to the
defences in great disorder. The noise of this conflict
was terrific and lasted for many hours. It shook the
houses of Mustafa Pasha as though by the tremors
of an earthquake, and terrified the Christian inhabitants,
many of whom came outside their houses and farms
after darkness had fallen and when the uproar was
most appalling, listening with white faces and hushed

103

into silence except when some old woman would break
into a loud moaning or when little children began to
wail, terrified by this thunder in the night. The
official bulletins of war issued in the Censor's office at
Mustafa Pasha were very laconic after these repeated
sorties, when indeed they mentioned them even by a
few words, which ended invariably with the good news
— " Turks repulsed with great loss." Never was any
mention made of their own losses. But from other
sources I heard that these were serious. A Bulgarian
priest, who used to drive repeatedly to the danger zone
in a carriage which was about as picturesque as my own, '
told me that on one day alone the Bulgarians had lost i
800 men. A friendly officer also gave me some details.
He admitted that the Turks had improved their posi-
tion after the first Bulgarian successes, and had re-
captured some of their forts, driving out the former
victors by a fury of shell fire which they were unable to
sustain. On another occasion two battalions of infantry
advanced upon a Turkish mine, which blew up suddenly
and caused a frightful slaughter. The position of the ;
Bulgarian trenches in the advanced front was not at all
enviable, because in addition to the way in which they
were exposed to the Turkish shells from neighbouring
forts they were in danger of starvation. For many
days it was impossible to reach them with food supplies
owing to the severity of the enemy's fire, and they had
to endure all the terrors of continued hunger.

In spite of these inevitable losses and difficulties the
Bulgarian siege of Adrianople was conducted with the
greatest skill. I watched their preparations for its
investment with increasing admiration. They made
them with a cold, quiet and almost leisurely deliberation,

104 ADVENTURES OF WAR

without any undue haste, yet never with delay.
Without any flurry the long tide of traffic rolled on
towards the front, and to a man without military
knowledge it seemed incredible that the Turks should
not make more desperate efforts to stop this work
before they were surrounded. Why did they not
break their way out to fire upon those long, slow con-
voys and to break the line of the deadly advance ?
After the one big fight at Kadikoi it was only when
the Bulgarian army had taken up strong positions
that the Turks began to make their sorties. Then,
during the early days of November, the Servians came
with two divisions to garrison Mustafa Pasha and
to complete the investment. The Turks spent an
immense amount of ammunition in trying to unmask
the positions of the allied armies, but the latter con-
tinued to make their entrenchments and to bring up
their siege guns without answering the Turkish fire
unless there was an actual sortie.

Strictly speaking, there was never a bombardment
of Adrianople, though when the guns were banging
away both officers and correspondents used to talk
of the " bombardment." It consisted really in a
general shell fire of that nest of forts by which the city
was surrounded and in determined rushes of advanced
trenches. The Bulgarians were reluctant to throw
their shells into the city itself. As much as possible
they desired to restrain themselves from the work of
needless destruction and to avoid the sacrifice of
human life. At least that is the reason given to me
by many of the officers, and I do not doubt their word.
After the battle of Lule Burgas it was not an essential
part of the plan to take the city by assault. History

105

was saved from a dismal chapter of horror, when a
city with many great buildings would have become
a heap of ruins and mangled bodies. The mosque of
Sultan Selim did not lose its towers. It was only on
the outskirts of the city that some damage was done
by the dropping of shells. It was enough to hold the
place in a ring of iron and to prevent any attempt
either to bring in supplies or to force a way out. The
Bulgarians desired the correspondents to emphasise
this merciful side of the siege, and I believe there was
some sincerity in their anxiety to avoid the frightful
business of actual bombardment j but the cynical mind
would point out that they never really obtained a
position from which they could have carried out the
task. Nevertheless, the situation inside the city must
have been quite infernal, and the stories which were
told by stray fugitives who managed to escape and to
surrender to the Bulgarians were suggestive in their
grim descriptions. Terror was continual in its hold
upon the great body of inhabitants, many of whom
were peasants who had abandoned their homes and
their prosperity in surrounding villages, and who now
cowered in huddled masses within the walls, poverty-
stricken, starving, and in the very morass of misery.
They were faced with the extreme horror of starvation,
for, with the greatest possible care, rations were running
out and the store dwindling. But it was in its nervous
effect that the siege seems to have been most terrible.
The noise of the guns, which was terrific even as far
away as Mustafa Pasha, was absolutely hellish in
Adrianople itself. By day it kept people quivering
with the shock of it as the great crashes followed
one another with a fury of sound ; at night the noise

io6 ADVENTURES OF WAR

became infernal in its violence, stunning the ears of
the inhabitants and making the very houses tremble.
It was like living in a continual earthquake. To those
poor people in Adrianople the nervous strain was
increased by the ordeal of suspense. Ignorant of the
military situation, inside as well as outside, they never
knew from one day to another whether the besieging
army would not carry the city by assault and come
through the streets with a general slaughter and an
orgy of blood and loot. They could not go to bed on
any night without the possibility of being awakened by
the shouts of Bulgarians, by shots in the streets, and
by the clash of cold steel. And when the garrison
made their sorties, generally under the cover of dark-
ness, there was no sleep for any living soul, because
the adventure might end for all of them in massacre
and death. Generally it ended in the return of the
attacking column, not in full strength but dreadfully
thinned, sometimes but a miserable remnant of the
body which had marched out, and with a wreckage
of maimed and shattered men. Out beyond the fort
were men who never came back, the cold husks of men.
On the other hand, I am told that at times a great
hopefulness animated the population, unnatural and
unreasonable, and followed by a violent reaction and
a renewal of their deep despondency. The success
of one of the sorties which had made a surprise attack
upon the Bulgarians and inflicted great damage upon
them raised the spirits of the people and became
exaggerated in a fantastic way, so that it was imagined
that the garrison army would smash through the
enemy's positions, follow their retreat, and slaughter
them as they poured in a rabble through Mustafa

107

Pasha. Old Turks licked their lips at the thought
of the vengeance, and promised themselves a cheerful
time with curved knives and upward thrusts. These
savage thoughts prevailed also among the peasant
soldiers on the Bulgarian side, who were disheartened
by the failure to capture a city which had seemed
like a ripe pear ready to fall into their hands, and they
were ange-red by the great losses which they sustained
from the surprise attacks and the continued shell fire.
They also made vows of vengeance, and kept their
bayonets very sharp and covered them with grease.
The besieging soldiers suffered most from the torrential
rains which preceded the rising and flooding of the
Maritza. Their trenches were rilled with water. They
lived like half-drowned rats. They slept in puddles.
At night, as they lay in the trenches wet to the skin,
the cold was intense, and they shivered in the grips
of ague and suffered horribly.

So the siege went on, tedious and interminable, and
as often as possible I went out to the hills, dodging
the vigilant officers who had a quick eye for the red
brassard of a correspondent, and riding or walking as
far as possible from the main road until I had reached
the last hill which looked down upon the city.

From afar the turrets and roofs and domes and
minarets of Adrianople appeared like a mirage through
a haze of sunshine and a thin veil of mist. The sky
was very clear above it. Only a few fleecy clouds
rested above the horizon. But suddenly, as I watched
one day, a new cloud appeared like a great ball of snow,
which unfolded and spread out in curly feathers, and
then, after a few moments, disappeared. It was the
bursting of a great shell, and the report of it came

io8 ADVENTURES OF WAR

with a crash of thunder which seemed to shake the
hills. Two, three, four shells burst together like
bubbles, and then there followed long, low rolls of
thunderous sound like great drums beating a tattoo.
The noise had a peculiar rhythm, like the Morse code,
with long stroke and short signalling death. It was
made by the Bulgarian batteries on the hill forts, and
it was answered by the Turkish batteries from neigh-
bouring hills. Presently, as the wreaths of smoke
from the guns faded into the atmosphere, I ^aw that
tall, straight columns of smoke were risL_0 uom the
city of Adrianople and did not die down. They rose
steadily and spread out at the top, and flung great
wisps of black murkiness across the sky. It was the
smoke of buildings set on fire by the shells. Other
towers of black smoke rose from valleys which dipped
between hills. The Turkish shells, far-flung from their
fortifications, crashed into little villages once under
Turkish rule and now abandoned by all inhabitants.
Soon there would be nothing left of them but blackened
stumps and heaps of ash.

As I stood watching one day I saw two scenes in this
grim drama which made my pulses beat with a great
excitement. A great bird flew across the sky towards
the city, and as it flew it sang a droning song like the
buzzing of an enormous bee. It was a monoplane,
flown by a Bulgarian aviator, who had volunteered
to reconnoitre the Turkish defences. It disappeared
swiftly into the smoke-wrack, and for some time I
listened intently to a furious fusillade which seemed
to meet this winged spy. After half an hour the
aeroplane came back, flying swiftly away from the shot
and shell which pursued it from the low-lying hills.

THE SIEGE OF ADRIANOPLE 109

Its wings were pierced, so that one could see the sky
through them, but it flew steadily from the chase of
death, and I heard its rhythmic heart-beat overhead.
Its escape was certain now. It had mocked at the
pursuit of the shells, the loud beat of its engine above
me was a song of triumph. I watched it disappear
again — to safety. So it seemed ; but death has many
ways of capture, and when I came back to Mustafa
Pasha that day I heard that the unfortunate aviator,
after his^escape from the guns, had fallen from a great
height wL;afli sight of home, and that the hero's body
lay smashed to pieces in the wreckage of his machine.
Then on another day I saw another drama in the
air. While my eyes watched the smoke-clouds from
the siege guns something twinkled and glittered to the
left of the four tall minarets of the great mosque of
Adrianople. It was the smooth silk of an airship which
caught the rays of the sun ; this cigar-shaped craft
rose slowly and steadily to a fair height, though I
think it was tethered at one end. It rose above
peaceful ground into a great tranquillity, which lasted
about ten minutes. Then suddenly there was a terrific
clap of thunder and a shell burst to the left of the
airship. I gave a great cry. It seemed to me that
the frail craft had burst and disappeared into nothing-
ness. But a few seconds later, when the smoke was
wafted away, I saw the air-ship still poised steadily
above the earth, untouched by that death machine.
A second shell was flung skywards, far to the right ;
and for an hour I watched shells rise continually
round that airship, trying to tear it down from its high
observation but never striking it. I do not know the
names of the men who piloted that ship, but, whoever

no ADVENTURES OF WAR

they were, they may boast of a courage which kept
them at their post in the sky amid that storm of shells.

It was at night that the bombardment of Adrianople
reached the heights of a most infernal beauty. Then
the sky quivered with flashes of light, and tongues of
flame leaped out from the hill-sides, and fire-balls
danced between the stars. As I lay in bed after a
day on the hills the noise of the bombardment chased
sleep away, and every great gun shook the old Turkish
farm-house in which I lived as though heavy iron
bedsteads were being dumped down upon the roof.
Then there came a continued roll of great artillery.
It was so loud and seemed so close that for a moment
the wild idea came to me that the Turks had smashed
their way out of the besieged city and that there was
fighting in Mustafa Pasha. I rose and dressed hastily,
lighted a lantern, and went out into the darkness.
All around me was the barking and howling of dogs,
hundreds of them, baying back an answer to the guns.
I stumbled through quagmires of mud and pools of
water until I came to the bridge of Mustafa over-
looking the wide sweep of the Maritza.

I passed on through the village, and past many
lines of sentries and men encamped round fires out-
side the mosques. Then in the shadow of a doorway
I stood still and watched the sky, upon which was
written the signs of death still seeking victims and
destruction away in the city below the hills. There
was no moon, but the sky was thickly strewn with
stars, and it seemed as though some flight of fallen
angels were raging in the heavens. I saw a great shell
burst below Orion's belt, and the pointers of the Great
Bear were cut across by a great sword of flame. The

Milky Way throbbed with intermittent flashes like
sheet lightning, and the pathway of the stars was
illumined by the ruddy glare of burning houses and
smouldering villages. I had an irresistible desire to
get closer to all this hellish beauty, to walk far across
the hills to a place of vantage from which I had seen
the bombardment by day. But when I raised my
lantern and walked forward I was arrested by a Bul-
garian officer — and this was the end of my night's
vigil.

As all the world knows now, the city of Adrianople
did not fall before the armistice arranged between the
allies and Turkey ; and its garrison, which had main-
tained such an heroic defence, deserved the fullest
honours.

CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS

THE war correspondents who had been sent out
by most of the important newspapers in
Europe to chronicle this new chapter in history took
an active and daily part in one great combat, which
increased in ferocity as time went on. It was not an
affair of shot-and-shell, but of violent words and heated
arguments.

Personally, looking back upon this side of the
campaign in cool blood, I cannot blame the military
authorities for the attitude they adopted towards the
correspondents. After all, war is not a theatrical
exhibition nor a peep-show for descriptive journalists
and men of literary attainments. It was a business in
which great nations had staked all they had. It was
a matter of life and death to them.

Now, a war correspondent may be a man of honour,
of good sense and discretion, he may even be in deep
sympathy with the forces to which he is attached, and
be extremely reluctant to publish any news likely to
hurt their chances in the field or to put valuable infor-
mation into the hands of the enemy.

But, when all that is admitted, the fact remains that
his presence at the front must always be a source of
grave embarrassment to the commanding officers,

1X3

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 113

because by the very duties of his profession he is a
spy, bound to reveal the truth of things whenever
possible and as much as possible to the public supplied
by his paper. If he sees a great defeat or the loss of
some important position he will do desperate things to
put the news on to the cable. If he sees the disposition
of troops he wishes to explain them as clearly and
accurately as words will show. Perhaps if his article
only reached the country for whom he is writing it
would not much matter. The man lounging in a club
in St. James's Street or reading his sheet in the Hamp-
stead Tube might read the truth and do no harm with
it. But in the modern world truth may not be isolated.
A few seconds after it has been published in one country
it is being tapped-out over the wires to other countries,
a thousand miles away or more, where such informa-
tion is read greedily and passed on to those immediately
concerned on the enemy's side. It may forewarn
generals in the field. It may give them the secret of
their opponents' plans. It may demoralise a nation
or encourage them to further resistance.

All this is obvious. It is clear, therefore, that the
military authorities of a nation at war have every
right to regard a war correspondent as an unmitigated
nuisance and to deal with him accordingly by a severe
censorship and strict regulations. No one may abuse
the Bulgarians or the Turks for taking these precautions.

But I think the Bulgarians were somewhat to blame
for encouraging the correspondents in the first place
and then making fools of them. In Sofia, for example,
when the correspondents arrived, not in single spies
but in battalions, they were not warned off. No one
took the trouble to say : " Look here, gentlemen, we
ft

H4 ADVENTURES OF WAR

like you very much and we think you are all men of
talent and distinction, but we absolutely refuse to
allow you to go to the front." If something like that
had been said the majority of them at least would
have accepted their disappointment and returned
home to their various offices. But, on the contrary,
the most alluring promises were held out. If we were
only patient for a while until arrangements could be
made, we should all be taken to the front. No one
was refused, whatever he belonged to, a big or a
little paper. If the junior reporter of the Sewing
Machine Herald or the funny man on Comic Cuts
had arrived he would have been received with smiles
and bows, given his armlet and papers, and told that
in a few days he would see something of the fighting.
A great corps of correspondents assembled and the
Censors were thoroughly scared, but still they had not
the pluck to turn anyone back before the campaign
had begun. The correspondents were encouraged to
buy kits, to hire interpreters and servants, to buy up
a store of provisions. Finally, they were all conducted
in a special train with a restaurant car to the general
headquarters, and the same foolish game began of
postponing the evil day when they would no longer be
patient, but demand to see without further delay the
things they had come out to see.

Finally, when at Mustafa Pasha we were within
reach of something really interesting, when the noise
of great guns was actually in our ears, and when a
great siege was being carried out almost within walking
distance, the Censors suddenly asserted their severity
and the correspondents were dealt with as men of
dangerous character. We were ordered to stay inside

THROUGH THE MIRE ON THE HIGH ROAD TO CONSTANTINOPLE

THE ABANDONED HOME AT SEIOLER

FUGITIVE FAMILIES

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 115

the town, and not to trespass beyond bounds under
the peril of instant arrest. Every kind of obstacle
was thrown in the way of men who by individual
resourcefulness and personal influence outside the
Censor's office obtained items of information, for the
most part of a harmless character, not contained in
the official bulletins. Again, I do not blame the
Censors for their methods, but for their manners.
Frankly, their manners were exceedingly bad. They
forgot too often that they were dealing, not with
truant boys or with ticket-of-leave convicts, but with
gentlemen, among them being some of the most brilliant
men in Europe.

These professors in Bulgarian colleges, these ex-/^
schoolmasters in uniform, adopted a bullying and
tyrannical demeanour which was quite unnecessary.
They subjected men who were superior to them inj ^
education and in social rank to petty insults and
irritating humiliations which turned their friendliness
into enmity ; as, for instance, when they posted notices
in Mustafa Pasha forbidding civilians to enter into
conversation with the correspondents or to give them
information.

They were also foolishly illogical and petulant in
their methods of censorship, and I had a special cause
of complaint when they refused to pass my sketches
showing reservists marching into the town in peasant
dress — the objection being that they were not in full
uniform — while numbers of photographs revealing the
same scenes with, I am bound to confess far more
fidelity, were passed without a word.
^ There were also several instances of flagrant favourit-
ism, to use no stronger phrase, and it rankled with the

n6 ADVENTURES OF WAR

majority of the correspondents that messages should
be passing freely to certain papers because some of the
Censors were nominally correspondents of those papers,
and so favoured their special representatives.

I am bound to say that most of my own particular
troubles were due to an insubordinate character and a
deliberate violation of the rules laid down for us. I
broke bounds consistently and impudently and, I hope,
took my punishment like a man. But in one case at
least I had a white and blameless conscience, having
sinned in ignorance.

This little story of adventure which I have to tell
will illustrate the difficulties of a correspondent in
time of war.

One of my friends, Mr. Pryor, the managing editor
of The Times, having decided to leave Mustafa Pasha,
I offered to place at his service my famous carriage
with three horses and a chime of bells. He accepted
the offer gladly, for it seemed to be the only means of
transporting his luggage to the station, four miles
away.

We sat lingering over the luncheon-table — it was a
frugal meal, but good to men who never know where
they may get another — and I then went round to the
stables to fetch my three-horse shay.

A tragic discovery awaited me, and I was over-
whelmed with grief and rage when I learnt that my
three lean horses and beautiful springless carriage had
been commandeered by unknown thieves and had dis-
appeared, so I was told, in the direction of Adrianople.

Lamentations were useless, and I returned with the
painful news to Mr. Pryor. As his train was due to
leave at seven o'clock there was no time to be lost, and

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 117

by good luck we succeeded in borrowing an ambulance-
waggon under the Red Cross which was on its way
to the station, where there was a temporary hospital
for the wounded.

The representative of The Times clambered into the
waggon, already crowded with peasants, and sat down
on his baggage in the straw with Mr. Horace Grant, of
the Daily Mirror, and Mr. Victor Console, of the
London News Agency.

I trudged behind the waggon, listening to Mr. Pryor's
harrowing description of his psychological sensations.
To a strong man this jolting over ruts and stones was
almost unendurable, and one could only imagine the tor-
tures of such a journey to a man suffering from wounds.

At the station we found a hubbub of excitement,
owing to the presence of the King, who was going
back to his headquarters at Stara Zagara in the royal
train.

Another train with wounded men was also being
made ready under the orders of the military officers.
It was some time before we could enter the presence
of the Commandant in order to obtain permission for
Mr. Pryor to travel to Stara Zagora : that permission
was granted readily enough, for he had already received
a document from the Censor's Office. But suddenly
the Commandant turned to me and to the other two
men who had come down to say farewell to Mr. Pryor.

" Where are your papers ? " he asked.

I handed him my passport and official badge as war
correspondent. He waved them aside.

" Where is your permit to come to the station ? "
he asked again. " By what authority do you leave the
precincts of Mustafa Pasha ? "

n8 ADVENTURES OF WAR

He frowned terribly, and I had dire forebodings.
I explained to him gently and politely that I had
merely come to act as a porter to my distinguished
friend, and that I had been prompted only by the
instincts of courtesy. The Commandant's frown
deepened. His face filled me with fright, and I ex-
pected to be shot against the back wall of the station
yard. He contented himself, however, by ordering
our instant arrest, and then sat down to write a long
letter to the General of the Headquarters Staff in
Mustafa Pasha complaining of our misguided conduct.

It seemed as long as a love-letter. He lingered over
it and pointed his phrases, and frowned horribly at the
end of every sentence.

Mr. Pryor, of The Times, was seriously disturbed.
He apologised in his pleasant way for having led us
into this trouble. Then, after a warm handshake all
round, we were marched away from him under the
guard of a most grim-looking soldier with a rifle slung
behind his back. He mounted a horse, shouted some
Bulgarian words to us, showed us the muzzle of his
rifle, and pointed to the long, dark way back to
Mustafa Pasha.

We understood him perfectly. Stepping out at a
hard pace we preceded him along the road, looking
back now and then to see that dark mounted figure
following closely at our heels.

It was a pitch-black night without a moon, and we
floundered into quagmires and stumbled over boulders,
and felt very sorry for ourselves. Lean, wolfish dogs
came out of the darkness, snarling and barking at us.
Now and again black figures peered at us as they passed
like ghosts. The searchlights of the Bulgarian army

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 119

swept across the sky and touched our faces with their
long rays.

Out of the deep silence of night there sounded the
boom of great guns and now and then a rifle shot. It
was all very grim and creepy, and we were heartily
glad to see the twinkling lamps of Mustafa and to
get entangled once more among the bullock waggons
and to surrender ourselves as prisoners at the head-
quarters.

Our soldier dismounted, and with his rifle very
handy marched us up the stone steps and took us into
the presence of one of the officers in command. He
received our explanations with gravity, and taking
possession of our papers told us to report ourselves next
morning.

" Then we may go ? " I asked. He clicked his
heels together, bowed, and said ; " Gentlemen, you are
free."

It was an anti-climax. I expected at least to spend
a night in a cold cell with a sentry outside the door.
However, we made the best of our disappointment and
grinned into the glum face of the soldier, who looked
bewildered at our sudden release.

" Now for supper ! " I said, and the sentiment was
echoed heartily by my friends.

But our troubles were not at an end. As we came
to the churchyard gate which leads through to the
farmhouse in which we had made our refuge — a lonely
place in a labyrinth of winding lanes — a stern voice
rang out into the darkness, and we found ourselves
confronted by a man who barred our way with his
bayonet.

We pointed to our red armlets, swore at him gently

120 ADVENTURES OF WAR

in English, explained to him in French and German,
and walked away. But we heard the click of his rifle
and another shout, and halted without second thoughts.
At night in time of war it does not do to hesitate.
Armed men are very quick on the trigger when there
are shadows about. We spoke to the man with the
gun in mild and persuasive speech, but he could not
understand a word.

Still keeping his bayonet across our path, he shouted
again and again into the black silence of the church-
yard in a voice that might have awakened the dead
under the white tombstones, Presently there came a
patter of feet, and we were surrounded by soldiers with
guns and peasants with lanterns, all peering at us and
speaking to each other rapidly and excitedly.

Our farm-house was only a few yards away, but at
that moment it seemed a long way off. Fortunately,
one of the men recognised me as one of the strange trio
staying at the farm with a mysterious habit of washing
our faces in the morning.

He explained the situation to the soldiers, and then
made us understand that the sentries had been changed
and that a Servian battalion had been placed in the
church. He was good enough to lend us the light of
his lantern to the farm-house gate, and when we came
inside our own room at last, after a ten hours' fast, we
were very happy men.

But there was a tragedy under the roof-tree, for the
tall, mild-eyed peasant who had been our host had
disappeared, and his wife was weeping. That very
day he had been taken off to serve with the troops.
All day long soldiers had been poking into farms and
outhouses, sheds and barns, and taking every sturdy

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 121

man they could find in Mustafa Pasha. For the
army is greedy for men and does not listen to the
wailings of women. The spirit of war knows no mercy.
The end of the adventure, as far as we were con-
cerned, was less amusing than the beginning. Upon
requesting to have our papers back in the morning we
were told that we were to be expelled from Mustafa
Pasha for having disobeyed the regulations. We were
not the only correspondents to be dealt with in this
way. A little party of Italians were also to be expelled
for having walked out over the hills towards Adrian-
ople. The correspondent of the Havas Agency had
had his horse taken from him and was on the black
list, and only three or four men were allowed to remain.

This was the climax in a continual campaign of
oppression against the war correspondents, who since
their arrival in Turkey had been dealt with in the
most severe way and practically prevented from send-
ing through any despatches of importance. It was a
hard thing to be turned back from Mustafa Pasha
after the many delays in reaching this point, and the
weather increased our dejection. There was a heavy
downpour all day, the roads were deep in mud and
water, the endless convoys of bullock wagons sprayed
up fountains of slush as they ploughed through the
narrow streets, soldiers with water dripping from their
sodden clothes jostled on the footway, and a heavy
veil of mist hung over the Maritza. And all through
the day our ears were dinned by the sound of great
guns which spoke of a fierce battle beyond thejvinding
road to Adrianople.

Upon hearing of my own dismissal I had a wordy
conflict with the Censor. I pointed out to him that

122 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the particular crime with which I had been charged —
that is, going to the station without a permit — was
utterly preposterous in its absurdity. He regretted
that he could not see eye to eye with me on that matter.
I argued that the mere dictates of courtesy had led me
to accompany my friend as the porter of his luggage.
He reminded me that I was living in time of war, when
rules must be obeyed. This was, of course, perfectly
reasonable in theory, but I objected strongly to be the
victim of its practice. I made up my mind that I
would not leave the town that evening whatever might
happen afterwards, and left the Censor satisfied with
having done his duty by me according to the strict
letter of the law.

With two of my companions I had returned to the
farm-house where we had obtained lodgings, and was
sitting down to a frugal meal after a long fast when
we were startled by strange noises in the farmyard
outside.

It was the noise of heavy wheels, of footsteps stum-
bling through the darkness, and of voices speaking in
loud tones.

A few minutes later the door opened and a police
officer with two soldiers carrying lanterns came into
the room. The officer spoke in Bulgarian, and then,
finding that we did not understand a word, produced
from his hat a letter written in French. It was very
brief and to the point, and commanded us to pack our
baggage without delay and to accompany the soldiers
to the railway station in a military waggon. A train
would be waiting for us to take us back to Stara Zagora,
with thirty-one other correspondents who had been
sent away from Mustafa.

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 123

We stared at each other in dismay. Our poor dinner
was still uneaten, and we were very hungry. Our
baggage was unpacked and in a state of chaos. But
the order — which had come from General Ivanoff,
chief of the Headquarters Staff — was not to be dis-
obeyed, especially as the police officer and the two
soldiers showed us clearly enough that they would carry
out their instructions in spite of our protests.

Then followed a wild scramble for all our kit, which
we thrust in a most disorderly fashion into sacks and
bags by the light of the soldiers' lanterns.

Half an hour later we said farewell to the woman
of the farm, who had treated us with kindly hospitality
in the absence of the farmer, who had been taken off
to the war.

She seemed sad to lose us. Strangers as we were,
she doubtless felt that the presence of men-folk in the
house was some protection in time of war.

Once again we stumbled out into the cold rain and
the darkness, and clambered into the military waggon
brought for our conveyance to the station. I shall
never forget that long drive, as we sat huddled up
among our baggage on the straw, with our heads touch-
ing the top of the canvas hood, staring through the
opening into the blackness of the night.

Through that narrow archway above the driver's
head I could see the pale faces of oxen and buffaloes
roving all around us and illuminated faintly by the
light of flickering lanterns. We became entangled
in these convoys, and there were long halts ; while
through the darkness there sounded the shouts and
curses of the leaders and drivers, the squeaking of
wheels, the suction of hoofs tramping through the

124 ADVENTURES OF WAR

quagmires, the cracking of long whips, and the barking
of dogs. Innumerable figures passed on like ghosts in
the night — silently and stealthily.

Lanterns gleamed momentarily on naked bayonets,
on soldiers' caps, on white hoods and cloaks, on the
faces of bearded men ; eyeballs flashed up at us through
the darkness. Thousands of eyes stared through the
blackness into the depths of our cart.

They were the eyes of two divisions of Servian
soldiers passing on their way to the front.

An officer called halt, and we were surrounded by
armed men. He spoke to me in German, and was
surprised when I told him that we were correspondents
sent away from Mustafa Pasha.

" The train has gone," he said ; you cannot get to
Stara Zagora to-night."

That was a horrid blow. If the train had gone we
should have a long night in a station without food or
shelter.

But my police officer said that, trains or no trains,
we must go to the station and report ourselves there
to the military commandant. The Servian officer
had no authority to countermand that order ; so after
courteous words he saluted, and we went on our dismal
way through the rain and the mud.

We had frozen feet when we staggered out on to the
platform, and cold hearts when we were told that the
train for Stara Zagora might go at any time within the
next ten hours. What had become of the other thirty-
one correspondents was still a mystery to us. We could
only presume that they had caught an early train and
were well on their way to the general quarters.

We three were lonely men, and fate seemed against

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 125

us. But we made the best of a bad business, and in a
narrow little washing-room, like a prison cell, crowded
with soldiers of the Red Cross waiting for a fresh batch
of wounded, we succeeded in getting a cup of hot drink,
by means of a spirit-lamp lighted with cotton wool in
place of a wick, and with reckless generosity shared
our biscuits with men who watched our preparations
with hungry eyes.

It was nearly four in the morning before word was
brought that the train for Stara Zagora was shunting
into the station.

When we clambered up with our bags and our baggage
we were amazed to find it full already, and still more
amazed when we discovered that the thirty-one other
correspondents — whom we believed to be in their beds
at Stara Zagora — were actually on this train, which
we had caught ten hours later !

They had been shunted on to a side line and kept
there through the night. It increased our own dis-
comfort, for there was only place for us in the narrow
corridors, on piles of luggage, where we lay in cramped
positions vainly hoping for sleep.

The journey that followed was indescribable in its
utter weariness and horror. The train halted on the
line for hours at a time to wait for the passing of troop
trains. The night passed, and the dawn came pale
and chill ; and then the day dragged on — and Stara
Zagora was still far away. Our hunger became an
obsession, our thirst was intolerable, and the last straw
came to break our spirits when at Novi Zagora we
were all bundled out of the train on to an open platform
to wait for another train to take us the last ten miles.

We waited for two hours and more, and when we

126 ADVENTURES OF WAR

had entered the second train it shunted a little way,
puffed and panted as if its strength was utterly ex-
hausted, and came to an abrupt stop, which lasted for
a long time.

I think we were now so utterly miserable that a
reaction set in. It was necessary to summon up a
little gaiety to relieve this intolerable situation. It
was provided by Signor Marinetti, the master Futurist,
a man whose fantastic philosophy I have often attacked
in the public Press, but a man who in private life has
an inexhaustible vivacity and fund of high spirits, a
keen sense of humour, and a most daring eloquence.
There was one lady in the carriage with us, a Bulgarian
lady of some beauty. Marinetti found no difficulty
in getting into conversation with her, and with a little
wizened fellow in her company, who was a master of
mathematics. In Italian, of which she understood no
word, he praised her beauty, spoke passionately of
the philosophy of love, divided the philosophy of life
into terms of poetry and mathematics, and denounced
all mathematical masters as men of hard nature and
unimaginative souls. The lady was fascinated and
mesmerised by Marinetti's speech, and he then sang
little songs to her, and in spite of the cramped and
crowded carriage danced little dances to her, in the
Italian, Arabic, Persian, and Futurist styles.

Finally he was prevailed upon to recite his great
poem, " L'Automobile." Before doing so he begged
me to open both the windows, so that he might have
fresh air, and took off his coat so that he might have
free play for his eloquence. Then he began his recita-
tion, in which he describes the beauty, the joy, the
exultation, the swift ecstasy of the soul of the auto-

BATTLE WITH THE CENSORS 127

mobile as it rushes over mountains and down the
valleys and along the high roads singing the song nf
speed. It is a thing of genius, and Marinetti, the com-
poser of it, threw his whole heart and soul into it, until
the veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was
scarlet, and his voice rang out like a trumpet. The
sound of his far-carrying voice startled the people in
the neighbourhood of the train. Hairy savages with
naked bayonets came rushing up. Peasants crowded
about with gaping mouths and wondering eyes. The
first recitation of the master Futurist in Novi Zagora
was an immense success and cheered up our drooping
spirits wonderfully, until at last the train went on.

But fate made fools of us again ; for when we jumped
down upon the platform of Stara Zagora we learnt
that the General Staff had removed from that town,
and that as war correspondents we were utterly
helpless and utterly stranded.

The Censor's office was doing no business in the way
of bulletins, but was in command of a black-bearded
Bulgarian, who adopted an insolent and cynical man-
ner to the expelled correspondents.

When I desired him to pass a telegram to my office
he said that it was five minutes to six and he could
not be kept waiting for his dinner. To this I replied
that I had been kept waiting fifty hours for my dinner.

But protests were useless; for several days many
of the correspondents found it impossible to forward
messages of explanation to their newspapers or mes-
sages of appeal to their Ministers. The Censor censored
them. He seemed to delight in censoring everything
and anything. The correspondents wandered miser-
ably about a deserted town, cursing their fate and

128 ADVENTURES OF WAR

cursing the Censor, and declaring that they felt like
shipwrecked mariners cast up on an island inhabited
by savages and wild beasts. They could not even get
permission to return to Sofia until a week had passed.

Meanwhile I had managed to smuggle a message
through to Mr. Pryor, of The Times, who was then in
Sofia, and he went to a great deal of trouble, and
used all his great influence to get me reinstated,
with my two comrades in misfortune. His efforts
were successful, and to our great relief and surprise
it was intimated to us by the Censor that we
were to be conveyed back to Mustafa Pasha. But
we were not allowed to leave until all the other
correspondents had departed for Sofia, lest, in their
wrath and indignation at what appeared like favourit-
ism, they carried out the violent threats which they
had uttered in public places and in the ears of spies.

The journey back was almost as tedious as the one
I have already described, but we were glad to get once
more to Mustafa Pasha, to hear the guns again, and,
as I hardly like to tell, to break bounds in the same
old way, so that we might again see something of the
siege of Adrianople.

CHAPTER VIII
THE WAY BACK FROM THE WAR

FOR two weeks I watched the first men back from
the quickest war in history.

They came back, not with medals on their breasts
and with bands playing them into the towns, but with
bandages round their heads and limbs through which
the blood had oozed with horrible stains, and with the
jolting of trains and the shrieking of whistles for their
music.

I do not know how many thousands of wounded men
I saw, but they numbered many great battalions, and
the roads of Turkey and Bulgaria were rutted deep
by the wheels of league-long convoys bringing back
these victims of war.

The Bulgarians issued no lists of their casualties.
With that amazing — and almost inhuman — secrecy ;
with which they veiled all but the barest facts of the
war, they steadily refused to give the names and
numbers of the dead and wounded, so that few peasant
women in Bulgaria knew whether their men would ever
come back again. But they were not able to conceal
the wounded men. The bright sun of autumn in the
Near East shone down upon those winding caravans of
Red Cross waggons jolting down the hill-tracks and
over roads axle-deep in mud ; the rain which swept

9 129

130 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the sunshine out of the sky at times poured down upon
men lying in misery and in sodden straw, and peasants
standing by the roadside with great flocks around them,
which they kept driving forward to the front as food
for men who were food for powder, saw their comrades
passing, passing, passing, day after day, towards hos-
pitals in Turkish villages and Bulgarian towns. The
agony of that long journey from the front must have
been terrible.

The men who fought at Kirk Kilisse and Lule
Burgas had sixty leagues and more to cover in hay-
carts and bullock-waggons before they reached the
railways. Many of them never reached the railways ;
the last flicker of life was shaken out of them before
they came to the trains ; the drivers called : " Hai-
de ! Hai-de ! " not knowing that a corpse lay in the
straw behind them. The faces of some of those
wounded men were terrible as they passed me. They
were the faces of dead men with living eyes, of an
earthen colour already, splashed by blood, and stamped
with the sharp imprint of pain. Some of them had
their tongues lolling out, parched with thirst, and
others were terribly smashed so that never again will
they be able to follow the plough in the field. At the
railway stations all ordinary trains were held up while
the ambulance trains poured through in one long
traffic of human freight. For hours, and sometimes
for two days at a stretch, while I waited for a passenger
train to take me fifty miles or so further to the front, I
stared at the convoys of wounded and became weary
of all their woe. Poor devils ! These heroes of the
war against the Turk knew the meaning of heroism
to the last bitter drop of the cup. Perhaps in the

- o

WAY BACK FROM THE WAR 131

ox-waggons they had prayed for the train. Now, in the
train, they suffered a new horror. They were packed
into cattle trucks, twenty and thirty, sometimes even
fifty, together, lying in the straw as one great heap of
wounded and mangled limbs. I looked into many of
these trucks, and sickened at the stench arising from
the rotten straw, and the sour smell of muddy clothes.

The men sat on the legs of their comrades, or lay with
their arms about each other, or stood clasping iron
railings and gasping for breath at the ventilation-holes.
Now and again a deep groan or a long-drawn whimper
came from some heap of straw and rags, but for the
most part the men were strangely quiet and amazingly
strong in endurance. It was curious to notice what a
large proportion of the slightly wounded had been
struck in the left hand — the forward hand when holding
a rifle — and I was overwhelmed with admiration for
the courage of these peasant soldiers who had the heart,
even on such a journey as this, to laugh and joke during
the frequent halts. Their greatest suffering was not
from their wounds, but from a burning thirst which
seemed to consume them. From every carriage as the
train drew up came the cry of " Water ! " And it was
a pitiful thing to see how they drank greedily from
the long brown jugs or the tin bottles held up to them
by the women of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross women did their work well. They
had but little sleep ; sometimes for several days at a
time none at all ; but cheerfully and untiringly they
sped along the platforms, carrying the precious water,
as well as tea, brandy, soup and bread to those truck-
loads of wounded. I shall not soon forget one of these
women at Stara Zagora. She was splendid — a bonny

132 ADVENTURES OF WAR

woman, with laughing eyes, and a plump figure in her
white cap and dress, but in spite of her plumpness
agile and quick and indefatigable. Her smart shoes
were splashed with mud ; she went through puddles
and into the lashing rain to the furthest trucks, she
climbed into the trucks themselves and gave refresh-
ment to men too weak even to ask for it. She had been
at work three days and nights and still seemed fresh
and untired.

One of the most pitiful scenes I saw was on the
station at Jamboli, one of the points from which the
Bulgarians struck at the heart of Turkey. While I
was waiting there, a great number of men were brought
in from the battle of Kirk Kilisse discharged from the
field hospitals, where the surgeons were very busy, to
go to the central hospitals for medical treatment.
Some of the men were terribly damaged and could
hardly drag one leg after the other. Many of them
were carried into the station by the Red Cross assis-
tants, or on the shoulders of other soldiers less seriously
wounded.

Several young officers, with their smart uniforms
torn and caked with mud, had empty sleeves, and others
»who had been shot through both legs were helpless
cripples. As it happened, the King was on the station
in the Royal train where he had slept every night and
journeyed every day from point to point. He came
out of the train and held a kind of reception of some
of the wounded, going from man to man and thanking
each for his gallant service.

At first, the irony of the scene embittered me. I

\had a kind of anger in my heart that the words of a
King might be supposed to cure a wound or ease a man

WAY BACK FROM THE WAR 133

tortured with pain. But in a little while I was no
longer ironical — only a little wondering. For, indeed,
these words from the King did cheer his men ; and it
was curious to see how some of them who had been
bent double straightened themselves up a little in the
feeble effort to salute the Sovereign, and how the young
officers with the empty sleeves flushed with excite-
ment as the King grasped their left hands, and how
even those who were carried upon the shoulders of their
comrades smiled in a twisted way and murmured
incoherent words when the King spoke to them. And
after all the old ideals are strong in the hearts of men,
and sentiment is more powerful than pain. The most
curious and startling thing I saw was outside the station
of Mustafa Pasha. I had become entangled in a
seething mass of soldiers and of buffaloes and ox-
waggons and horses, and stepped aside out of all the
confusion towards a little house which stood solitary
on the road-side. I noticed that a sentry hugged his
rifle in his sheepskin outside the door, and that groups
of peasants kept stepping up to the window to stare
inside before going on their way. I, too, went to the
window — and then recoiled.

Inside a bare room a doctor and nurses were busy
about the body of a man stretched out on a deal table.
I saw the gleam of the surgeon's knife ... all the
horror of a terrible operation in one swift glimpse !
I turned away hurriedly, and listened to the piping of a
shepherd boy close by, and heard the laughter of the
peasants and the shouts of " Hai-de ! Hai-de ! " as
the drivers called to their bullocks. To that little
house of pain on the road-side, stretcher-bearers were
carrying other bodies for the surgeon's knife ; and out

134 ADVENTURES OF WAR

of a side-door came two men with a stretcher upon
which a form lay very quiet and still. War was reaping
a harvest of lives, and, as I walked along the road, the
guns of Adrianople boomed across the hills. And in
the fields, where black and white sheep were browsing,
the shepherd boy was piping his merry song.

PART II

WITH THE ARMY OF THE CRESCENT

BY

BERNARD GRANT

(SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE DAILY MIRROR)

CHAPTER I
THE CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE

NOW that I write these reminiscences of the cam-
paign in Turkey, it seems to me that all that I
saw and suffered — for I had to endure many small hard-
ships and even perils, and many experiences of real
horror — it seems to me that it was a nightmare, from
which I have awakened.

I saw the worst side of war ; not the fierce struggle of
the battlefield which has a thrill and excitement which
are almost, intoxicating, but the utter misery of a great
retreat, the ravages of disease in a beaten army, the
despair and terror of great masses of humanity, plodding
onwards from the fear behind them, starving, dying
in heaps, hopeless.

As a photographer I took many pictures of these
things for my paper, the Daily Mirror, and they are
familiar now to many people. Yet though they
represent faithfully the living pictures of the Turkish
debacle they do not convey the full meaning of its
tragedy. Only those who saw the reality may under-
stand it. It needs a greater power of words than I
possess to describe the scenes which my camera has
helped to portray.

The call to the war came to me in Egypt when I was
busy with the ceremonies attending the departure of

137

138 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the Holy Carpet to Mecca, and with the holy camel
which is selected for the honour of carrying that carpet
before retiring to a life of dignity and ease after the
fulfilment of its sacred duty.

It was on the last day of September that I received
a cable ordering me to prepare to go to a war in the
Balkans, and on the following day, the first of October,
another telegram instructed me definitely to proceed to
Constantinople.

The news came to me as a complete surprise, and I
confess that I had moments of excited thoughts when
I pondered over the fate in store for me during the
following weeks. It would be a great adventure,
anyhow ! Perhaps it would be good fun.

On October 2nd I left Cairo for Alexandria, which
was more stifling than ever, and then joined the s.s.
" Osmanieh " for Constantinople.

There I first came in touch with the war-spirit. On
board there were a good many Greeks returning from
Egypt in response to the call of the army. They were
all very excited, very enthusiastic at the idea of attack-
ing the hated Turk. They seemed confident of victory,
and appeared to me rather hysterical, as though their
condition had got the upper hand. I could not help
thinking that some of them would not be so cheerful
when they came face to face with the Turkish forces,
of whom, at that time, I thought a good deal as fighting
men.

On October 4th I reached Pyraeus, in the morning,
and after the passengers had been landed in small boats
I took the train to Athens. In this city of ancient
fame I found the war-fever raging. There were excited
crowds in the streets, the newspapers were being read

CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 139

feverishly for the latest reports, and I passed proces-
sions and groups of men wearing ill-fitting khaki
uniforms, and carrying under their arms the ordinary
clothes which they had just taken off. Everywhere I
went I was reminded of the undying and inherited
hatred of the Greek for the Turk. It seemed an
obsession with them, so that even the ancient monu-
ments of Greece served as texts for my guide in his
denunciation of Turkish rule.

When I went to see the ruins of what was once a
great temple to Jupiter, many of its Corinthian columns
now fallen and shattered, most of its fine carving
destroyed, my Greek guide did not fail to remind me
that it was the Turks who had helped to ruin this great
relic of ancient glory when they invaded Greece some
three hundred years ago.

In an open space near the ruins a body of Greek
soldiers was drilling in preparation for the coming war.
They were smart fellows, but did not have quite the
heroic aspect of those descended from the blood of
those ancient Greeks whose genius is still revealed by
the monuments that have survived the destroying hand
of time.

Yet I think, from the memory of their ancient history,
the modern Greeks still draw an inspiration, and it is
this recollection of their old pride and fame that in-
fluence their hatred of the Turk, who for centuries
has been their enemy and oppressor.

Climbing the steep way to the topmost tier of the
theatre of Bacchus, built 300 years B.C., with seats
carved out of rock where 30,000 spectators might find
room to see the ancient drama, I looked down upon the
great panorama of Athens, with all its broken temples

140 ADVENTURES OF WAR

and palaces, the records of a long and wonderful history,
in a city where people have made many wars. Now
there came up to me the sound of bugle notes and drums
stirring the hearts of the Greeks with valour for a new
war, to which they looked forward with eager expect-
ancy. I returned to Pyrseus in the glory of a wonder-
ful sunset and saw boat-loads of reservists coming in
from surrounding islands to join in the coming fight, all
gay and high-spirited as though war were a merry
game.

At Smyrna, on my way to Constantinople, there was
no great excitement, and it seemed to me that the
inhabitants were equally divided among Turks and
Greeks. In the evening our ship called at Mitylene,
and here there was a great din as though a war had
already broken out.

But it was a war of boatmen, who came in swarms
to the ship, struggling and shouting, as each tried to
gain a few pence by being the first to board us. This
always happens in these ports, but it was more notice-
able in the darkness of a night with a boisterous wind
and a heavy sea running. The scene reminded me of
a pack of wild beasts fighting over a single bone.

We left Mitylene early in the morning of the 6th,
and arrived at the entrance of the Dardanelles in the
afternoon. We had to cast anchor and wait for a pilot
ship to guide us round the submarine mines. After
a long wait it came, and we made a successful journey
through the straits. We passed many forts, and I
scanned them through my glasses, but all seemed very
quiet, and there was no sign of that approaching war
when this passage of the Dardanelles would be perhaps
the track of many warships.

CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 141

Late at night we anchored off Constantinople, and
on the following day, after repeated examinations of
my passports, I was allowed to land and enter a city
where the tocsin of war was calling up a great army
and summoning the Turks to a death-struggle.

It was a city wild with excitement, and full of con-
fusion, noise, and tumult. Battalions of soldiers, in
khaki uniforms, wearing the inevitable fez, or turban,
marched through the streets ; bands of reservists, with
a fierce and martial look, came swinging by with bands
playing strange Oriental music. Smart officers rushed
about in automobiles, crowds of Turkish citizens
wandered aimlessly about as though waiting for the
beginning of a great drama, veiled women passed
under the shadows of the walls, generals and staff
officers assembled in groups outside the Ministry of
War, and everywhere there were signs of feverish
anticipation.

Exciting scenes took place when soldiers seized upon
the horses hi the streets, cab-horses and carriage-horses,
except those for which the owners had special permits.
The horses were taken to the barracks, and if fit for
military service the owner was given a receipt to the
effect that if the horse returned from the war it would
be given back, but that if not he would be paid its
value. Nothing would be paid for hire, and no one
seemed to like the arrangement except the army
officials.

A party of journalists arrived from London in the
afternoon, among them being Mr. Lionel James of
The Times, Mr. Donohoe of the Daily Chronicle, Mr.
Ashmead-Bartlett of the Daily Telegraph, Mr. E.
Ashmead-Bartlett, his brother, Mr. Ward Price of

142 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the Daily Mail, and Mr. Baldwin of the Central News.
They were all confident that war was inevitable, and
I think the majority of them were of opinion that the
Turks would prove victorious in the struggle, or at
least fight with a dogged and resolute courage.

On the following day I crossed over to Stamboul and
took photographs of the crowded population in that
strange quarter, so vile in its filth and squalor, so
picturesque in its Oriental life, so turbulent in its
passions.

Thousands of poorly clad peasants kept pouring
into the city to join the colours. They marched in
procession headed by a musician with a fife or stringed
instrument, and as they marched they burst forth into
a kind of chant, repeating the same words monotonously
but rising into waves of rhythmic sound. I did not
understand those Turkish words, but they were trans-
lated for me, and were " Burn the Bulgarians ! Burn
the Servians ! Burn the Greeks ! " Straggling bands
came down the streets shouting defiance and ridicule
at the enemies of Turkey.

\ These Turkish peasants were for the most part men

of fine physique, and their gaiety and high spirits

seemed to prove their fighting valour. As they passed

in thousands, and as I watched their faces and heard

their laughter and shouts, no thought came to me then

of the change that would come over them in a few

weeks only — a change which made them different beings,

which stamped their faces with marks of torture, which

1 doubled up these big fellows into twisted, writhing

j creatures, which made living skeletons of them, and

• took the brightness out of their eyes, turning it to the

leaden glaze of agony and death.

CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 143

Through the sunlight they passed to their fate, con-
fident of victory, ignorant of the sufferings that lay
ahead, giving praise to Allah that they had been called
out to kill their Christian enemies.

Little did these Turkish peasants guess that the
Government which was organising this war, which
was flouting the Christian allies, and returning con-
temptuous answers to their challenge, had already
forfeited the power of Turkey in Europe, by hopeless
inefficiency.

Some of those proud officials who came driving down
the streets in motor-cars, receiving with impassive
faces the salutes of the people, were hiding in their
hearts the guiltiest of secrets. Some of them knew
that the Turkish artillery would lack ammunition to
fire its guns on the field of battle. Some of them
knew that these soldiers were being sent out to starve ;
some of them knew that the service of the Red Crescent
was hopelessly inadequate for a great campaign. What
they hoped to do was to muddle through. With a spirit
of fatalism, said, " What must be — must. Kismet."

On October 8th I cabled to my office asking them to
get the British Foreign Office to wire the Embassy
here with a recommendation that I should be allowed
to accompany the Turkish troops. Having come
straight from Egypt I was of course unprovided with
any kind of pass.

As another precaution I also called on Colonel Tyrrell,
the British Attache in Constantinople, whom I found
very courteous and charming, and willing to help me
in every possible way. On this day we received news
that Montenegro had declared war and with impetuous
courage had flung her troops into the fighting line.

144 ADVENTURES OF WAR

The few days that passed now were occupied in all
the business of preparing for a campaign of which no
man could guess the duration, and in searching out from
a foreign city the thousand and one articles essential
to the life and health of a correspondent who would have
to sleep out in the open country, perhaps in rain or snow,
who would be beyond the track of civilised towns and
who would have to depend on his own baggage for
daily food and drink. It was a harassing task, and
no sooner had I bought everything that seemed essen-
tial than fellow correspondents warned me that I had
forgotten a score of other things just as important.

However, there are good shops in Constantinople,
and I succeeded in getting riding clothes and warm
underwear and provisions which seemed enough to
last me for a year, although as a matter of fact they
could not have kept me going for more than a month
or two.

The next part of my programme, and the one which
gave me the greatest anxiety, was the search for a horse,
because obviously it was no use starting on this cam-
paign without means of transport.

Mr. Ward Price of the Daily Mail met me at the
Sublime Porte, and as he was engaged in the same search
we went together to see any horses that might have been
left over after the general military requisition.

We could find nothing worth buying — only a few old
crocks who looked as though they would fall down and
die under the weight of a man, and a few others of
better class which had been hidden by their owners,
who asked fantastic prices. Finally after penetrating
into all kinds of out of the way places I managed to
get possession of a nice little black horse, which for

CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 145

certain personal reasons I christened at once Peter
of Cornhill.

He bore me valiantly on many long rides, and was
my silent companion in many scenes when he and I were
both disheartened, weary, woebegone, and hungry.
Later on I bought a second horse which I called Michael,
and among other valuable purchases were two tents,
a great stock of photographic material and various
cooking utensils. My outfit accumulated in the Hotel
de Londres and caused continual interest to the visitors.
But having at last worked through my list of require-
ments, built up from the lists of other correspondents, the
idea came to me and to them that after all these things
might have been bought without a purpose and would
be wasted. For although Montenegro had started
fighting, days passed without any declaration of war
from the other States or from Turkey.

The newspapers declared that the Great Powers were
actively at work, and in Constantinople the opinion
gained ground that after all war would be prevented.
Our stores began to look silly, and I almost repented
of the energy with which I had gone a-marketing.

On October I3th, however, I called on Nazim Pasha,
the War Minister, and asked permission to take his
photograph. If war did break out it was upon the
shoulders of this man that the weight of it would fall,
and the world would want to see his portrait.

I found him a quiet, genial, benevolent looking old
gentleman, and I was tempted to take him aside and
ask him privately whether war would be declared or not.
But as he spoke no word of English the idea fell to
the ground, and I had to content myself with the
opportunity of getting a good photograph of the
10

146 ADVENTURES OF WAR

Minister seated at his desk from which he directed the
business of the army. There was much bowing and
saluting and he seemed pleased with the compliment
paid to him by my camera.

Meanwhile Constantinople was becoming congested
with Redifs, coming from all parts of Turkey in Europe
and Asia Minor, and filling the city with the noise
of martial preparations. The only possessions they
brought with them were a few odd things from home
in a rough pack on their backs.

On October i8th I saw the Sultan go to the Mosque.
He was accompanied by his own body-guard in
gorgeous uniforms. The people assembled in great
crowds to watch his procession, and I managed to
get a clear view of this ruler of a great Empire which,
unknown to the world as yet, was tottering to its fall.

The Sultan himself was the tottering ruin of a man,
a poor, weak, withered old gentleman, utterly without
dignity, nervous of the crowds. The people did not
receive him with any sign of enthusiasm. Only here
and there a man cheered, and then became silent as
though ashamed of himself.

But that lack of demonstration was perhaps due
to the Oriental reverence for the person of the Sultan
and not to disloyalty or dislike. I think during those
days before the war the Turks were uplifted by a
fanatical enthusiasm for the Mohammedan faith, of
which the Sultan is the ruling head.

Two of my colleagues, Mr. Banister and Mr. Castle,
surprised me by their sudden and unannounced arrival,
and according to instructions from the Turkish military
authorities we all doffed our English headgear and
adopted the fez.

THE ONLY STRETCHER SEEN BY MR. GRANT

A WOMAN AT S1L1VRI GUARDING THE WRECKAGE OF HEK HOME

PICTURES OK MISERY

CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 147

On October 7th it had been announced that Turkey,
under the pressure of the Great Powers, had consented
to the application of Article 43 of the Treaty of Berlin,
providing immediate reforms in Macedonia and other
vilayets of European Turkey. It was supposed to
be a great concession, and many innocent people
believed that it would have the effect of preventing
war.

But the promise of reforms came many years too
late, and was merely scoffed at by the Balkan League.
In Constantinople its only effect was to arouse popular
indignation and what they considered a humiliation
to their pride. This led to an exciting scene in the
city some time later, when an extraordinary exhibition
of the popular desire for war and a popular belief in
victory was^given by the students of the University.

After holding a patriotic demonstration in the College
of Law, they marched in a rowdy way to the Sublime
Porte, shouting out that they wanted " War, and no
concession ! "

On the road they met Nazim Bey, the War Minister.
He was in his carriage, which had to stop owing to the
great crowd. The students surrounded him, shouting
" We want war ! " and were pleased when he made the
answer, " Nobody wants peace ! "

Afterwards, at the Sublime Porte, where Ministers
were sitting in Council, about 5,000 students stormed
the gates, broke some of the windows, and yelled
" We want war ! " " We won't have the Treaty of
Berlin ! "

Things began to look serious until Mahmoud Mukhtar,
the general who was afterwards defeated at Lule
Burgas, appeared before the students and explained

148 ADVENTURES OF WAR

that the Treaty of Berlin did not mean the granting
of independence to Macedonia. He was hissed a good
deal, and the students shouted, " Let the Treaty be
torn to bits ! " Finally, after the Grand Vizier had
addressed them, they consented to disperse.

Other rowdy scenes of this kind took place in Con-
stantinople, and I remembered them afterwards when
this clamour for war had been satisfied, and when the
Turks were in panic-stricken retreat. It was the
terrible irony of fate.

On October lyth, after a long period of uncertainty,
war was. declared by Turkey on Bulgaria and Servia.
The text of the Note delivered by the Turkish Minister
of Foreign Affairs to the Bulgarian and Servian Minis-
ters was as follows :

" The general mobilisation and concentration
of Bulgarian and Servian troops on the Ottoman
frontier, and the daily attacks on the fortified
positions, together with interference in Ottoman
internal affairs and inadmissible and inconceiv-
able pretensions, have rendered impossible the
maintenance of peace between Turkey and Bul-
garia and Servia, which the Imperial Ottoman
Government has always been desirous of con-
serving.

" In consequence of this the heads of the Royal
Legations of Bulgaria and Servia and their staffs
are informed that they must take their passports
and leave the territory of the Turkish Empire as
soon as possible.

" As a result of this Note a state of war exists
to-day between the Turkish Empire and the king-
doms of Bulgaria and Servia."

CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 149

There was no formal declaration of war to the people
in Constantinople on that day, but the news came to
them, and they received it, not with any demonstra-
tions of joy, but without any sign of alarm or mis-
giving. As far as I was concerned, a man appointed
to depict the scenes of war as near as possible to the
righting lines, the end of the long delay came as a great
relief.

I was heartily tired of stopping in Constantinople.
In Fleet Street phraseology, I wanted " the real stuff."

Yet that night, as I went through the streets and
across the Galata bridge, something of the meaning of
it all came to me, something of the solemnity and fate-
fulness of this new chapter in history of which the open-
ing words had now been written. I wondered vaguely if
the city of Constantine the Great, the first Christian
Emperor, would ever be wrested from the Moham-
medan power, which had turned the great church of
San Sofia — dedicated, as I have been told, by Constan-
tine to the spirit of " Eternal wisdom " — into a Moslem
mosque.

I stood there looking up to the beauty of its tre-
mendous dome, and saw the wonders of its marbles
and mosaics. Now the streets of Stamboul, above
which rose the domes and minarets of many mosques,
were seething with crowds of Turks, the descendants
of those who, as one reads in history, came under
Mohammed II. to raise the Crescent upon this birth-
place of Christianity in the Near East, and on the
north side of the Golden Horn I looked across to the
Christian quarter of Galata and Pera, with its aristo-
cratic residences, its fine shops, its embassies and
legations and consulates.

150 ADVENTURES OF WAR

For a moment the thought flashed across my mind,
what would all these Christians do if excited either by
the victory, or still further the defeat, of Turkish arms
if the Mohammedans of Stamboul, to whom already a
Holy War was being preached, came pouring out with
fanatical hatred of the Christians who lived so close
to them ?

But the idea was too fantastic to be entertained for
more than a moment, and I came down to solid ground
again when I remembered the business that still had
to be done before I could leave for the front.

Fortunately, by this time I had received the recom-
mendation from our Foreign Office, and I had also
interviewed Issett Bey at the Turkish War Office.
This man of courteous manners and polite speech was
in charge of the foreign correspondents, and on October
2ist he sent for me to attend the War Office at 2 p.m.

There was a general assembly, and Issett Bey intro-
duced us to Waffsy Bey, who was to come in command
of us at the front. The interesting announcement
was made that we should leave Constantinople by
special train for the fighting line at 4.32 on the
following Wednesday.

Afterwards I remembered the time given, and
laughed at it ; 4.32 was so very exact ! However, we
made a careful note of it, and after much bowing and
ceremonious salutes we were all asked to come into the
courtyard to be photographed for the Ministry of
War.

This operation having been accomplished, there
were more bows, smiles and hand-shakes, and we
separated to do what business we had in hand. I
made good use of my time by getting a permit from

the War Office to pass two horses, without which they
would have been seized by the army.

On the following day I obtained a pass for a servant
whom I had engaged. He was an Englishman, named
Henry, who had spent his life in Turkey, and spoke
the language fluently, as well as Greek. I hoped to
find him useful both as an interpreter and handy
man.

I was then called upon to sign a document pledging
myself to stay with the Turkish forces until the end
of the war. I confess this gave me some anxiety, for
what mortal man could say how long the war would
last ? Wars, when once begun, especially with a
power like Turkey, had a nasty habit of lingering on,
as in the case of Tripoli.

Some of my friends, to whom the same ideas had
occurred, spoke of arranging to have Christmas pud-
dings sent out to them, and one of them told me that
we should certainly spend Easter in Turkey. As I am
to be married in June, this gave me additional cause
for worry. I have since learnt that he was working
on a double salary, so perhaps his wish was father to
the thought.

There was now immense activity among the corps of
correspondents, all of whom had extensive kits and all
of whom had horses, interpreters, servants, and other
nuisances. There was a tremendous scramble on Wed-
nesday morning, and at last I succeeded in collecting
all my articles of baggage and loading it on to a waggon
which I had procured with immense difficulty.

We set forth in a downpour of rain (not a cheerful
beginning for the campaign), and lost our nerves and
tempers at the outset. At the station I found a chaos

152 ADVENTURES OF WAR

of baggage waggons and horses, and everything in
a tumult and confusion.

The approach to the train was blocked with carts,
mules, horses, donkeys, cabs, baggage, soldiers, officers,
porters, and old men, all of them shouting, most of
them cursing, many of them screaming for more money
for having lifted a box or laid hands on a package.

Everyone, including myself, was in the vilest of
tempers. Mr. Angus Hamilton discharged one of his
servants twice for insubordinate behaviour and crass
stupidity, but the man refused to accept his dismissal.

After seemingly endless strife and a gradual dis-
entanglement of all this confusion, the horses and bag-
gage were put on to the trucks, and we left, mopping
our brows and trying to regain our peace of mind, for
the passenger station.

But here there was no train. The 4.32 did not arrive
even at 4.33. It proved to be a myth, and we had to
cool our heels and learn the art of patience for a con-
siderable time before at last a train crawled in.

It was loaded with a regiment of Anatolians, who were
packed into all the carriages except four, reserved for
ourselves. Into this we squeezed, not without difficulty,
and I managed to get a place with five other men,
wedged in by piles of hand baggage, and supremely
uncomfortable even before the train had made a move.
Besides a number of French and other foreign corres-
pondents— about twenty of these, I believe — there
were thirteen representatives of English papers and
firms. Several others were left behind in Constanti-
nople to come on later.

Our baggage waggons and horses were attached to
the train, making it by far the longest I have ever seen,

CRISIS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 153

and at six o'clock we slowly moved out, amid the cheers
of a crowd for the departing regiment, who were going,
as they no doubt believed, to gather laurels upon the
fields of war.

Poor devils ! They reaped another kind of harvest.
It was the harvest of death. They went shouting and
singing to their doom.

On the way we passed great camps ; the darkness
of the countryside was illumined by their fires, in which
black shadows moved like a dance of devils.

On the wayside stations there were great crowds of
Turks, who waved flags and torches and cheered the
men who were preceding them to the front. For the
first time I felt the thrill of war, and understood that
madness which intoxicates great masses of humanity
stirred by the spirit of war, eager to meet the enemy,
careless of all else but victory in the field.

The rain had ceased and it was a glorious night.
The crescent moon arose, as a symbol of Turkish power
in Europe, as a threat to the armies of the Cross advan-
cing under that moon across the distant mountains.
The train jogged on. The faces of my companions
became blurred and vague. My head jolted with the
jerking of the carriage. My brain was filled with a
confusion of thoughts, my body was cramped by my
uncomfortable position. The conversation of my
companions became only a murmur in my ears, and at
last I fell into a troubled sleep, while I was carried
onward to the great adventure of war.

CHAPTER II
IN THE FIELD OF WAR

ON the morning of October 27th I awakened at
5.30 a.m. to find that we had arrived at a
place called Seidler.

The train had come to a halt and did not seem to
have the slightest intention of ever going on again. I
felt both cold and hungry, and making a dive into my
haversack obtained the relics of some sandwiches and
wine which had furnished my supper on the previous
night.

As the train seemed quite fixed, I decided to stretch
my limbs, and went for a short walk with my camera,
which was always my companion on such occasions.
Some living pictures appeared, and I saw the first
signs of Turkish defeat, startling at this early stage
of the campaign.

There were hundreds of refugees hurrying forward,
slowly in spite of their hurry, with what goods they
could carry towards Constantinople. Practically all
of them had bullock waggons, and the closely-veiled
women, wearing trousers, did the same work as the men,
ploughing through the mud and water at the head of
the carts and putting their shoulders to the wheel when
the carts stuck in the deep ruts of the rough track.

It was a pitiable thing to see these people, whom fear

154

IN THE FIELD OF WAR 155

had over-mastered, and who under the shadow of it had
abandoned their homes and farms to go in search of
safety from an advancing enemy.

It was obvious to see how, with frantic haste, they
had collected all their little valuables, piled on to the
carts as much household furniture as they could carry,
and set forth on the long journey to the city, where they
had no means of livelihood, but only a chance of life.
Upon the tops of the bundles of clothing and the mis-
cellaneous assortment of pots and pans sat the children
of these wanderers.

Yet in the light of day these little ones looked happy.
To them, not understanding the truth of things, this
escape seemed a good adventure, and they smiled
down from their high perches as though it were all a
joke.

Only their parents, the unhappy peasants who had
left their little plot of soil upon which they and their
forefathers had laboured, only these poor peasants
who had turned their backs, perhaps for ever, from
the little houses and hovels which had been their homes,
showed by their faces the fear that possessed them and
the perplexity with which they trudged forward.

There were fine faces among these men : the strong
faces of peasants who have lived hard, simple lives, and
who have been very close to nature and seen its cruelties
and hardships.

The old men especially moved my pity. These
wrinkled old fellows, with white beards and mild eyes,
looked very weary and very troubled. It was late in
their life to be turned adrift and to lead their oxen to
new, and perhaps barren, pastures. Yet they made
no moan, but trudged forward, pulling at the bullocks

156 ADVENTURES OF WAR

and shouting strange words into the ears of those
unresponsive beasts.

All the women were very much averse to being photo-
graphed, and, with the strange shyness and fear of
Oriental women before the public gaze, hid when they
saw a camera pointing at them.

One of my colleagues, Mr. Banister, had an ugly
proof of their hatred of publicity.

He raised his camera to take a picture of the refugees
making their way along the track, when suddenly he
received a severe blow from behind, and before he could
recover himself his camera was torn out of his grasp and
flung into a pond. This sudden and violent attack
had been made by a man who resented the attempt to
photograph his wife. He seemed wild with passion,
and raised his fist in a threatening way as though he
would do still greater violence.

Mr. G. H. Wilkins, who had come out for the Gau-
mont Company, and who in moments of crisis was always
the leader of my little party and a man of quick deci-
sion, pulled out his revolver, believing that the angry
Turk might try to use a knife and that this incident
might develop into a nasty affray. The man looked
at the weapon, which had a wonderful effect in quiet-
ing his wrath. He went away vowing to return with
a gun, but we saw no more of him.

For some unexplained reason the tram still remained
stationary, and from the officers we understood that
it would probably be many hours before we moved on.

There was nothing to be done but pitch a camp on the
side of the line and to pass the time in preparing a
meal. I took the opportunity of climbing into one of
the baggage waggons, where I captured a tongue and

IN THE FIELD OF WAR 157

a tin of biscuits from my stores, while Wilkins, who
is an old campaigner, made a successful fire and some
excellent tea on the bank of the railway line.

It was glorious weather all day. The sun shone
warmly down upon us and gave comfort even to the
refugees, many of whom were thinly clad. During
the day at least there was no sign of the promised cold,
although at night it was chilly enough.

As the sun sank and twilight came, with its deepen-
ing shadows, many of the soldiers who had descended
from the train took off their boots and prayed. A
hush fell upon the scene, and I was deeply impressed
with the sight of those men proclaiming their faith
under the open sky and praying to the God of Battle
— to Allah — whose name was upon their lips.

They raised their hands to their ears with that strange
Oriental gesture which signifies that the man is listening
- for the whisper of the great voice of the Almighty One,
• and prostrated themselves so that foreheads touched
the earth, and sat down cross-legged, swaying back-
wards and forwards until once again their heads were
bowed to the dust. But always they kept their face
turned towards the setting sun.

These men were praying that the Mohammedan
spirit might vanquish all its enemies, as in the days of
the Prophet, and that the Crescent might rise supreme
over those who challenged its might.

But even while they prayed there came an answer,
which perhaps put the first fear into the hearts of sol-
diers who had come out confident of victory. For late
in the afternoon a train arrived from the direction
of Kirk Kilisse packed to suffocation with refugees
and soldiers, and then we heard with amazement

158 ADVENTURES OF WAR

that the place had fallen into the hands of the
Bulgars.

It was a deadening blow to the Turks, for that city
was acknowledged by them to be of immense stragetic
importance, and it was believed that it would hold out
against the attack of the Bulgarian forces.

Afterwards we heard of the destructive terrors of the
Bulgarian artillery, the deadly accuracy of that fire
which rained upon the Turkish trenches, and the vast
stores of ammunition which fed those insatiable guns.
We heard of the frenzied way in which the Bulgarian
peasants charged with the naked bayonet, making a
series of rushes from position to position, charging over
the dead bodies of their comrades, and utterly reckless of
their own lives, but doing the most dreadful work when
their knives came within reach of the Turkish infantry.
We heard of the fierce fighting through the vineyards,
the gradual dismay which fell upon the Turkish com-
manders, the sudden order for a general retreat, the
wild flight of the inhabitants mixed up in a terrible
confusion with wounded and panic-stricken soldiers,
with gun-carriages and limber and transport waggons,
and the abandonment of the town with all its wealth
of stores.

With Kirk Kilisse fallen Adrianople would be closed
in on the eastern side by the besieging army and cut off
from communication with the main forces of the Turks.

A train, which had previously arrived, and which was
carrying the people who knew the full details of this
tremendous calamity for the Turks, passed on in the
direction of Constantinople.

But almost immediately four of the coaches over-
turned, slowly and mysteriously.

IN THE FIELD OF WAR 159

I had been watching the departing train, startled by
the news which had come with it, and I could hardly
believe my eyes when the carriages toppled over in this
way. It looked as though a great disaster had hap-
pened at this spot, and there was a good deal of scream-
ing from those who had been hurled to the ground.
Curiously enough, however, no one seemed badly hurt ;
but the accident had blocked our retreat for several
hours, and Major Waffsy, who, as I have said, was in
charge of the war correspondents, seemed rather
worried about it.

Before it was quite dark we received orders to take
our seats in the train, and the reason soon became
obvious.

All around us were thousands of refugees. They
were starving. They had no shelter from the night.
Their women folk were spent and weary. Their chil-
dren were wailing, and they had only one consuming
and desperate desire — to escape from the advancing
enemy, whom they believed to be close on their
track.

The men clamoured to be allowed to crush into the
train, although it was already overcrowded. They
were fierce in their appeals and in their demands. It
seemed as though theyjwould fight their way in, even at
the expense of blood.

A strong guard was placed over us and over our
provisions. There were some who thought the position
quite dangerous on account of there being so many
starving soldiers about and our provisions being so
near. Francis McCullagh came into my carriage and
said :

" Grant, hand me down that bag."

160 ADVENTURES OF WAR

" Presently," I said, being busy with something
else at the moment.

McCullagh looked at me gravely.

" I will have it now," he said, " if you don't mind."

I gave him the bag and he took out a small black
object which he slipped into his side pocket. It was
his revolver.

" Do you think it is as bad as that ? " I asked.

He nodded.

" I think it's coming."

Personally I did not take so serious a view of the
situation, as it seemed to me — with less experience than
men like McCullagh — that the refugees were helpless
against the soldiers.

But, looking back on the incident, I am inclined to
think that the peril was there, and that the soldiers
were quite as dangerous as the refugees, for they knew
perfectly that we had a good stock of provisions.
They had seen us opening tinned meats and picnicing on
the lines. After all, we were Christians and well fed,
and they were Moslems, and starving.

It would not have been wonderful for them to enter-
tain the idea of robbing the Christians to feed the
Turks. As a matter of fact a portion of our guard
was disarmed and replaced by fresh men, which is
a proof that trouble was brewing. Fortunately we
had good officers with us who were responsible for our
safety, and who were perfectly loyal in their considera-
tion for us. Without their authority there might have
been a different tale to tell.

Orders had been given that the train should not
proceed further, after the news about Kirk Kilisse, but
that we should go back part of the way.

IN THE FIELD OF WAR 161

At 9.30 p.m. we began to move for shunting pur-
poses, while officers stood on the footboards to keep
order. A little later we started off on our retreat.
It was a beautiful moonlight night.

I shall not soon forget the sensation of pity that
overwhelmed me at that moment. It was a horrible
thing to see in the pale glamour of the moonlight
a huddled mass of men, women and children exposed
to the biting wind. Many of them were crying with
cold and hunger. Now that the sun had gone, and
the coldness of night had fallen upon them, the little
ones were no longer merry. The sunlight had gone
out of their eyes, too. It was no longer a gay adven-
ture. They were crying out for food and shelter.

And the hundreds of poor peasants who had brought
their worldly goods in the bullock waggons, over the
rough ways and through the mud and ruts, were now
ready to abandon their waggons and their goods as
well, so that they might get a place of safety on our
train.

But even that was denied them. We could not have
given a place to any other passenger. A great wail of
grief, of infinite despair, one of the saddest sounds
that has ever come to my ears, arose from that wretched
crowd. The lament of the women, the cries of the
little children, the deep groans of the men mingled
in a dreadful chorus of despair.

They watched our train glide away, thinking, I am
certain, that with us went their last chance of safety,
and that when the train had gone there would be only
one way of escape — through the dark gate of death.
Several men tried to scramble on to the footboards,
but were roughly pushed off by the soldiers, who then
it

162 ADVENTURES OF WAR

searched them, as though suspecting that they carried
weapons.

It was horrible. It made our hearts bleed. The
people who read of wars do not realise this dark side
of the picture, surely more terrible than when men
are falling in the heat and shock of battle.

CHAPTER III

TOWARDS LULE BURGAS

I AWOKE from a fitful sleep, disturbed by dreams
in which all this misery was re-enacted, and
found that the train had arrived at Chorlu.

It was then seven o'clock in the morning, and we
received instructions to disentrain. It was good to
get out into the fresh air, to blow the cobwebs out of
our eyes, and to stamp a little warmth into our feet, but
the hours that followed were full of worry and trouble.

My servant Henry, who was a willing but not very
capable man, without any self-reliance and rather
" old-womanish " in his character, tied two of our
horses to trees, but owing to an insecure fastening, and
the worst of luck, one of them got loose in a few minutes
and disappeared — goodness knows where.

I was very vexed, for this was a personal disaster
which might cost me dearly. I sent the man off to
find the missing animal, and used such strong language
that he bestirred himself.

To my joy he returned with a horse. It was not
my horse, it is true, and unfortunately it was not so
good as mine, but still it was a horse. I did not inquire
too closely into the facts of its previous ownership,
but Henry had followed out the one great rule of war,
which is — everyone for himself.

163

164 ADVENTURES OF WAR

He had been so successful that I tested him again,
and sent him off for a bullock waggon. This time
he surpassed himself, and actually came back with a
beautiful waggon and two nice little oxen — at the same
price as the horse.

" Where on earth did you pick that up ? " I asked.

Henry replied modestly that it had been quite
simple. He had found it near the station, and an old
man near by had told him that the owner had gone
away by train and left it.

" May I have it ? " asked Henry.

The old man raised his hands in a hopeless sort of
way.

" It is not mine. It belongs to nobody. I have no
use for it."

So it became my property, according to the extra-
ordinary conditions of life prevailing in this Country,
where, as I found all the time, men would carry their
goods about awhile, then drop them, and abandon
them, anywhere, to any fate, while they seized upon
some passing chance of escape, or wandered off to die,
or slunk into some hiding place which they made their
home, until death came in some other form to relieve
them of their misery.

My companions, Wilkins and Banister, had decided
to pool their servants with mine for the time being,
and to camp together. In a country like this, and at
such a time, it would have been a mad, even an im-
possible thing, to play a lone hand and to go upon
the lone trail.

One man would have been defenceless against the
wandering bands of soldiers and stragglers, hungry for
his stores, if he had any, greedy of his horse, if he

TOWARDS LULE BURGAS 165

mounted one. If he had fallen and broken his arm
or leg in a lonely place, he would have lain there to
die without any hope of help. If he had been attacked
by fever or any other illness, not improbable on the
line of a retreating army, he would have found no
doctor to attend to him, and no medicine to relieve his
pain.

Above all, perhaps, wandering about with no com-
panion he would have been utterly miserable and in
danger of melancholy madness. It was therefore
advisable to get companionship for self -protection.

And here I must pay a tribute to Wilkins of the cine-
matograph, one of the best companions in the world,
because of his continual cheerfulness, his knowledge of
handicraft, of horses, and of all rough work and out-
door life. He is an Australian, and has had many
adventures in wild places of the world which have
taught him valuable lessons, among them being the
gift of leadership, instant decision in moments of peril,
and a quick way of righting something that has gone
wrong. If a cart broke down it was Wilkins who set
it up again. If it overturned it was Wilkins who put it
on its wheels again. If horses stampeded in a camp, it
was Wilkins who was first to come to the rescue. And
he did all these things, not in any arrogant way, not in a
bullying commanding spirit, but quietly and cheerfully,
as though it all came natural to him and was part of his
scheme of life. Personally, I do not know what I
should have done without such an experienced fellow
by my side, and I am glad here to give the praise that
was his due.

Together, therefore, Wilkins, Banister and I picked
out a nice spot on the side of a hill near the station,

166 ADVENTURES OF WAR

which was to be the correspondents' headquarters.
We pitched three bell tents, one for sleeping, one for
meals and the developing of photographs, and the
other for servants.

We also put up two small tents as shelter for our
stores, and above this encampment we raised the Union
Jack, as a sign to all Turks, and to any foreign Chris-
tians who might come that way, that we were under
the protection of that great British Empire which, in
legend at least, stretches its mighty power over the
meanest and furthest of its subjects !

In other words, it was a warning against trespassers.

Towards evening we had shaken down and settled
our arrangements in a very orderly and creditable
style, and then partook of tinned sausages and tea,
which after our fatigue was as good as a banquet.
Our camp consisted, in addition to the three principals,
of a Maltese person of linguistic attainments but of faint
heart, whom I will allude to in future as the white-
livered one, and who was to act as our chief interpreter
and general servant ; Henry, interpreter, bottle-washer
and general drudge, with Marcus, a Turk with no lan-
guage but his own, as ostler and part-cook, together
with six horses, one motor-bicycle, and a waggon
converted into a manger.

When all hands were on deck, cleaning up and making
order out of chaos, the two oxen which had come to us
as a gift from the gods, escaped in the same sudden
and mysterious way, much to the consternation and
grief of Henry, who regarded them with feelings of
personal pride and satisfaction, as though he had
bought them by his own hard-earned money.

I was hardly less regretful at the loss, and having

TOWARDS LULE BURGAS 167

made enquiries in the neighbourhood heard that they
had last been seen disappearing into the mist over the
hillside. It did not seem expedient to go in search of
them, as we had been instructed not to leave the camp
after 5.30 p.m., and at no time without an officer.

We were war-correspondents it is true, but we were
also to some extent prisoners of war, and it was per-
fectly futile for any one of us, at this time, to attempt
o break away in the hope of getting a journalistic
" sloop," as it is called.

It would have been an easy way to death, for there
were sentries posted around with orders to shoot
anybody who failed to give the password to their
challenge, and as far as we were concerned the very
challenge itself would not have been understood. It
was wiser therefore to stay close to camp and obey the
regulations.

I slept that night under my canvas roof in fair com-
fort, although in such close quarters that there was
hardly room to breathe.

In the morning I turned out for a ride on " Peter
of Cornhill " with Allan Ostler of the Daily Express,
and gave the natives of the village a rare treat, for they
seemed to think we had come out of a museum, and
gathered round in crowds to gaze at us.

The village of Chorlu was a miserable, squalid place,
and at this time fairly quiet. I saw it afterwards when
it was the scene of a wild and terrible chaos of panic-
stricken humanity.

Wolfish dogs prowled about, Turkish women peered
at us from dark doorways, hiding their faces as we
passed, and the peasants stood about in groups as
though they had no work or purpose in life.

168 ADVENTURES OF WAR

I took cafe there at the local tavern, a fine luxury
in spke of the dirt and evil smells in the place, and I
was surprised when the waiter refused " backsheesh."
It seemed to me that he might be ill or in love, and to
this day I do not know the reason of this astonishing
refusal.

That night we gave a dinner party, on the strength of
a turkey, captured, killed and cooked by Marcus.

This man had a genius for looting, and had made a
solemn vow to find us food anywhere and everywhere,
The turkey had been caught on a raiding expedition,
and Marcus enjoyed himself vastly as the aroma of it
came steaming out of the pot to his critical and sensitive
nostrils. It was a huge success, and we received the
compliments of our distinguished guests, Mr. Ward
Price, of the Daily Mail, and an English officer who had
come out in the hope of seeing some of the fighting.

Mr. Ward Price, who invariably wears an eyeglass
and looks the most debonair of men, was the best of
companions, unruffled in a crisis, and of persuasive
speech in the presence of Turkish officers who desired
to thwart our plans. He proclaims that his knowledge
of the Turkish language is not as extensive as he would
wish, but the way in which he managed to make himself
understood in the most difficult circumstances, and to
understand what was said to him, continually aroused
my admiration.

That night I developed some photographs in my
tent under the most uncomfortable conditions, as there
was a very heavy thunderstorm, and some of the rain
found its way through the canvas.

The noise of the thunder was like the booming of guns,
and the rain lashed down with a great pattering on the

TOWARDS LULE BURGAS 169

tent, and I was so absorbed in my own work that I
did not hear any other kind of noise.

But presently I was startled by a terrific din from
a soldiers' camp near by, and one of my companions
came and informed me, through the closed flap in a
voice of alarm, that a mutiny was in progress near by,
and that we should have to look out for the safety of
our stores. I answered gruffly, for I was not in the
best of tempers on account of the developing work,
and as the noise stayed where it was and did not come
any nearer I went on with my task.

I heard afterwards that- the soldiers had been quarrel-
ling and fighting over some tents, and that the uproar
had alarmed others who were encamped in the neigh-
bourhood.

On October 27th I dried the films of the photographs
I had taken, and had them passed by the Censor after
heated argument.

He was, I think, perplexed as to the advisability of
letting through photographs which showed in the most
vivid way possible the demoralisation of the refugees
and the tragedy of the flight after Kirk Kilisse. From
Constantinople there would be going out optimistic
reports to throw dust in the eyes of the world, re-
assuring accounts of the work of the troops, and the
temporary retirement of certain forces in order to
lead the Bulgarians into a death-trap.

But the old saying, that the camera cannot lie, pre-
sented itself to the mind of the Censor when he held
my films up to the light and saw the subjects which had
made his face grow grave on the previous day. Even
after he had passed them I had grave doubts whether
they would get through to England, past all the other

170 ADVENTURES OF WAR

officials whose duty it was to hide the ugly truth of
things as far as possible.

However, I trusted to luck, and took a ride round
the country with some of the other correspondents.

Very soon an officer came riding toward us in an
excited way and reprimanded us for being out of
camp. We received his words in silence, but obeyed the
order. Afterwards we were informed that an officer
would conduct a party of us for a short "joy ride "
at three o'clock ; but this was too much for our pride,
and we all refused to go, as we objected to be treated
like school-girls.

On the following day we broke all records for break-
fast, having bacon and three eggs each, with tea,
bread and butter. This sumptuous fare was a safe-
guard against the weather, which had turned very cold
indeed, so that I found a sweater, leather coat and
overcoat not more than was necessary.

Waffsy Bey, our commanding officer and chief
inquisitor, talked of finding stables for our horses,
which was essential for our comfort and theirs, as
on the previous night, in our corner of the camp,
there had been a great fight among them. A German
horse had escaped from another part of the camp
and galloped over to us, causing a wild stampede.

We were all asleep in our tent when the affair hap-
pened, and were awakened by the tremendous tramp-
ling of hoofs, a series of neighings, and all the noise
of animals engaged in a desperate conflict.

My companion, Banister, was very nearly kicked
to death, as a horse lashed out close to the canvas,
and he crawled out, almost undressed, to see what
was happening around him.

TOWARDS LULE BURGAS 171

Wilkins and I also dashed out, and found three of
the horses on their hind legs fighting furiously within
a few feet of the tent, surrounded by a crowd of ser-
vants, swearing in all languages, but utterly afraid to
bring the beasts to order and discipline. Wilkins,
with his usual energy, seized a long tent pole and
brandished it like a Berserker on the war-path, be-
labouring the infuriated horses with great blows.

He had absolutely no fear of them, though it was a
dangerous game to play, and he might have been
kicked to death by one of those lashing hoofs. How-
ever, his methods proved effective, and the uproar
soon quieted down, though not before one of our
horses had been badly bitten on his shoulder and
stood quivering with excitement and fear.

We now had orders to shift camp into the village
of Chorlu, where we were to pay for rooms and
stabling.

I think the object of this order was not so much
to provide us with more comfort, but to keep us more
together and more restricted in our freedom.

After the usual scramble of repacking, shifting
goods, and searching for lodgings, we settled down in
three rooms, using our camp beds as the most useful
and ornamental articles of furniture. Our house was
nothing more than a Turkish hovel, bare of any luxuries,
horribly dirty, and infested with those small animals
of which I have a special and peculiar dread. Keating's
powder was in great demand, and I sprinkled all my
clothes with it in order to secure some relief from the
intolerable misery of providing a banquet for these
carnivorous creatures.

The stabling for the horses was good enough, and we

172 ADVENTURES OF WAR

made the best of our household arrangements, doing
our own cooking and enjoying our own dishes.

I now come to the days of October 2Qth and 30th.

Glorious weather continued, and tempted all of us
to the open country, away from this filthy little village,
where we were penned up like sheep. From afar I
heard the music of the guns. It came in continuous
shocks of sound, the crash of great artillery bursting
out repeatedly into a terrific cannonade. It was
obviously the noise of something greater than a
skirmish of outposts or a fight between small bodies
of men.

While the war correspondents were cooking food in
their stewing-pots a big battle was in progress, deciding
the fate of nations and ending the lives of many human
beings. That thunder of guns made my pulses beat,
throbbed into my brain. I could not rest inactive
and in ignorance of the awful business that was being
done beyond the hills. Ignoring the orders to remain
in the village, I rode out towards the guns.

Although I did not know it at the time, as we were
utterly without information, I was riding towards the
battle of Lule Burgas, which destroyed the flower of
the Turkish army and opened the way of the Bul-
garians to Constantinople.

Of the actual battle itself I am unable to speak as
an eye-witness. Indeed, there was no mortal eye who
could see more than a small part of it, as it covered
a front of something like fifty miles, and even to the
commanders of the army corps engaged it was a wild
and terrible confusion of great forces hurling themselves
upon other great bodies of men, sometimes pressing
them back, sometimes retiring, swept by a terrific fire,

TOWARDS LULE BURGAS 173

losing immense numbers of men, and uncertain of the
damage they were inflicting upon the opposing troops.

Only from those who took part in it have I been able
to gather some of the grim details of that great tragedy
to the Turks. Certain facts stand out in all their
accounts.

The Turkish artillery was overmastered from the
first. The Bulgarian guns were in greater numbers
and better served, and they had an inexhaustible
supply of ammunition.

Not so the Turks. In consternation, in rage, in
despair, the Turkish artillery officers saw their ammuni-
tion dwindling and giving out at a time when they
needed it most : when the enemy's shells were bursting
continuously upon their positions, when the enemy's
infantry were exposing themselves on the ridges, and
when the Bulgarian soldiers made wild rushes, advan-
cing from point to point, in spite of their heavy losses
in dead and wounded.

There were Turkish officers and soldiers who stood
with folded arms by the limber of guns that could no
longer return the enemy's fire, until to a man they
were wiped out by the scattered shells. The frantic
messages carried to the commander-in-chief notifying
this lack of ammunition passed unheeded, because
the supply was exhausted.

Abdullah Pasha was a sad man that day, when from
one of the heights he looked down upon his scattered
army corps and saw how gradually their fire was
silenced. Now on his right wing and his left his le-
gions were pressed back until they wavered and broke.
And now, with an overwhelming power and irresistible
spirit of attack, the Bulgarians cut the railway line,

174 ADVENTURES OF WAR

scattered his squadrons of cavalry, broke through his
various units, and bore down upon his rear-guard
holding the town of Lule Burgas.

I do not believe the Turkish soldiers were guilty of
cowardice during those hours of battle. It was only
afterwards, when the fighting was finished and the
retreat began, that panic made cowards of all of them
and seemed to paralyse them.

But from all that I have heard the Turkish soldiers
in the mass behaved as bravely during the battle as
all the traditions of their fighting spirit have led us to
believe. They fought resolutely and doggedly, although,
as I know now, they had gone into the battle hungry
and were starving at the end of it.

They died in sufficient numbers, God knows, to prove
their valour. They died in heaps. Many of the
battalions were almost annihilated, and the greatest
honour is due to the men of the Second Corps, who
after they had been beaten back again and again, after
the battle had really been lost irretrievably by the
failure of Mukhtar Pasha to repress the general attack
of the Bulgarians with his Third Army Corps, which
had come up from the direction of Viza, re-formed
themselves and marched to an almost certain death.

For a little while they held their own, but the Bul-
garians were now in an impregnable position on the
heights, and in such places of vantage for their artillery
that they could concentrate their fire in a really terrific
manner. The men of the Second Corps found them-
selves in a zone of bursting shells, and in the face of a
withering rifle fire which swept upon them like a hail-
storm.

A great cry broke from the ranks of the living, in

TOWARDS LULE BURGAS 175

which already there were great gaps, as the dead and
wounded fell in all directions. The ranks were broken.
It was only a rabble of terror-stricken men, running
away from that hunting-ground of death, who came
back beyond the reach of the Bulgarian bullets.

The town of Lule Burgas was already in the hands
of the enemy. And in the great field of battle, extend-
ing over the wild countryside for many miles, divisions,
regiments, and battalions were scattered and shat-
tered, no longer disciplined bodies of men, but swarms
of individuals, each seeking a way to save his own life,
each taking to flight like a hunted animal, each be-
wildered and dazed by the tragic confusion in which
he staggered forward.

This is a connected account of what happened. But
in war events are not seen connectedly, but piecemeal,
confusedly, and without any apparent coherence, by
those who are units in a great scheme of fate. So,
looking back upon those days, it seems to me that I
lived in a muddling nightmare, when one experience
merged into another, and when one scene changed to
another in a fantastic and disorderly way.

I first came in touch with bodies of retreating soldiers
when, in my ride out from the village of Chorlu, I crossed
the railway line and went on towards the guns.

Those men were in straggling groups or walking
singly. They were the first fugitives, the first signs,
on this day of Tuesday, 29th, that the battle which
was raging with increasing fury was not going well
for the Turks.

The men were coming away from the fight weary,
dejected, hopeless. They had no idea as to the direc-
tion in which they wanted to go. They wandered

176 ADVENTURES OF WAR

along aimlessly, some this way, some that, all of them
silent and sullen, as though brooding over the things
they had seen and suffered, and as though resentful
of the fate that had befallen them.

I did not grasp the full significance of these wander-
ing soldiers. I thought they were just faint-hearted
fellows who had deserted from their battalions. Soon
I saw the real truth.

CHAPTER IV
THE GREAT RETREAT

LATE in the evening of Tuesday, October 2gth,
all the war-correspondents were ordered to
prepare themselves immediately to go forward to the
front and to take provisions with them for three days,
as well as blankets.

At 9.30 on the following morning I again rode out of
Chorlu, with Banister and Wilkins as my companions,
with my one white-livered man. We were determined
not to wait for the personally conducted crowd, but to
pass on independently. I carried a sleeping bag with
a blanket, and biscuits and chocolate.

Wilkins was delayed by his pack-horse, which had
to carry his cinematograph apparatus and other im-
pedimenta, so I went on with my colleague Mr. Banister.
But we too soon became separated. Later on, when
some miles on the way to Lule Burgas, I lost my servant,
and I then had to go forward on the lone trail.

In a little while I lost all sense of loneliness. I was
in the midst of a crowd. It was one of the most pitiable
crowds that might be seen in the world. I passed a
continuous stream of wounded men struggling in the
direction from which I came.

Some of them had had the good luck to find places
on ox-waggons, but most of them, not so lucky — for

12 177

178 ADVENTURES OF WAR

there were few waggons — were on foot, and were already
utterly exhausted. It was a terrible and heart-
rending sight.

Those Turkish soldiers were not cowards and deserters.
They had taken their part in the firing lines. They
were the victims of the Bulgarian batteries. They
had been wounded in the arms or legs, and their wounds
had not been dressed. They had torn strips off their
own clothing to make bandages or slings. Many of
them had their heads swathed in. rags, through which
the blood had oozed, so that they looked ghastly.

Some of them were hobbling along on sticks picked
up on the wayside. Now and again a man would
stagger, grope blindly for a moment with both hands,
and then collapse, falling limply upon the roadway,
never to rise again.

Others made desperate efforts to keep their feet and
to reach a place of shelter and safety.

There was no groaning among them, no cries of pain,
though I could see by their faces that pain had them
in its grips. There was the stamp of hunger too upon
their faces, so pinched and drawn that only for the
living eyes they would have looked like dead men.

Now and again as a man passed a murmur came from
him — the name of Allah. Again and again I heard
those words "Allah ! Allah ! Inch' Allah! " in a des-
pairing way, in a harmonious sing-song. But it seemed
to me that Allah did not hear these men and had
abandoned them, at least there was no mercy for them
in this life.

Hundreds passed me, a long procession of pain and
suffering, the wreckage of human life cast up to my
feet as it were by the waves of battle.

THE GREAT RETREAT 179

Many of them turned their eyes to me as I sat on my
horse, seemed to send up to me a mute appeal for help.
But I could do nothing for them. Their numbers
were too great.

Only to one poor fellow with glazed eyes, and lips
all swollen out so that he was a living horror, I gave a
little water from my flask, and although too weak to
make the usual Mohammadan sign of thanks he spoke
to me from those glazed eyes of his, and I knew that
he was grateful.

This road of retreat was a Doleful Way. There was
no real road at all, but only cart-ruts across the open
country, and beside it lay dead and dying men and
horses.

Flocks of carrion crows were hovering about waiting
for their banquet of death. Later on I saw the wolfish
dogs of the countryside already eating the flesh of these
victims of war.

The dying men lay in all kinds of posture, some of
them as if they were sleeping quietly and happily,
some of them huddled up and face downwards, as a
blindness had come over them so that they fell heavily,
some of them in horrible contortion, some of them stiff
and stark, with their faces upturned to the sky.

None of their comrades of misery tried to lift them
up again, or even turned their eyes to glance at them
as they passed. They were left there helpless and
forsaken, and the greatest gift for which they could
hope was a speedy death.

It was hunger and fatigue, as much as loss of blood
that killed them. Some of the men in charge of the
commissariat of the Turkish army were the greatest
enemies of the troops.

i8o ADVENTURES OF WAR

Late that afternoon, sickened by all these sights, I
stopped to rest my horse and was joined by Major
Waffsy and the other correspondents.

Our Turkish officer was very much disturbed by the
scenes on the road, which told him the tale of defeat
more clearly than anything he might have read in
official despatches.

After fording the river — during which the horse of one
of the French correspondents took it into his head to
take a refreshing roll, much to the rage and dismay of
the dapper gentleman on its back — we stopped near
the village of Karistaran and our conductor decided to
camp.

Several of the English correspondents joined forces,
and after attending to our horses — always our first
duty — we lit a huge fire and sat round to a dinner of
sardines, tongue and biscuits, washed down by tea
without milk. We had a camp-fire gossip, chiefly
about the war, of which we knew so little ; about the
possibilities of Turkish victory or defeat, and about
the long trail of the wounded whom we had seen that
day.

Then we prepared for sleep, rolling ourselves up in
our blankets and lying with our feet to the blazing
embers. The moon was high and bright, and shed a
pale glamour upon the scene, so that it all seemed
ghostly in its beauty. Presently all was very quiet,
and one after another drowsy men fell into a deep
slumber, so that their steady breathing was the only
sound beyond the crackle of the fire.

By three o'clock in the morning, however, the frost
had taken possession of our blankets, and chilled to
the bone we found further sleep impossible, so that

THE GREAT RETREAT 181

we started up and searched for wood to light the fire,
which had died out.

This done, we sat hunched up as close as possible to
its flames, and in the warmth of them awaited the
dawn, more or less in comfort. It was a queer experi-
ence, even to journalists and press photographers, who
are the adventurers of modern life, and who come
across many queer days in the course of a year.

The pale dawn came greyly across the plain, and
the shadows of night crept away, and in the hush of
the early hour men were silent, wondering what would
be the fortune of war that day.

So came the break of day on October 3ist, a date
which now belongs to history, remembered with bitter-
ness by the Turks and with triumph by the Bulgarians.
Before the sun had dispelled the white, hard frost on
the grass there came to our ears once more the thunder
of the guns, which had stopped at dark on the night
before. We made a hasty breakfast, eager to get close
to the battle, not only for professional reasons, but
because no men may withstand the thrill which comes
when men are fighting.

But our hopes were dashed to the ground, and we
were thrown into consternation when Major Waffsy
came to us and ordered an instant and hurried retreat.
We were disposed to rebel, to protest against this order,
which seemed ignominious, and absurd, and unreason-
able. But very soon we saw that Waffsy Bey had
reason on his side and that things were very serious.

Thousands of Turks were making their way in great
disorder in the direction of Chorlu.

They were literally running from the distant guns.
They were like great flocks of sheep scared by the

182 ADVENTURES OF WAR

wolf, and stumbling forward. Men fell as they ran,
stumbling and staggering over the boulders and in the
ruts. They seemed to be pursued by an invisible
terror, so that they did not dare to stop, except to
regain breath to amble forward with drooping heads.

They had no shame in this flight. These tall fellows,
of fine physique except for their leanness and starva-
tion looks, ran like whipped dogs, with eyes that glinted
with the light of a great fear. It was a distressing
and painful sight.

Major Waffsy seemed in just as much hurry. The
sight of these fugitive soldiers seemed to shake his
nerves terribly, and his face was very white and
strained. I pitied the man, for he was a patriotic
Turk and a courteous gentleman, although sometimes
we hated him because he kept us so strictly in hand.

Now he started back on the line of the retreat with
part of his charge, who seemed to think that this time
he would be a valuable companion; but none of the
English went with him. We had decided to give him
the slip.

So we tarried over our preparations and deliberately
lengthened the time of our packing, and found many
difficulties in the way of an early start. Major Waffsy
set off without us, not suspecting our ruse, and when
he was well out of harm's way we proceeded on our
own line of route, which was forward to the battlefield.

I made my way to the river and there saw an astound-
ing sight of panic in its most complete and furious
form. It was indeed the very spirit of panic which
had taken possession of the soldiers whom I now met
on this^spot.

Never before had I seen men so mad with fear. I

THE GREAT RETREAT 183

hope that never again shall I see a great mass of
humanity so lost to all reason, so impelled by the
one terrible instinct of flight.

The bridge was absolutely blocked with retreating
soldiers. It was a great stone bridge, with many arch-
ways and a broad roadway, with one part of its parapet
broken ; but, broad as it was, it was not wide enough
to contain the rabble ranks which pressed across from
the further bank.

They struggled forward, trampling upon each other's
heels, pushing and jostling like a crowd escaping
through a narrow exit from a theatre fire.

Most of the men were on foot, some still hugging
their rifles, and using them to prod on their foremost
fellows, but some of them were unarmed. They bent
their heads down, drooped as though their strength
was fast failing, breathed hard and panted like beasts
hunted after a long chase, and came shambling across
the bridge as though on one side there was the peril
of death and on the other side safety.

The horsemen in the crowd — rugged men swathed
in drab cloths like mummies taken from their cases,
on lean ribbed and wretched horses — would not wait
for the procession across the bridge, but, spurred on
by panic, dashed into the water and forded their way
across. All seemed quite regardless of the fact that the
Bulgars were several miles away, and that the difference
of a few miles would not count in the gap between
life and death.

I almost expected to see a squadron of the Bulgarian
cavalry charging down upon this mass of men, so
abject was their terror. But the plain behind them
showed no sign of an enemy. No guns played upon

184 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the fugitives. Instead came a force of Turkish cavalry
with drawn swords, galloping hard and rounding up
the fugitives.

Many officers did their best to stem the tide of
panic, and beat the men back with flats of their
swords, and threatened them with their revolvers,
shouting, and cursing, and imploring them. But all
the effect they had was to check a few of the men, who
waited until the officers were out of sight, and then
pressed forward again.

With a young British officer who was out to see
some fighting, I turned again towards the town of
Lule Burgas, where a great fight was now taking place,
and rode against the incoming stream of wounded
and retreating soldiers.

They seemed to come on in living waves round my
horse, and I looked down upon their bent figures, and
saw their lines staggering below me, and men dropping
on all sides. I saw the final but fruitless struggle of
many of them as they tried to keep their feet, and then
fell. I saw the pain which twisted the faces of those
who were grievously wounded. I saw the last rigours
of men as death came upon them.

When we got nearer to the roaring guns, breaking
out into great volleys which seemed to shake the earth,
and to set the air throbbing, the retreat was being
carried out in a more orderly fashion. Men were
marching in rank, with their rifles slung across their
shoulders, and with officers pacing along side. Those
who had broken the ranks were stopped, and unless
wounded were compelled to come into the ranks again.
I saw many men being chased with whips and swords,
while non-commissioned officers were set apart to cut

THE GREAT RETREAT 185

off the stragglers. They were spent with fatigue,
and suffering from hunger and thirst, and despondency
was written on every face, but at least it was a relief
to see an orderly formation and a body of men who
had not lost all courage and self-respect. Evidently
the best of the army was at the front.

As my companion and I were short of food and dark-
ness was coming on, we decided to turn, especially as
the fight could not last until the next morning. At
dusk we reached the village of Karistaran and met
Angus Hamilton and H. Baldwin, and together set
out for a night ride to Chorlu.

This was far from pleasant. The army was in full
retreat, and the roads and bridges were thronged,
so that it was impossible to push one's way through
the tramping men who, of course, would not open up
for us, and whose rifles were like a moving hedge in
front of us.

It was also difficult to ride at the side of the roads,
on account of the exhausted and dying soldiers who
lay about in the mud while their comrades passed.
This was a sickening thing, and I had a sensation of
horror every time my horse halted before one of those
prone bodies, or when I had to pull it out of the way of
one of them.

Another difficulty that worried me was the absence
of an interpreter. We should not know if we were
challenged, and could not answer if we knew, so that
we were in real danger.

As a measure of precaution we rode as near as
possible together in a group of four, hoping, in the
darkness, to be taken for a patrol. If we had been
recognised as foreigners we might have lost our horses,

186 ADVENTURES OF WAR

for these Turks, wounded or exhausted, would have
coveted our mounts, for which they had a really des-
perate need.

Reading this in cold blood people may accuse us of
selfishness. It would have been heroic, they might
think, to dismount and, in Christian charity, yield up
our horses to suffering men. But that idea would have
seemed fantastic had it occurred to us for a moment.
We had our duty to perform to our papers, and what,
after all, would four horses have meant among so many ?
Such a sacrifice would merely have led to our own
undoing.

Never shall I forget that ride in the dark night to
Chorlu, the vague forms of the retreating army passing
with us and around us like an army of ghosts, the
strange, confused noise of stumbling feet, of voices
crying to each other, of occasional groans, of clanking
arms, of chinking bits and bridles, the sense of terror
that seemed to~ walk with this army in flight, the
acuteness of our own senses, highly-strung, appre-
hensive of unknown dangers, oppressed by the gloom
of this mass of tragic humanity.

At last we reached Chorlu in the early hours of the
morning, utterly tired out in body and spirit and quite
famished, as we had only had a few biscuits since our
very scanty breakfast on the previous day. My chief
surprise and congratulation was that Peter, my horse,
had stood the strain so well. He was still in good form
though tired after his long journey.

It was now Friday, November ist, and I celebrated
the day by having a wash, the first of any kind since
Wednesday morning. A soaking wet day developed
as the hours passed, and we were all very wet and

THE GREAT RETREAT 187

miserable when we were ordered to get our baggage to
the station so that it could be taken to Tchercheskiou,
in the direction of Constantinople, on the following day.

It seemed that we also were in full retreat and that
we should not be allowed to see any more of the war,
or of its accompanying horrors, unless it followed us to
the gates of the great city. As will be seen, however,
later on, we were unable to carry out our instructions.

Upon the following day I was busy in the endeavour
to get something in the nature of a cart, my companions
being engaged in a similar quest, but great difficulty
was experienced and we did not succeed until late in the
afternoon. We then packed and harnessed our saddle
horses, and set out in the drenching rain and in the
darkness.

The rain lashed upon us, and our horses stumbled
in the quagmires of the road, and there was no fun at all
for any of us.

The main street of Chorlu was now full of the retreat-
ing army.

The men surged through it in one great seething mass,
wet to the skin, with heads bent to the storm, splashing
and tramping through the mud. It seemed as if all that
great army which had assembled under the command
of Abdullah Pasha were pouring back in misery to
Constantinople, from which they had set out so gaily
and so proudly with the word victory already on their
lips. What a contrast it was here ! These beaten men,
these broken ranks, these battalions of despair, turning
their backs to the enemy and making their way back
to the capital of a ruined Empire !

However, there was no time for thoughts of that
kind. One thing was clear. The roadway, possessed

i88 ADVENTURES OF WAR

by the army in retreat, was quite impassable, and would
be so for hours. Our only chance was to get round to
the station by a back way, and this we attempted to do.

Then our troubles began.

All the horses jibbed and refused to work. The
lashing rain had scared them and made them stubborn.
The deep mud in the tracks made it difficult for them
to draw any load, and being but poor beasts they had
no pride in them, and no spirit.

My horse Peter disgraced himself. He had been a
manageable beast as a saddle horse, but now in traces
he began to kick and very soon smashed his cart. I
sent my servant Marcus back to hire fresh horses, and
after a long time away he at last returned with a new
horse, which succeeded in dragging a cart to the station.

This left the other carts still stranded in the mud,
and Wilkins made another attempt to rescue one of
them by means of his saddle horse, with the result that
at the first bend of the road the other cart capsized.
It was a tragic comedy, and we hardly knew whether
to laugh or to groan.

It seemed utterly useless to prolong the situation.
We must postpone our departure until daylight, when
tjie rain might stop and the conditions be more favour-
able. There was in fact nothing to do but get our
insubordinate steeds back to the stable, so I set out
with my Maltese servant, each of us with two horses.

There followed one of the worst half hours of my
life.

In the darkness we became jammed in the midst of
a struggling mass of soldiers, bullock-waggons, gun-
carriages and horses. My own horses, which I was
leading, immediately took fright and begun plunging

THE GREAT RETREAT 189

and rearing in an alarming way, so that my arms were
almost jerked out of my body, and I nearly lost my hold
on the bridle of the led horse.

It was a fantastic, horrible nightmare. As my
horse reared soldiers with fixed bayonets passed
beneath my upraised arms. When my horse came
down on to its feet again it was still a yard away from
me, so that I had to drag it violently back, while
the soldiers still continued to press their way between
the flanks of the two beasts, almost jabbing me with
their bayonets, pushing and thrusting at my horse's side,
followed by an endless stream of soldiers, all of them
indifferent to my troubles, careless of my horses' hoofs
and eager to shove along somehow through this wild
tangle of bodies, and wheels and waggons in the dark-
ness.

For a long time I could make no progress. I re-
covered a better hold of the other horse, but became
still more firmly wedged into the living, surging mass.

At last, after making headway literally by inches,
I managed to crawl as far as the stable, and then set
out with a lamp and an extra man to help my good
comrade Wilkins, who was guarding the two derelict
carts. Neither of us had seen anything of our former
companion, Banister, who had started with us in the
first place.

Wilkins was the type of man who helps himself and
does not look around for rescuers. When we came up
to him, therefore, and hailed him through the darkness,
we found that in his characteristic way he had righted
the cart and had nearly reloaded it. As soon as we
could get the hero's horse we might start it on the road
again.

igo ADVENTURES OF WAR

I set out for the station once more, and found the
third cart there, with the faithful but irresolute Henry.
We pushed it into a position near to some other corres-
pondents who had settled down for the night, left it
under their protection, and returned to Wilkins.

We then found, to our disgust, that the man with the
hired horse did not return. The frightfully cold gale
and the lashing rain had proved too much for his
courage and loyalty.

Here was an awkward situation ! If we followed
our temptation to run for shelter we might lose all our
precious stores. With all the retreating soldiers about,
a cart full of provisions would have been a grave
danger. They would certainly have looted it, and we
should have been without any kind of stores for a still
uncertain future.

Wilkins and I, after a hurried consultation, decided
to sleep on the goods, sending the servants back to the
village, not, however, before I borrowed an extra
revolver. Not only were we afraid to trust them in a
situation like this, trying both to their courage and
fidelity, but we could not bring ourselves to put more
upon those hired men than we were willing to suffer in
our own skins.

So they went off gladly, with the prospect of some
kind of shelter against the appalling weather, and
Wilkins and I prepared to make the best of a very bad
business.

The badness of it became more and more apparent
as the hours passed. It was truly the very worst
night I have ever spent. We were absolutely wet to
the skin, caked in slimy mud, and chilled to the bone.
The cold was intense, with a fierce wind blowing which

THE GREAT RETREAT 191

seemed to cut one like a knife, and with the rain still
lashing on us. Our boots were soaked through, and
every step we took was in a quagmire.

Fortunately, we managed to find some biscuits and
cheese, the first meal we had had all day, and drank
neat lime-juice, followed by brandy. This did us
some good, and put a little warmth into our blood,
but the feeling soon wore off. We wedged ourselves
as well as possible under the cover of the cart, huddled
close together, and tried to forget the misery of our
condition in sleep.

But sleep would not come, at least as far as I was
concerned. The wind blew in upon us. The rain
continued to soak us. Our teeth chattered with the
cold, and it gave us but little consolation to think of
the army in retreat, suffering more severely than our-
selves, not so lucky in having a few biscuits and a sip
of brandy — starving, wounded, exhausted, despairing
in this night of horror. There were hundreds of dead
men lying out in the rain and the wind.

Worse still, there were hundreds of dying men,
lingering in their agony in the water-pools and the
mud, tortured by pain, hopeless of rescue, and crying
out, maybe, to God. I thought of all that. I was
haunted by the thought of it all through the night.

But it only added to my unhappiness and gave an
additional sense of horror, to a night which never
seemed to end; while crouched in the cart, with my
limbs getting numb, I waited for a dawn which never
seemed to break.

Before it was light on the morning of Sunday,
November 3rd, Wilkins and I got out of that horrible
cart, unable to stay there any longer, lest we should

192 ADVENTURES OF WAR

perish of cold. Wrapped in our blankets we ran about
in the darkness, stamping our feet, thumping ourselves,
and trying to get a little warmth.

Figures moved about in the gloom, silent figures
like ghosts wandering aimlessly. Now and again
there came to our ears the murmurs of voices from men
we could not see.

Now and again footsteps, quite close to us, startled
our nerves.

I became aware of a man creeping stealthily about
one of the carts. I went after him, and found that it
was a soldier out for loot. The poor devil was as cold
as we had been, and he had seized upon a horse-blanket.
He had also taken possession of my mackintosh, and
I shouted to him to let go. Then I seized one end of
it, and we had a short tug of war, but the man decided
not to press the point, and leaving the mackintosh in
my hands slouched off.

Other soldiers cast covetous eyes upon our stores.
They were famished, and yet hunger had not made them
fierce but tamed them, so that fortunately for us they
had not the spirit of the looter, nor pluck enough to
show fight.

That seemed to me remarkable. Here were we,
two men of a foreign race, in the midst of a starving
army, while we had stores, yet there was no serious
attack upon us, and our property remained as safely
in our hands as if we had placed our cart in the middle
of Hyde Park under police protection.

The Terrible Turk, as he has so often been called,
and as I had often imagined him, turned out to be a
man of law, a respecter of property, and an honest
fellow, even when he was gnawed by hunger and

THE GREAT RETREAT 193

supported by enormous numbers of hungry comrades,
who in one moment or two could have killed us and
taken possession of all we had.

Our two servants at last arrived with the daylight,
surprised, I think, to see us still alive, and still guarding
our stores. We were glad to see them, but we should
have been still more glad if they had come with horses.
They had failed to bring them along, and, in conse-
quence, we set about pushing the carts to the station
by manual labour, ploughing through the deep mud.
In order to relieve the weight I abandoned my best
tent — a grievous loss.

Later, after we had pulled and tugged the carts a
good way, Marcus, our Turk, arrived with two horses,
and with his help we at last reached the station.

Here we found our former companion, Banister,
who had lost us the night before, and had found his
way to the station. A train was just leaving for
Constantinople, but before we could load any goods
on it, it went off with a punctuality which was some-
thing like a miracle.

No Turkish train in my experience had ever gone
off so promptly, without shunting and halting half a
dozen times after the whistle had first been blown I
It was an unfortunate thing for many left behind,
because it proved to be the last train to leave for
Constantinople.

Anyhow, its departure put an end to our former
plans, and made the instructions of Waffsy Bey
impossible. There was nothing for it but to trek,
so with more delay and many difficulties we hired two
horses and bought two others, with an extra cart,
when, with many regrets and much misgiving, but
M

194 ADVENTURES OF WAR

in the interests of light transport, we abandoned
three cases of stores, and three sacks of personal
luggage. Afterwards we loaded and seemed all ready
to start.

But Fate was against us. At the last moment a
fresh difficulty arose.

Demetrius, the owner of one of the hired horses,
suddenly, and for no very clear reason, refused to
start. His excuse was that the journey could not be
completed that night. We argued with him, but to
no purpose, and after various consultations and delays
we agreed to sleep in the village and start at daybreak.

Marcus, the Turk, was now our guardian angel. His
only word of English was " good," a word which he
used on all occasions, and with a variety of expressions.
But through one of our interpreters he made us under-
stand that he would undertake to find us lodgings.

We gathered from his gestures and from the crescendo
of his " goods," that they were to be lodgings more
glorious in luxury than Aladdin's palace. Having
agreed to let him work the miracle he took us to the
house of some Christians which, if not a palace, was,
at least, an excellent retreat from the foul weather.
Our hosts provided us with the best dinner we had had
since leaving Constantinople, the bill of fare consisting
of such sumptuous items as soup, macaroni steaks,
cheese, and coffee. Marcus had turned up trumps !

With the memory of the previous night still vivid
in my mind, it was good to turn in to the usual floor
beds, and under the shelter of a good roof I slept like
a top.

But, before retiring, I could not fail to notice the
amazing contrasts in the appearance of the village of

THE SENTINEL AT SAN STEFANO

GUARDING THE FOUNTAINS FROM INCOMING SOI.DIEKS STRICKEN WITH CHOLERA

THE GREAT RETREAT 195

Chorlu, since I had ridden through its streets, with
the led horse. It was an extraordinary change. No
longer were the streets flocked by shouting and stru-
gling men with horses, guns and waggons. The
retreating army had passed through the town, leaving
only its Christian inhabitants. All was quiet. It was
as quiet as the death that had come to those wounded
men who still lay out on the roads. The silence of
it^was intense and startling.

£. .On Monday, November 4th, we left Chorlu, after so
many delays, on a morning of glorious weather, when
the bright sunshine dispelled all but the memory of
those days of storm and those nights of frost and
cutting ram.

We were now in luck's way, as far as our transport
arrangements were concerned, having three carts and
four cart horses, and four saddle-horses. We had to
leave one of our original horses behind, as the wound
on his shoulder became much worse.

Before leaving this village of unforgettable scenes,
Wilkins and I saw the Turks blow up the railway
bridge.

f Our attention was first directed to it by seeing a party
of men who were busy below the bridge suddenly rise
from their stooping positions and run away as hard as
they could. There was a little puff of smoke, but it
was clear that the fuse had failed. The men crept back
stealthily and again retreated at a hot pace. This
time they made a better job of it. There was a big
explosion, and a mass of stone- work came toppling
down. By this scene, which we watched at a distance,
we knew that the Turks had abandoned the railway
line — another sign of their great defeat.

196 ADVENTURES OF WAR

After travelling some distance with our caravan
we pulled up at a deserted farmhouse which we
made our temporary home, and where we spread out
luncheon.

It was a strange thing — to my mind one of the
strangest things of war — to wander about the country
abandoned by its inhabitants so that one might enter
any door and live in any house, without asking per-
mission, or finding any living being.

During the whole of the great retreat the country-
side was covered with people wandering like ourselves,
but more aimlessly, and in a dazed way. They were
the fugitive soldiers who had broken away from their
battalions, who had no more interest in the war, and
whose only thought was to find some kind of hole or
retreat where they could get a safe hiding place for a
little while, or until death came.

Their one great need was food, and if they could find
a few roots or a little maize, they esteemed themselves
lucky. Their gospel at this time was " sufficient unto
the day the evil thereof," and they took no heed of the
morrow.

To many of them there was no morrow. To others
who clung on to life, finding some way of feeding them-
selves— God knows how — there was no purpose which
they could follow, no kind of duty which they could
perform. The main body of the retreating army had
passed beyond them, they were but individuals of no
account to their country, and utterly careless of all
but the one essential and primitive instinct, the preser-
vation of their own life.

In a way I belonged to this band of wandering men.
For a little while at least I was faced with the same

THE GREAT RETREAT 197

problems, how to live, how to get shelter, how, if need
be, to hide.

Marcus was the man who taught me how to live.

He had some secret kind of gift which led him to
likely places for food. He was a born looter, of things
that were good to eat. His own appetite was great,
and was probably the spur which urged him on to high
endeavours of a culinary kind, but he was gratified also
in seeing other jaws at work upon the results of his
looting expeditions, and at these times his eyes would
roll with delight.

On this day he explained to us in dumb show, punctu-
ated by many " goods," that he meant to provide
something special. He then proceeded to capture
nine turkeys, two fowls and a duck.

It was a veritable massacre, and in spite of the nature
of the work had a farcical side. For Marcus was a fat
man, and he waddled with short little runs after a
turkey conscious of its coming doom, and after the end
of a panting chase made a furious blow at the poor bird's
neck with a long pole. The death was exceeding
swift.

This process was then repeated with other waddles
and grunts and blows until, as I have said, a great bag
was captured. One of them was put into the stewing
pot and cooked with the utmost success. The others
were hoarded up for future use.

Later in the afternoon, having left the deserted farm-
house and gone on the track again, we met Messrs.
Allan Ostler, Ward Price, and Pilcher, who were return-
ing to Chorlu, but we continued on our way as they
were only going to look for luggage.

At dusk we passed many burning villages, which

igS ADVENTURES OF WAR

were but heaps of blackened ruins in which fires still
smouldered and from which there rose the clouds of
smoke, pictures of desolation in the darkening twilight
of that abandoned countryside and object-lessons of the
grim and merciless business of war.

Wilkins and I now rode on to Tcherches Kiou, but
found it blocked with soldiers and transport. We
decided therefore to return to our waggons and camp.
This we did near a broken ammunition waggon which
we used as fuel and entirely burned during the night.
It made a splendid bonfire and the flames of it burst
angrily up giving us both light and heat.

But before this had been set going I took my Maltese
servant to find some water, of which we were in urgent
need, and after a long and rough ride in the darkness
came to a stream at which we refilled our bottles.
Afterwards we rode back to camp, and here I found
Marcus in command of the cooking department, and
very busy with the work he liked best in the world.

He had cut up three turkeys and stuffed them into
a horse-pail full of water, which he placed on the fire.
There was much dumb show from him. He rubbed
his portly stomach, cried " Good ! good ! " with
incessant repetition, rolled his eyes, pointed to the
boiling birds, and then stirred them up vigorously
with a tent pole.

At last the stew was ready and ten of us partook of
the good fare, including two wayfarers who had been
attracted from afar by the succulent smell and who
could not tear themselves away. Marcus, the great
chef, dished up with an exaggerated air of importance
and gave us our share in a pot, explaining that it con-
tained enough for breakfast.

THE GREAT RETREAT 199

He then raised the pail itself to his lips and took a
long draught of the steaming liquid before the two
wayfarers had been favoured with a drop. They eyed
him with increasing anxiety as he raised the pail higher
and higher, and were enormously relieved when Marcus
set it down again and set steadily about a leg, side bone,
and half a breast, leaving the remnants to his uninvited
guests.

There next followed the question of sleeping, and
Banister, Wilkins and I turned into one of the carts.

But it was a painful experience, for after all we
found it necessary to breathe. Banister volunteered
with some heroism to sit by the fire, and Wilkins and
I only opposed the suggestion weakly, for it was the
case of preferring our friend's room to his company
in such close quarters.

It was a great joy to me when he had departed, for
having the middle berth I had been in some danger.

We were up at break of day on Tuesday, November
5th, and regaled ourselves with more turkey and tea.
We then packed up again and set out for Tcherches
Kiou in dull weather and a wind that lashed us with
the sting of whips. We reached the railway station
and learnt that the other correspondents had already
left for Hadem Kiou, and that it was quite uncertain
when another train would go.

One of my companions was anxious to get to Con-
stantinople, and decided that the best way was to
make for the seaport of Silivri, and to go on from there
by ship. So we set out again, keeping the two horses
which had been hired with the men to whom|they
belonged, while one of the strangers, who had invited
themselves to dinner on the previous night, seemed

200 ADVENTURES OF WAR

inclined to come with us, chiefly, I think, because he
wanted to wear my overcoat, which I had lent him.

We agreed to this, so here we were, with six servants,
besides ourselves and three carts — quite an imposing
convoy. The wind came on to blow worse than ever,
but to our great joy the rain kept off.

During the morning we reached an entirely deserted
village, which had once been inhabited by Bulgarians.

It was a strange thing to be the only human beings
alive in this place of many houses. All was silent.
Not a footstep echoed in the streets. No shadow of a
living figure fell upon the walls.

We peeped into little windows and saw bare rooms,
in which only the heavy furniture had been left. The
doors were gaping wide, just as the inhabitants had
left with their worldly goods. It reminded me of old
fairy tales, where the young tailor, always the hero of
them, set out on his way to make his fortune and
came to an enchanted village.

It seemed indeed under a magic spell, and the lone-
liness and silence of the place was uncanny.

But Marcus broke the spell. With his rolling eye
he had observed three small pigs, and he instantly
started the good work. Wilkins tried his revolver on
them, but it was Marcus who did the necessary deed.
He never could resist an opportunity like that, and
the sight of food running about excited the hunter's
instinct in his savage breast.

After this episode we sent the carts ahead, and Wil-
kins and I stayed behind awhile, keeping the Maltese
servants with us.

Just as we were leaving we were stopped by three
soldiers, who suddenly came up on pack horses. They

THE GREAT RETREAT 201

assumed a threatening demeanour, and eagerly ques-
tioned us in their own language, which we could not
understand. Then they demanded our passports and
our field-glasses, but we only handed over the former,
and those with misgiving.

The soldiers seemed inclined to keep our papers,
but finally were persuaded to hand them back. They
then intimated that they would ride on with us to
inspect our luggage.

We had no liking for their company, and were
beginning to get anxious as to the end of the adventure.
Our horses were better than theirs, but whenever we
got a few yards ahead they shouted for us to stop.
Eventually we came in sight of the carts, and saw
Marcus riding away to the right. As we learnt after-
wards, he was exploring for water.

To our consternation the leading soldier suddenly
unstrung his rifle, loaded hurriedly, and fired in the
direction of our most excellent Turk. Marcus stopped
as though he had actually been shot, although the
bullet had gone wide of him, and the carts, which
were trailing along the road, also came to an abrupt
halt. We rode up to our friend Banister and explained
what had happened. The situation seemed to be
developing in a serious way, but there was nothing we
could do except to tell the servants to parley with the
men, telling them who we were, and getting rid of
them if possible.

This plan did not succeed as well as we had hoped,
for although the men let us proceed on our way, they
kept near, riding on our flank in a suspicious, un-
friendly way, and we reckoned that they would be
looking for food when we camped. If it came to a

202 ADVENTURES OF WAR

fight, we should be without much chance of victory, for
the men had good guns, and we were not likely to get
much support from our servants, who were not of heroic
stuff.

Late in the afternoon, when we were nearing the
village of Chanta, one of the carts capsized when going
down a steep decline. After some trouble we righted
it and to our great relief found that no damage had
been done to its structure. Afterwards, however, we
discovered that the fall had caused much internal
trouble in one of the provision baskets ; the Keating's
powder having escaped into the sugar, and a small pot
of jam having spread itself out in an extraordinary
way among the other goods.

As it was getting dark and the soldiers were still
hovering in the neighbourhood with some friends
whom they had picked up on the road, we decided
to get rid of them in the most effective way by putting
up in the village of Chanta, and getting our stores into
shelter and safety.

We tried various houses, and one place we went to
wanted as much as £7 for the night for three of us.
We refused to pay this outrageous price, and at last,
after much searching, found good rooms where we
established ourselves comfortably, and enjoyed a good
dinner of turkey and macaroni, which we needed badly,
as we had been many hours without food. As usual,
we made our beds on the floor, and slept soundly.

We rose early on the morning of Wednesday, Novem-
ber 6th, and left for Silivri in gloriously sunny weather,
and through very beautiful scenery.

From a vineyard near the road we gathered some
fine grapes, which were very refreshing.

THE GREAT RETREAT 203

Many soldiers and refugees were making their way
in the same direction as ourselves, and again we saw
all the signs of the hopeless demoralisation which had
befallen the Turkish Army and people.

These soldiers had broken away from many regiments,
and were going to whatever place their mood suggested
without caring to rejoin their battalions, ignorant of
the progress of the war, and under no kind of discipline
or command.

Near Silivri we found large camps where there were
more orderly bodies of men, still acknowledging them-
selves as part of an army in being, and awaiting in-
structions as to where they should go, and what they
should do.

Finally we reached the little sea-coast town, and
immediately inquired about a ship for our companion
Banister, but we were told that owing to the rough
sea no vessel was leaving, and we should have to wait
until the weather turned.

We got a room and stables at the house of a priest,
and from this host we heard many stories of looting
in the town. Gangs of disorderly and starving soldiers
had come in, forcing their way into houses and demand-
ing food.

With or without leave they had seized upon anything
that would satisfy their hunger, and had made raids
upon farmyards and poultry, terrifying the inhabitants.
We could not find it in our hearts to blame men so
desperate for life as these retreating soldiers of the
beaten army who had undergone frightful sufferings
owing to the appalling lack of organisation and the
fortune of war which had gone against the Turk.

Their situation in Silivri itself was not so bad, as

204 ADVENTURES OF WAR

bread for the troops was sent round by ship, but even
these supplies were miserably insufficient for the needs
of so many men, and starvation still menaced them.

Before daylight on the following morning I sent
my servant, Henry, out to watch for a ship, in hope
that one would start early enough to catch a post
with my photographic films.

I had been wandering about so long in wild tracks
that it was a matter of vital urgency now to despatch
some of my work to London, where they would be
waiting anxiously for the next consignment of pictures,
and wondering what in the world had happened to me.

To my regret Henry came back reporting that there
was no luck, as no ship was getting ready to sail.

During the morning I met Francis McCullagh of the
Westminster Gazette, and another correspondent named
Long. From them I learnt that photographs were
not permitted in the town on any account, and because
we neglected this advice, Wilkins and I fell into trouble.

We were both arrested for disobeying the order.
Wilkins was using his cinematograph camera, and the
officers who pounced down upon him took us to head-
quarters and destroyed our films.

Later in the day we were again arrested, this time
by private soldiers with fixed bayonets.

This time our offence was merely that of walking
in the streets.

They did not detain us long, but used a great many
words, which from their gestures and facial expressions
we understood vaguely to be warning and advice.

It was now decided that my Maltese servant
should, instead of Banister, leave by ship for Con-
stantinople with the photographic material, and we

THE GREAT RETREAT 205

got him away at last, with many instructions as to
what to do, and orders to return immediately to
Chatalja.

After dark, Wilkins and I returned to our rooms, but
not without great difficulty. The streets were besieged
again by an army in retreat.

Great masses of men tramped by in the darkness,
with that nightmare confusion of horses, carts, gun-
carriages and waggons, which was becoming familiar to
me. This tide of men never seemed to slacken, and
came like receding waves from the front, from which
they had been forced back by the enemy's guns.

As we sat in our room we listened to the strange
swirling sound of all those tramping feet outside, to
the vague dull chorus of many voices, shouting in the
streets, to the grinding of the wheels, and the creaking
of the carts, and the clank of bit and bridle.

But we turned our eyes away from those shadows in
the night and our thoughts away from the grim drama
of despair, so close to us.

Marcus had provided us with a splendid dinner of
roast chicken cooked in the stable, and we thoroughly
enjoyed it, with that selfishness of human nature
which makes our own creature comforts so much more
interesting than the welfare or the sufferings of the
world without. Just as we had finished it the Maltese
servant reappeared with the message that we could
not get on board until the morning.

The morning came, and whether from the effects of
the dinner or our previous fatigues, or some cause
unknown, Wilkins and I both felt rather unwell.

We improved later and set out for a ride, where we
came in touch with more retreating soldiers.

206 ADVENTURES OF WAR

They were in vast numbers, and surged by in dis-
orderly battalions. There seemed enough of them to
keep the Bulgarian army at bay, but we knew enough
of war by this time to understand that when once a
great body of troops has been beaten in battle, and has
become demoralised, when its ammunition is spent, and
its food supplies exhausted, numbers only increase the
tragedy of retreat, and add to the terrors of a great
rout.

From the direction of Chorlu we heard the sound
of distant guns, and it seemed to us that the Turks were
evacuating the place, falling back, further and further,
from the advance of the triumphant Bulgarians.

Would they never call a halt ? Would they never
stop that awful flight until they had regained Con-
stantinople ?

It seemed inconceivable that the Bulgarian army
should be allowed to walk down without a check to
the city of the Sultan.

But Wilkins and I obtained information that the
next fighting would be on the lines of Chatalja, the
last lines of defence before the Turks would be beaten
out of Europe. Perhaps after all the Turks could hold
that last barrier and reorganise themselves behind its
trenches. That was the meaning of the continued
retreat. They were staking all their hopes now upon
those defences.

Wilkins and I decided to make our way in the same
direction and to see the finish of the war along those
lines. In any case they lay on the road to Constanti-
nople, which must soon be our goal.

After this decision had been reached Wilkins, with
his usual energy and ability as a handy-man, directed

THE GREAT RETREAT 207

the operation of making three bad carts into two good
ones, and certainly he succeeded wonderfully. Once
again I was filled with admiration for the indomitable
character of the man who was so splendid in a time of
difficulty, and so resourceful and self-reliant when any
awkward job had to be tackled.

During the evening that followed Marcus came to
our room in great trouble. We were startled by the
look of extreme dismay on his face, and by the tragic
gestures with which he made clear his incoherent and
incomprehensible speech.

He went through a dumb show of collapsing on the
floor, with his mouth open, with strange and horrid
contortions, and dreadful groans, and rolling eye-balls,
continually repeating the words " Henry " and
" Haree."

After watching him with increasing alarm and excite-
ment we hurried out, supposing that Henry had died
an unnatural death in the stable, or had committed
" hari-kiri " because of some secret grief.

We found him alive, however, but suffering severely,
being quite overcome by an over-dose of the wine of the
country.

He was utterly and dreadfully drunk.

We put him to bed on the floor, and I pondered over
the many things which I should have to say to him in
the morning.

When the morning came, I was less eloquent than
I should have been over-night, for Henry was a sadder
and a wiser man, very chastened in spirit, very shaky
in his physical condition, and resolute in his promise to
become a total abstainer henceforth.

It was now Saturday, November Qth, and we finished

208 ADVENTURES OF WAR

our work of carpentering and started at noon with
two saddle-horses in one cart.

They gave us a good deal of trouble, as the animals
had no liking for the traces, and gave signs of bad
tempers and rebellious mood. Eventually by coaxing
we got them used to the work, and continued our way
in better style.

It was a way through beautiful scenery, enchanting
to the eye on this day of sunshine and splendour, but
what nature had made lovely, man had made hideous.

The retreating army had left behind it a long wake
of horror and misery — exhausted men lying by the
roadside, unable to move another step, and slowly
dying of hunger and thirst and utter weakness, while
others still struggled feebly on, groping forward in a
drunken, dazed, stumbling way, with their heads
drooping upon their breasts, and their eyes half shut.

Everywhere around them lay dead and dying horses
and bullocks, and the wreckage of broken carts. The
dying horses were writhing in their last agony, or
panting with hard-drawn breath, the flies already
busy in their wounds and sores, their lean ribs shaken
at times by the convulsion of approaching death. The
poor oxen looked up with dull, beseeching eyes, and
beat their heads upon the ground, before being released
from the burden of their life.

This was war. Here was the reality of that romantic
business which seems so fascinating and glorious in the
writings of imaginative authors who describe it from
their arm-chairs. Here was the trail of war, defiling
the roads with the wreckage of life, with men and
beasts abandoned by all, dying without a friendly
hand to help them in their agony.

THE GREAT RETREAT 209

Now and again a man whose boots had worn away
on the long march, stooped down and cut off a piece of
hide from one of the dead oxen, binding it round his
bruised and sometimes bloody feet. I saw this done
repeatedly, and I could not help thinking at the time
that the fly-blown hide of an ox might put poison into
the blood of a man who used it for his foot-gear. After-
wards, when I saw worse sights than any I have yet
described, it seemed to me that this might be one
cause of the cholera which ravaged the ranks of the
army of retreat.

Most of the men who passed us begged for bread,
but we were unable to give them any, deeply to our
regret.

But it would have needed a convoy of bread waggons
to feed all the men who were starving on the roads,
and we ourselves were hungry, though in our baggage
cart we still had a few stores left, of which we should
have to be very careful.

The idea constantly occurred to us that these des-
perate-looking soldiers might close in upon us and
rifle our bags, but they begged without a menace, and
in a most pitiable way. None of them had spirit
enough to make an attack upon other people's property.

Some of them seemed to have gone mad, or at least
to be light-headed, for without any reason they would
raise their guns and fire at some tree or other object
in a wild manner. It was rather scaring, because one
never knew whether a stray bullet would not end all
one's troubles swiftly.

At dusk we pitched our camp, still some four hours
away from Chatalja. A party of soldiers joined us
and asked for food, but I do not think they liked us so

210 ADVENTURES OF WAR

well when they found Marcus skinning one of the
small pigs — which to them are unclean animals.
However, they camped, or rather stopped, near by,
so that we thought it best to keep a watch over our
horses during the night.

Wilkins fried our pig over a spirit stove, and with
some cocoa and jam we thought it a great meal. Wil-
kins and I took turns in doing " sentry-go " where the
horses were tethered, and in getting a spell of sleep in
the shelter of one of the carts.

We were up before dawn on a fine but cold morning,
and made an early start.

We had a good journey to Chatalja, arriving at
ii a.m. Here we found only a few soldiers and
officers. To the latter we were very unwelcome, and
they utterly declined to give us any information.

Some of them seemed to be in a savage temper, with
Fate which had allowed their army to be defeated,
with their men who had not been able to gain a victory,
and especially with foreign war-correspondents who
had seen the truth of things and the abasement of
Turkey's pride.

Some of these officers treated their men like dogs,
and the men received the treatment like dogs also,
cringing beneath the blows they received. I saw one
of the officers punishing two men for some trivial
offence. He ordered them to lie down and then beat
them with a stick. It was an extraordinary sight.
One of the men was quite an old fellow, and as he lay
down his grey beard stuck out in front of him, while
the officer laid on the blows severely.

I lost some of my respect for the Turkish soldier,
the so-called " Terrible Turk " who had not spirit

DEAD AND WOUNDED ON THE HICI.l) OK BATTLE

CAITURED BY CHOLERA

THE PRICE OF WAR

THE GREAT RETREAT 211

enough to resent this ridiculous method of punishment
and took it meekly, lying down.

As we could get no news of war and could find no
other correspondents, we decided to make for Hadem
Kiou on the other side of the lines. Then came a
most difficult journey, parts of the road being almost
impassable, so that our carts stuck in the deep ruts
and lurched over the boulders, and plunged deep into
quagmires, so that every moment we expected them
to break to pieces. It was not until after dark that
we reached the outskirts of the village, which, as we
learnt afterwards, was crowded with soldiers, and the
centre of the last army of defence.

CHAPTER V
IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA

ON the outskirts of Hadem Kiou we were stopped
by an officer, and he gave us startling news.

He told us that we must on no account enter the
village, on account of cholera.

That was the first time we had heard the mention
of that dreadful word. It gave us a sense of fear,
as in the presence of an unseen enemy. But not yet
did we realise all the ravages it had already achieved
nor the frightful way in which it had spread among the
ranks of men who had escaped from death on the
battle-field, only to be stricken down by a more ghastly
fate.

Oppressed by gloomy forebodings, Wilkins and I
looked about for somewhere to camp, and at last
found an open space which seemed suitable enough.

A gale was blowing hard, and it was very cold, but
there was no wood for a fire, and we passed a cheerless
night, suffering a good deal from that cutting
wind.

Nor could we try to forget our discomforts in sleep,
for it was essential to keep a watch over our goods,
as we were in the thick of the army, and were constantly
aware of soldiers prowling about and creeping close to
our carts. Some of them came up boldly and asked

213

IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA 213

for bread, but went off again tamely and despondently
when we had to refuse their request.

We rose before dawn again on a warm morning, with
a thick damp mist clinging to the fields and trees. We
prepared breakfast, but as we were sitting down to
eat it we made an unpleasant and even dreadful
discovery. It appeared that we were camped on an
isolation cemetery for the cholera victims. We called
the attention of Wilkins to some carts filled with queer-
looking burdens covered by white sheets, which were
being brought up to a spot where men in white coats
were digging a pit.

" Look there," I said. " This place is a graveyard."

Wilkins glanced over in the direction of the carts
and went on munching his meal.
fc " It looks like it," he said. " Cholera, I should say."

I watched the grim work going on so close to us.
At first, as I have said, the bodies were covered with
white sheets. There were piles of them turned out
into the deep trench which had been dug for them.

Then came other carts, and this time the bodies
were uncovered except by a white powder which
looked like quick-lime. They had been heaped into
the carts just as they had died, arms, legs and heads
flopping about in a horrible and grotesque way. The
grave-diggers dragged them out and let them fall
heavily, in any kind of posture, into the grave, before
shovelling the earth upon them.

It was the most gruesome breakfast hour I have
ever spent, and yet, after so many strange experiences
and dreadful sights, it did not make so great an im-
pression upon me as I should have imagined, and did
not even take away my appetite. It is strange how

214 ADVENTURES OF WAR

quickly the human mind adapts itself to the most extra-
ordinary conditions.

But one thing was clear to me. The Turks were
in the deadly grip of a cholera epidemic which was
killing them off at a great rate.

Ten death carts that came to tilt their loads of
corpses into the trench, while we were at breakfast,
were only the vanguard of longer convoys, piled up
in the same way with a litter of contorted bodies.

I could not guess at the numbers of the dead. I
do not know even now the grim statistics of that
mortality, and perhaps the world will never be let
into the secret, as those soldiers were unnamed, un-
known, and uncounted by those who buried them.

But the pestilence certainly thinned the ranks of
the army in retreat almost as swiftly as the shell fire
of the Bulgarians, and the death-rate was frightful.

It was the first time in my travels that I had ever
seen cholera symptoms and cholera victims, but I
came to know only too well the look of men stricken
with that disease — the first stage of collapse, preceded
by pains in the body, twisting up the forms of men,
contorting them, and making them groan with agony ;
the gradual change that came over men so that they
resembled living corpses, with shrunk and livid features,
eyeballs sunk into their sockets, drooping eyelids, and
the half-open eyes glazed and apathetic. On the skin,
which darkens to a greyish-blue tint, the perspiration
breaks out, though the victim shivers as though icy-
cold, and his hands and feet shrivel as though death had
already touched his extremities.

He is plagued by an intolerable thirst, and greedily
gulps down any water, clean or filthy, which he passes

IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA 215

on the way, only to vomit it up again. Then death
comes to him in a few hours, and immediately his
corpse blackens as though he had been buried and
dug up again.

These things came to my eyes and sickened me.
I could not escape from them. They haunted the
highways and byways of this great stretch of country
on the way to Constantinople.

I suppose, in spite of all my words, it is difficult to
convey even a faint impression of all the horrors of
this cholera which ravaged the Turkish troops at
this time, and was increased by the utter lack of
hospital arrangements and medical attention after the
retreat.

Later, behind the lines of Chatalja, the authorities
bestirred themselves. They took elementary pre-
cautions. They organised some system of medical
service, and kept the cholera victims isolated, and
guarded the^water supplies.

But I am writing now of a time when none of these
things were done, and when the sufferers were left to
die on the roadside, crying for water from the passers-
by who had none to give, drinking out of the muddy
pools which they tainted with their own poison, and
leaving their dead bodies to be the resting-places of
flies who carried the infection farther. We tried to
skirt those places where the bodies of the dead and
dying lay, but it was impossible.

We turned our heads away from the pestilential
swamps in which they lay, but breathed in vapours,
which for all we knew contained the germs of death.

If we had not been in a healthy condition I do not
think we should have escaped.

216 ADVENTURES OF WAR

On the way to this village of Hadem Kiou we
passed the Turkish line of defences.

Men were already in the trenches with their rifles
pointing the way from which we had come, as though
expecting an immediate attack from the pursuing army
of Bulgarians. The trenches were well dug, and the
best I have ever seen in Turkey, being so straight and
deep that the men could stand up in them, and be
perfectly sheltered, unless they put their heads above
ground.

I took some photographs of them, and was intensely
interested in the sight of those waiting men, for it was
the first sign I had had that the Turks were preparing
to make a final stand against the advancing enemy, and
that upon this ground the fate of Turkey in Europe
would be finally fought out.

I did not know how far away the Bulgarians were at
this time, but judging from the wild retreat of the
Turks, which I had followed almost continuously from
Lule Burgas, it was clear that they were not very far
behind, and that in another day or two I should again
hear the sound of the guns.

This thought caused me some anxiety, for it would
never do to be caught between two fires, or to be cut
off altogether from Constantinople. If the Bulgarians
were to prove victorious again on this line, nothing could
stop their entry, and it would be essential both to my
safety and to my business to be in Constantinople before
they arrived.

That day I called on Nazim Pasha, the Commander-
in-Chief of the defeated armies, the man most to be
pitied in all Europe, because the great force which had
been under his charge had crumpled up and fled in all

IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA 217

directions. He had now nothing left but to rally the
remnant for a last stand, and then save, by diplomacy,
what he had lost in battle.

His officers told me that we must go at once to San
Stefano owing to the cholera. If we stayed it would
be at the risk of life. They also warned us against
taking photographs in the stricken area.

They were deeply anxious to hide the secret of this
cholera from the rest of Europe. If that leaked out
it would encourage the enemy to make a more rapid
advance and to attack the lines of Chatalja with great
confidence of victory. It would also emphasise in the
eyes of the world this utter hopelessness of the Turkish i
position, and convict the Government still more of mis- i
management and failure in every branch of organisation, j

With these warnings in our ears we made a fresh
start and struggled with the usual difficulties of bad
roads. On the way we passed an almost continuous
line of refugees making for Constantinople, the soldiers
of many regiments all mixed up together without order
or discipline, and civilians of the peasant class from
many villages around.

It was another procession of those despairing legions
who had passed us ever since the first retreat after the
fall of Kirk Kilisse. Once again we saw the men and
women who had abandoned their homes, but who still
clung to their poor chattels which they carried in packs
until they became too exhausted to carry them any
further, dropping them by the wayside, or loaded on
to carts which were being dragged on slowly by tired
and emaciated oxen and helped over the ruts and
through the mire by veiled women who put their
shoulders to the wheel.

2i8 ADVENTURES OF WAR

The children were on the bundles in the carts, staring
with wondering eyes at all the scenes of flight, the older
ones more terrified, and all of them suffering from
hunger and exposure.

There were thousands of these wretched people,
tramping along the way of despair, and it was obvious
even by a casual glance that many of them were already
in the first stage of cholera.

Some of those who collapsed were put on to the carts
where they lay with those glazed eyes which seemed
already in the blindness of death ; others left the lines,
groped forward a little, then fell in a huddled heap upon
the roadside; others again were leaning up against
broken walls, or any kind of support, groaning with
internal pains, and showing the symptoms of a great
agony.

At dark we were still some way from Tchekmedge
where we wished to sleep, but we made up our minds to
keep on, as the idea of camping along this line of refuge
and in the zone of the cholera victims was horrible
to our imagination, and more than our nerves could
stand.

Indeed, it would have been folly to attempt such a
thing, for the risk of infection was a grave one, and both
Wilkins and I knew that if we once became touched
with it we should have no more chance of escape than
any of the poor devils who were dying around us.

We still had some money left in our belts, but no
money would buy medical service in this district, and
by no wealth could we bribe death to overlook us.
The bacillus of cholera would work its poison in our
blood too quickly to enable us to get even as far as
Constantinople, and it was not pleasant to think that

IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA 219

we might leave our bones on the roadside, to be buried
in the way we had seen while having breakfast in the
graveyard.

So we pushed on through the dusk and through
the darkness, and it was with infinite relief that at last
we reached Tchekmedge, where, for a time, we could
forget the horrors of the road.

Marcus found us rooms and stables belonging to the
village barber, who was also an inn-keeper in a small
way.

We ransacked our stores, for having had no food for
a great many hours we were quite famished, and
managed to get a fair meal of biscuits and cold sausages
washed down by cold cocoa. After that we descended
to the barber's shop below.

It was filled with a strange and motley crowd of
Turkish peasants in quaint costumes, and broken down
soldiers, some of whom told the tale of their woes,
while others sat quaint and grim, listening impassively,
or staring with brooding eyes at the barber, who sat
in the centre of the room smoking a huge hubble-
bubble. Marcus was on a seat beside him smoking a
similar pipe, and puffing like a walrus, and presently
he related his own adventures to the assembled com-
pany with many gesticulations and grunts.

We found Tchekmedge to be a very pretty fishing
village, and as it was impossible to use the horses —
they were suffering from over-fatigue — went for a
walk. But this was spoiled for us by the number of
sick soldiers coming in, pitiable objects, in rags and
tatters, and suffering from hunger and disease. We
turned back again to avoid the sight of men whose
sufferings we could not relieve.

220 ADVENTURES OF WAR

One trouble of our own, which caused us grave
anxiety, was the lack of fodder for the horses. For
a whole week they had been working on short rations,
it was urgently necessary to get fresh supplies.

Marcus spent the whole day at surrounding farms
to obtain a stock for immediate and future use, and
succeeded, though at an extravagant price. After
the labour he came into us during the evening and
made a long speech with his arms, eked out by many
nods and sundry ejaculations of " Good ! " " Good ! "

In one hand he held some long strips of meat, which
I had seen hanging out on pegs inside his bedroom
door, and we at last came to understand that the
simple meaning of the speech was a threat to make us
a native dish for dinner. He then asked us for a bottle
of oil and some beans, and departed with delighted
grins.

When the great dish appeared in due course we found
it satisfactory, and, indeed, enjoyed it thoroughly,
trusting to good luck that we should not suffer any
ill-effects. The meat was swimming about with the
beans in much oily gravy, and there were also tomatoes
in oil. With it came the warning message that enough
had been sent for breakfast. Later the chef himself
appeared to receive our verdict.

To our reiterated expression of "Good! Good!"
which he understood so perfectly, he replied with
smiles and many bows, and to our astonishment and
admiration sprung another English word upon us
before departing. It was " Orright ! "

Perhaps we ought to have been a little conscience-
stricken at our own good cheer, for there were thousands
of men that night dying from starvation. The state

IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA 221

of these stragglers was absolutely appalling. One
man came into the cafe" begging for bread, and said
that he had lived for nine days on nothing but a little
barley and corn. Another lay down on the floor of
the cafe" all night, and died in the morning. Fortun-
ately for us it was not from cholera, but from mere
exhaustion.

On the following morning, Wednesday, November
I3th, I rode to San Stefano and sent on Marcus to
Constantinople with my photographs for despatch to
the Daily Mirror.

On the way I found quite close to the town the body
of a man who had obviously died from cholera. It
seemed to me outrageous that at that place which should
have been well within the zone of civilisation, this
plague-stricken corpse should be allowed to lie on the
highway.

I considered it to be my duty to report the matter
to the Commandant, and I think he was surprised that
I should take the trouble to mention one body when
so many others were lying in a similar state. How-
ever, he promised to have the matter attended to, but
when I returned two hours later it was still there,
untouched, and a horrible danger to the passers-by.
The only result of my report was that a soldier had
been posted near the spot and made the incoming
people take a slight detour, in order to keep at a little
distance from the corpse.

I now learned that cholera was raging in San Stefano,
so that the Commandant was not likely to bother
himself much about a single corpse.

For a wonder, some precautions were being taken,
and sentries had been posted at each of the fountains

222 ADVENTURES OF WAR

to prevent them from being contaminated by the
incoming soldiers. But there was no efficient medical
inspection, and cholera victims were only isolated a
little from the rest of the population when they were
dying or dead.

On my return to San Stefano I met Donohoe of the
Daily Chronicle, with Ashmead-Bartlett of the Daily
Telegraph, and his brother. They had installed them-
selves at our " hotel " and invited us to a very good
dinner.

Wilkins and I now decided to leave for Aios Giorgios
in the morning, as it was nearer the front of the Chatalja
lines. We got up, therefore, at daybreak, and pre-
pared to start by mending one of the carts which had
been run into by a gun-carriage the previous day.
Having achieved this task we loaded and got away by
one o'clock, Wilkins driving one of the carts as Marcus
had not yet returned.

It was glorious weather, and we made a fairly easy
journey to Aios Giorgios except at one point, where
we found an impassable road, so that we had to take
the horses out of the shafts and lead them down a
steep hill.

Eventually we camped on some rising ground above
the village, as the place was choked with soldiers
and we could get no stables. We pitched the tent,
and left the covered cart to the servants for their
night quarters.

But now an agreeable surprise awaited us, and it
was nothing less than the appearance of Castle, one of
my own colleagues, who arrived with Marcus, bringing
me eleven letters and news of the outer world, from
which I had been cut off for many days. It may be

IN THE CLUTCH OF CHOLERA 223

imagined that this was a delightful treat, and with the
new member of our party there were many times to
talk about, many experiences to relate, and many
facts to learn.

It seems that we gave great anxiety to our friends
while we were in Silivri, for a rumour had been taken
to Constantinople that there had been a massacre of
Christians in this place. As a matter of fact, I have
since heard that there was some trouble between the
Christians and Turks, but it took place immediately
after our departure.

We were the last Englishmen to leave Silivri, and
the Bulgars were much nearer than we thought, which
accounted for the Turkish trenches being manned
when we reached them near Hadem Kiou.

The report that five English correspondents (among
whom were ourselves) were in grave danger was no
sooner received in Constantinople than my brother,
T. E. Grant, with Banister, our colleague, who had
reached the city safely, and the English officer I have
previously mentioned, chartered a tug, and with three
German correspondents set out on a relief expedition.

They entered Tchekmedge Bay at 4.30 in the after-
noon and anchored near two Turkish battleships. My
brother and his companions then put off in a rowing
boat towards the fishing village, but had not gone
very far when an unpleasant surprise overtook them.

It was a shell from one of the Turkish men-of-war,
which whizzed over their heads, followed by broad-
sides from both battleships. At first, for a moment,
my brother and Banister thought they were being
fired at directly, but it then became evident that the
fire was aimed at the hills above the village, where

224 ADVENTURES OF WAR

the Bulgarian cavalry and three battalions of infantry
appeared.

It was in any case an unpleasant position, as the
Bulgarians were replying with rifle fire.

There were divided counsels in the boat. One of the
German correspondents thought it best to make for
the pier, as they were not far away, but he was over-
ruled, and the men pulled back towards the tug.

Darkness was gathering, the boat began to leak,
and it was a hard pull against the incoming tide, and
all the while shells were bursting over the hills and
the sound of the answering shots seemed very close.

When the tug was nearly reached a torpedo-destroyer
came alongside, and the commander ordered the skipper
to leave the bay immediately. The order could not be
ignored, so the boat was hauled up and the vessel got
under way, and after a rough voyage in the darkness
anchored off Stamboul.

Upon returning to Constantinople my brother was
relieved to hear from Marcus, who had then arrived,
that I and the other correspondents were in no danger,
and that the relief ship had not been necessary. Never-
theless, we were very grateful for the trouble taken on
our behalf.

CHAPTER VI
ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA

ON the morning of Friday, November I5th, Castle
left us to go back to Constantinople, and I
rode out towards the forts of the Chatalja lines, as a
battle was immediately expected.

The Bulgarian army was steadily advancing, and
the last great struggle of the war was about to begin.
On that moniing, however, the guns were silent, and
the only battle I saw was between a correspondent
and the servant of one of his German confreres.

The correspondent in question had lost a fur coat,
Which he valued exceedingly. He had made angry
and exhaustive inquiries without getting any clue to
its whereabouts, and his nerves were considerably
upset by this affair.

Now it happened that Wilkins and I had noticed
the German's servant wearing the identical coat, so
we sent down a message to the village, and were
rewarded by seeing the enraged owner of the coat
coming up at a good pace, and obviously in a great
state of excitement, brandishing a riding- whip.

The servant, who was wearing the article, was either
conscience-stricken or saw danger ahead, for he took
off the coat and tried to hide it. But the owner ad-
vanced, and without waiting for explanations began to
belabour the miserable man with fast and furious blows.
15 225

226 ADVENTURES OF WAR

The culprit (who afterwards proclaimed his entire
innocence and explained that the coat had come into
his] possession by a pure accident) retreated in a
damaged condition, yielding up the booty, but was
taken in the rear by a little undersized servant of the
indignant correspondent.

Imitating his master's example, in the most ludicrous
way, as he was not more than half his master's size,
he struck a sharp blow at the offending man and caught
him on the ear, retreating quickly lest there might be
reprisals. The affair struck me as being intensely
comic, though I am still in doubt as to the justice
of the punishment inflicted. There is just a chance
that the man was blameless, because in time of war
property changes hands in the most unexpected ways,
owing to the hurly-burly and confusion of baggage.

Another episode in the list of the day's events was
the return of my Maltese servant, whom I had not seen
since he left Silivri on an errand to Constantinople.
I heard afterwards that he had put in a very good time
in the capital, swaggering about, and relating marvel-
lous stories of his prowess and adventures. As I shall
have to tell later, he was, in truth, grievously lacking in
moral courage, and betrayed us at a critical time in a most
cowardly fashion. But as a braggart he was unequalled.

On Saturday, November i6th, we heard the boom of
guns to the left of Hadem Kiou on the Chatalja lines,
and excited by the sound which had told us that the
righting had begun, we left hurriedly in that direction.

At last the final attack of the Bulgarians was to take
place, and we were full of speculation as to whether they
would smash through the lines of defence or whether
the Turks would stand against them.

READY FOR THE HUI.GAKS AT HADEM KIOU

IN THE STRONG TRENCHES AT CHATAI.JA

THE LAST LINE OF DEFENCE

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 227

It was the last hope for Turkey. If once the Bulgars
pierced the line of forts I was convinced that the Turkish
soldiers would become panic-stricken again and that
another rout would begin, ending in irretrievable disaster
and in the utter downfall of the Crescent.

I reached a point two miles away from Hadem Kiou
and took up a position on a dismantled fort close to
the Turkish lines, where the infantry were in their
trenches awaiting the attack to develop, and under the
protection of their artillery.

Here I met an old acquaintance. It was none other than
Issett Bey, the officer who in the beginning of the cam-
paign had been put in charge of the war-correspondents.

I have already related how his Second in Command
went back hurriedly with some of the foreign corre-
spondents, and how the English gave him the slip.
Since then most of his charges had wandered away
into different parts of the country, camping wherever
it pleased them, or wherever they were compelled to
camp, and leading the strange fantastic life which I
have described in my own adventures.

Now like Little Bo-Peep who lost her sheep, he found
that some of the correspondents had come back, bring-
ing their tales behind them.

He did not seem at all pleased to see me, and wanted
to know what permission I had to be there on the
Chatalja lines.

I explained very politely and very plausibly that he
himself had made me sign a document pledging myself
to remain with the Turkish forces until the end of the war
and that I had been endeavouring to do so ever since !

I am bound to say that I was rather pleased with this
explanation, which seemed without a flaw in its logic. It

228 ADVENTURES OF WAR

certainly staggered him a little and he did not know
what to say in reply, but finally he spoke very sharply
and said I was to go at once to San Stefano and on no
account come nearer the line of defence.

I started back meekly, for it was no use protesting
against such an order, though I intended to give the
gentleman the slip again whenever I saw an opportunity.

On the journey Wilkins and I skirted the village of
Hadem Kiou because we could see piles of dead waiting
to be buried, and everywhere by the roadside lay dead
bodies, all victims of cholera.

It was, indeed, quite impossible to ride along the road
on this account. The sight was too horrible — the most
dreadful vision that might meet the eyes of men — and the
stench from that mass of corruption was unendurable.

The bodies had been heaped up much in the same way
that a gardener sweeps up dead and rotten leaves.
The legs and arms protruded from a confused mass of
corpses. Here and there the blackened faces stared
up at the sky with unseeing eyes. At every other yard
a dead body lay huddled up on the road just as the
living man had fallen before his last gasps.

I had served during these last few days an apprentice-
ship in the sight of horror. But this was too much for
me. Not for great rewards would I have ridden further
along that way of death.

So we turned our horses up the roadway and rode
up the hillside, getting into the fresh air again and
away from the pestilential scenes.

Eventually we reached the camp after dark, and
found my colleague Banister, and Tower of the Daily
News, who had arrived in a car.

The mission of the latter was to find Francis

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 229

McCullagh and Long, whom no one had seen since
we had encountered them in Silivri, so that their
friends were becoming very anxious as to their fate.

Ward Price also called in, entertaining us in his
charming and irresistible way, and together we made
a simple meal spiced by many anecdotes of our vari-
ous adventures. Afterwards all five of us turned in,
finding just room on the ground of the tent, although
there was a slight shortage of blankets.

When the dawn came on Sunday, November I7th,
we heard the thunder of distant guns and knew that
the battles had started. We instantly decided that;
with or without permission, we would ride back to the
front and watch the progress of the fight.

It would of course be necessary to dodge the peremp-
tory Issett Bey, but we hoped to escape his watchful eye.

While we were preparing to go out, however, an
officer appeared and ordered us to San Stefano, reading
an official order and taking our names. This was
annoying and awkward. It might lead us into serious
trouble if we deliberately disobeyed such very formal
and precise instructions. Evidently the Censors were
determined to prevent the correspondents from seeing
anything of the battle and watching the real state of
affairs on the Chatalja lines.

Some of the correspondents decided to return to
Constantinople, being afraid of getting cut off from
their base ; but, after a council of war, Wilkins, Ward
Price, and I, decided to risk the wrath of the authorities
and to see something of the fighting.

We therefore prepared our horses and kit for a
night out. I arranged with my Maltese servant that
he should accompany us, explaining to him the risk.

230 ADVENTURES OF WAR

After some trouble with the carts, which wasted
much valuable time, we set out ostentatiously in the
direction to which we had been ordered.

But this was only a blind, and we soon made an
attempt to turn off. The first effort was frustrated
by the appearance of an officer, but we managed to
give him the slip.

We then got on to the mountain side and rode in the
direction of the guns.

The shells were bursting in the sky, and the roar of
artillery fire shook the ground and came in great con-
cussions of sound, although, so far, we were absolutely
safe, as we had not yet reached the danger zone. We
now had the thrill of a really good adventure, and the
sight of those shells made us greedy for a closer view
of the battle.

But the Maltese servant, whom earlier in this book
I have called the " White-livered one," soon began to
have signs of funk. He found innumerable excuses
why we should not go further.

He had unaccountable trouble with his saddle, and
other small accidents which suggested an immediate
return. Finally he confessed that he " felt exactly
as he did at Lule Burgas."

" There is no need for you to tell us that," said
Wilkins, who was beginning to get very angry at this re-
velation of cowardice. " We know exactly how you feel."

Finally the Maltese was scared out of his wits by
the spectacle of the shells bursting ahead, and abso-
lutely refused to go another step. I believe he imagined
that we should not go on without an interpreter. He
fondly believed that rather than risk such a thing we
should return with him.

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 231

But he was very much mistaken. Wilkins called
him a coward in plain terms, and said that he would
have to pay the penalty of cowardice. The man began
to whimper when we took his horse and told him to
walk back. He did not want to return alone, but, on
the other hand, he still refused to go on.

Presently Wilkins pulled out his revolver and threat-
ened to use it if the man did not go back. He ran up
to me, hoping that my heart would soften towards him,
but I spoke sternly to him. Then he ran over to Ward
Price, but obtained no comfort in that direction either.
He ran about from one to another like a frightened
sheep, so that I was almost sorry for him.

The last we saw of him at that time was when he
turned tail and made his way miserably over the
mountains in the direction from which we had come.

It may be thought that we were too hard on him and
that cowardice is not a crime. But in war cowardice
is often a crime. For in his case we were taking a
very real and grave risk in going forward without an
interpreter, and by leaving us in the lurch he was endan-
gering our lives. If we had been challenged we should
not have known what to answer, and we should not have
been given very much time for explanation. We should
have been dead before the explanation had been made.

The Maltese knew that perfectly well, and when he
started out with us he knew also that we were not
going on a picnic party, but on an expedition to the
front line. If he had refused to accompany us at the
outset we should not have blamed him and should have
made other arrangements, but to desert us when we
could get no other man was the work of a traitor, and
deserved to be punished severely.

232 ADVENTURES OF WAR

After this unpleasant episode we went on and had a
very good view of the battle raging in the valley below us.

Unfortunately, the night was too bad for photography.

From a dismantled fort we watched a thrilling scene.
The Turkish rifle fire from the trenches was very thick.
I shall never forget the peculiar rushing whirr of it,
terrible in its intensity and in the menace of its sound.
When we imagined that one of those bullets, whose shrill
note blended into this great chorus of swift shot, might
find a living mark it was grim in its significance. There
was no lack of ammunition in those trenches at Chatalja.

The Turkish soldiers seemed to be firing almost con-
tinuously, reloading as fast as they could and sweeping
the enemy's line with a perfect hurricane of lead.
Only now and then did the fire drop and languish
away. In a few moments it would break out again
fiercely, with that kind of screaming song of death
which cannot be described in words, but which leaves
an ineffaceable sensation in the minds of those who
have once heard it.

All the field guns were using shrapnel. The air
was alive with those flying shells which burst high up
and scattered the missiles of death as they fell. They
had a strange and deadly beauty. I was fascinated
with those sudden flashes of flame, those white puff-
balls, those bursting clouds.

Perhaps if they had been as innocent as fireworks
the sight of them would soon have become tedious.
But our imagination was set at work. One realises the
deadly effect of those high-mounting shells. One
knows the terror that falls with them.

The Bulgarians seemed to get the distance better
than the Turks, whose shells in many cases burst short.

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 233

I have since seen criticisms of the Bulgarian artillery.
It has been alleged by at least one critic, who can speak
as an eye-witness, that the guns were badly served and
that the gunnery was not at all good. It is his opinion
that there was no real superiority on the Bulgarian
side over the Turkish guns, and that it was luck, and
recklessness of life, and the irresistible nature of the
infantry attacks, which enabled the Bulgarians to
achieve their success.

I do not pose as a military expert or as a competent
judge of shell fire. But I can only speak according
to the impressions of personal observation, and certainly
to me it seemed beyond argument that the Bulgarian
artillery was .very much better than that of the defence.
The village of Chatalja, which lay ahead of us, was in the
hands of the Bulgarians, who had made it their head-
quarters, and now it seemed to be vomiting fire.

There was a great concentration of guns there, and
from that direction there came an immense number of
shells, which as far as we could see were bursting well
over the Turkish lines.

I was unable to form any accurate idea of the losses
on my side. Shell fire is proverbially uncertain in its
effect, and, as I have said, the Turks were in most ex-
cellent trenches, which provided them with good cover.

They continued to maintain a splendid defence, and
kept up a withering fire in response to the attack ; so that
it would have been quite impossible for any battalions
of the enemy's infantry to advance in the face of it.

Almost for the first time in the war the Turks seemed
to^be determined to hold their lines at all costs, and it
became clear to me as the battle progressed that the
Bulgarians were not going to have that " walk over "

234 ADVENTURES OF WAR

which they had so confidently predicted, and which
they had almost a right to expect after their previous
knowledge of the demoralisation and panic of great
Turkish armies.

Nevertheless, I also believe now that if the Bulgarians
had shown the same determination to carry the position
which they had revealed at Kirk Kilisse and Lule
Burgas, and if their commanders had decided to sacri-
fice the lives of the men as freely as in those early days of
the war, they might have succeeded in piercing the
lines.

For the strength of the Chatalja defences have been
much exaggerated, and the Turks had to rely upon
their own courage and determination rather than
upon the impregnability of their position. If the line
had once been cut it is probable that their march
would have been broken and that the other parts of
the line would have crumpled up and retreated.

All that, however, is mere theory, and history has
not been written that way. It is probable that after
their own heavy losses, heavier than will ever be
admitted in official despatches or national statistics,

I the Bulgarians were not willing to sacrifice themselves
to the same extent as in the first battles.

Such were the thoughts which came to me as I stood
in the fort watching the grim struggle.

Towards dusk a village to the right of Chatalja
caught fire, owing to the shells which had burst over
it, and flamed up as a torch, casting a lurid, quivering
light above its volumes of smoke, which spread out in
far-reaching clouds.

Darkness settling down rapidly, we decided to retire a
little way, to a safer position, and wait until morning

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 235

before watching the renewal of the battle, which was
also languishing.

After going about a mile we came to a village and
encountered the officer in command. He instantly
expressed a desire to see our permits, and we had an
uneasy feeling that there would be an unpleasant end
to our adventure.

Ward Price had the most impressive looking docu-
ment, as also the most distinguished and persuasive
manner; so we put him forward as the leader of the
party, and let the officer think that we were his servants.

He was very doubtful about the led horse, which had
belonged to the Maltese renegade. He scented mystery
here, and was evidently puzzling his head about it.
However, he eventually made up his mind to be kind,
and after his preliminary hesitation gave himself a
good deal of trouble with regard to us.

The first thing he did was to find some stables for
our horses and put a man on guard over them. I am
sorry to say that he turned some soldiers out of the
stables to find room for us. This was very hard for
them. They had been soundly asleep in the straw, and
I have no doubt they were in an exhausted and miser-
able state, like most of the soldiers of the Turkish army
at this time.

At his word of command to " clear out " they stag-
gered up and looked half -dazed and sullen, but with-
out a murmur they shambled out so that we foreigners
might be left in possession.

It gave us uneasy consciences, but we could not
argue with the officer or decline the method of his
hospitality and courtesy, so that the matter had to
take its course. We saw that the horses had their

236 ADVENTURES OF WAR

best meal for a week, and when this duty had been
performed followed the officer to a room which he
provided for us.

He then left us with a stately bow and a salute, not
awaiting or expecting thanks, asking nothing from us
in return for these great services, and making us always
grateful to a Turkish gentleman, who had behaved
according to the best traditions of his class.

The room was very small and dirty, but it was
better than a night out in the rain, and we esteemed
ourselves very lucky. We settled down to a frugal
and somewhat ill-assorted meal, and then prepared
to fix ourselves up for the night.

That is to say, we selected our particular shake-down
on the floor. One anxiety disturbed us. It was a haunt-
ing sense of fear that our horses in the stable, some dis-
tance away, might be stolen by some of the needy soldiers.

Arguing the matter out, it seemed unreasonable to
entertain such a thought, as the officer had put a guard
over them ; but our nerves were jangled, and, try as
we would, we could not get rid of the suspicion. We
decided therefore to visit the horses and report progress
whenever we woke up.

It was a most uneasy night. I was horribly troubled
by small beasts, who went for circular excursions on
my body and defied my attempts to annihilate them.

It was a night of nerves and nightmares.

Sometimes I was awakened by Ward Price, who, with
more anxiety than any of us about the horses, made his
way over the bodies of my sleeping comrades, and after an
absence came back more disturbed than ever in his mind.

One of the horses had changed its position from the
right side to the left side of the stable. He could not

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 237

understand how this had happened. It seemed to him
that there was mischief afoot. He did not like the
look of things.

Then I took a turn outside, and came back to report
that the horses were still safe.

Once I happened to move in my sleep, and frightened
a party of rats who were finishing our dinner. In their
hurry and fright at the noise I made they shot the
biscuits all over the room, and with nerves more jangled
than ever we lit the lamp to view the wreck. A small piece
of cheese, which we had regarded as a precious treasure,
was quite gone, and much of the other food had been
demolished ; but we gathered up the remnants, wrapped
them in Wilkins's mackintosh, and put the bundle under
Price's pillow, which happened to be his saddle.

Once more we settled down to a restless slumber,
leaving the light up. It kept the rats away, but did
not quieten those smaller beasts who were still making
journeys about my body.

We rose before daybreak on the morning of Monday,
November i8th, and again set out towards the guns
on the lines of Chatalja.

We passed many dead bodies on the roadside and
in the adjoining fields, gruesome objects in the thick
damp mist, where they lay in the sleep of death.

Once again we reached the fort, and saw that the
Turkish defence was being well maintained and that
the trenches were still manned. This time the Bul-
garians were not going to have a walk over. The last
defence of the Turks might even now secure the safety
of Constantinople.

We could not stay long, however, in this position.
The officer in charge of the fort appeared to have orders

238 ADVENTURES OF WAR

about us, and made us understand that we must
return at once to San Stefano. He gave us a guide,
to show us the way and keep an eye on us.

We determined to make our way now straight to
Constantinople, and not to the cholera-stricken area
of San Stefano. Our guide came a considerable way, and
then returned. About noon we parted with Ward Price,
as we wanted to pick up our luggage at Tchekmedge,
and he wanted to find his servant in another village.

At one o'clock we reached Tchekmedge, and found
Marcus and Henry, who had been waiting for us.

We set about packing our cart at once, and leaving
Henry to look after the remainder of the luggage,
started by two o'clock for Constantinople. It was
a fairly good road, but we were delayed by the incur-
able instinct which Marcus had for looting.

Although we were returning to civilization he could
not resist a fine fat lamb which his eyes coveted in a
passing flock, and he tied it by the legs to the top of the
cart. The few words he had with the shepherd before
grasping his prize seemed quite friendly, so I suppose
it was not an actual theft, but a gift. Nevertheless,
I was angry at the delay and abused Marcus roundly for
his folly ; but he only smiled at me in a " knowing "
way, nodded like a Chinese mandarin in porcelain, and
repeatedly used the words " Good ! " and " Orright ! "

At last we got away again, Marcus shouting " Una
ora," which I took to mean that we were one hour from
the city, but over a particularly rough piece of road
the lamb became partly unstuck and had to be rescued
by Wilkins, who re-arranged its captivity.

At last we entered the gate of Constantinople, and
after a seemingly endless journey through the narrow

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 239

streets crowded with excited people and with many
of those fugitives who had tramped from the surround-
ing country amidst all the horrors of retreat, I arrived
at my hotel, rejoicing at this return from the wilds.

Here I found my brother Tom, whom I had not
met for many months, and here I received my order
of recall ; so that I was a very happy man.

My adventures were at an end, and my account of
them ends also.

But before leaving Constantinople for the joyful
journey home I was able to see the terrible conditions
prevailing in the city.

Refugees kept arriving in enormous numbers and
in the most deplorable state. They camped out in
open places round the city and in the graveyards, and
many of them died every day from exhaustion and
hunger. The condition of the little children was
especially terrible.

Cholera continued to ravage these armies of un-
fortunates, and the Turkish authorities, realising the im-
mensity of the danger, bestirred themselves, and with the
help of medical authorities from other countries organ-
ised an isolation system and took sanitary precautions.

They also engaged actively in the work of disarming
all civilians, seizing guns, pistols, swords and knives,
and every kind of weapon. These were brought in by
cartloads and stood at the Ministry of War.

I was convinced, however, that all fears of an
attempted massacre of Christians were unfounded and
fantastic. The starving people who invaded Con-
stantinople were too broken in spirit and too weak
in body to attempt any acts of violence, while the
soldiers who had escaped from the Bulgarian guns and

240 ADVENTURES OF WAR

from the cholera had only one desire — tohide themselves,
so that they should not be sent back to the fighting lines.

The Turkish Government was calm and dignified
in the face of its appalling disasters, and they set about
the task of strengthening their lines of defence at
Chatalja and obtaining strong reinforcements of troops
from Asia Minor.

Transports arrived, bringing in large numbers of fresh
troops from Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Erzeroum, and
other provinces ; and these men were drafted quickly
to the Chatalja lines, behind which they were drilled
daily and put into something like fighting shape.
Raw recruits as they were, they were in excellent
spirits ; and at the last ditch, as it were, the Turks
regained hope and put themselves in a position to
retrieve some of their great disasters.

On the other side the Bulgarians were not in an
enviable position. In spite of, and even because of,
their rapid series of victories they were much ex-
hausted and unable to force their way through the
Turkish trenches. They had lost an immense number
of men, they were stricken with disease, and they were
embarrassed by the length of that line of communica-
tions which they had to maintain.

Political and financial reasons also called a halt,
and the time was ripe for parleys and negotiations. I
need not enter into the details of those negotiations
which led to the truce between the two armies and to
the Conference, when, after all the horrors of war,
peasant soldiers were to be of no more account, and
diplomatists were to wrangle for the fruits of victory
and to dispute the forfeits of defeat.

It has now become clear to all students of this war

ON THE LINES OF CHATALJA 241

that the Bulgarians were unable to take advantage
of their great opportunity after the battle of Lule
Burgas. Instead of falling upon the retreating and
demoralised army, cutting it off from Constantinople
and inflicting the severest damage upon them, they
were delayed by their own losses and difficulties,
disheartened by the tremendous price they had paid
for victory, and afraid to advance upon a rear-guard
which might still have sufficient strength to stand at
bay. All the early reports that there had been severe
rear-guard righting at Chorlu and other places were
absolutely false, for as I have shown in my narrative
the Turkish rout, dreadful as it was, was unmolested
by Bulgarian guns or cavalry. By that one great
failure to make the most of their supreme advantage
the Bulgarians lost a great deal for which they had
fought.

THE END

16

Wyman & Sons Ltd., Printers, London and Reading

I

I Hi