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The author at work in the field; watching the Battle of Lule Burgas
"It was a wonderful spectacle." See page 128
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POLISH CAVALRY & HORSE ARTILL
ASSOCIATION IN NORTH AMERIC
WITH THE
CONQUERED TURK
THE STORY OF
A LATTER-DA Y ADVENTURER
BY
LIONEL JAMES
Author of "On the Heels of de Wet"
ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS AND
PHOTOGRAPHS WITH TWO MAPS
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
DONATED BY
/«.* ujtut* 4.***
51
Copyright, 1913
By Small, Maynard & Company
(incorporated)
Published February, IQIJ
I
CONTENTS
Facets page
I ix
II xvi
CHAPTER
I The Meet i
II To the First Covert 22
III Blank 51
IV Still Blank 67
V For'ard Away 87
VI Full Cry 11 1
VII A Lone Line 139
VIII Back to the Hunt 153
IX A Rogue Hound 162
X Still a Rogus 185
XI Still Shirking .... . . . 208
XII A Couple and a Half .... 238
XIII To a New Country 259
XIV The Run of the Season .... 281
XV Back Home 306
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
The author at work in the field ; watching the
Battle of Lule Burgas. " It was a wonderful
spectacle." See page 128 . . Frontispiece
The theatre of war in the Balkans. Map . . 1
Calling out the reservists in a Turkish village be-
fore the war 6
The call for volunteers outside a mosque in Con-
stantinople 14
Mahmud Muktear Pasha, commander of the
Turkish Third Army Corps. " Mahmud Muk-
tear was among the earliest of the fugitives.
He had misgivings as to the safety of the rest
of his corps established along the Viza Road."
See page 2 J 24
"Something had happened" 30
" The rear part of the train that had just come in
left the rails, and for the moment there was a
definite block upon the Turkish communica-
tions." See page 45 46
" The first fruits of this vicious incompetency had
been demonstrated in the desperate scenes wit-
nessed at Seidler Station, which, be it remem-
bered, was over thirty miles distant from the
nearest town where fighting had taken place " 50
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
" The indescribable mass of humanity crushed into
the open trucks of that south bound train " . 54
Map of the final battles of the Bulgarian campaign 60
Turkish soldiers manoeuvring near Adrianople . 66
u No sooner did they arrive than they were
marched hotfoot northwards in the direction of
Lule Burgas." See page yj 72
" Save for one or two convoys of empties there
was nothing coming back. The fact that the
empties were not even utilised for the trans-
port of wounded proved that the battle, such
as it was, or wherever it was, was still in its
infancy " 82
" They had overtaken one or two ammunition
columns toiling northwards." See page pj . 96
" In the bitter cold of that bleak winter's morning
it was a fearful sight to see those wretched
victims of international hate and greed, plod-
ding their weary, painful and hungry way back
to the railway." See page pp 98
" It was a great rabble of soldiers, many of whom
were without firearms. The men were totally
disorganised and were making their way south
without any attempt at military formation" . 100
A wounded mounted Turkish officer leaving the
field during the Battle of Lule Burgas on Octo-
ber 30. The Turkish infantry can be seen
across the river answering the fire of the
Bulgarians on the crest of the hill in the back-
ground 1 14
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
" They had not, however, counted upon the Turk-
ish bridge guards on the left bank. Here was
a long line of concealed trenches. These began
to spit fire and in one five minutes of murder-
ous mechanical energy the Bulgarian attempt
had failed" 118
Abdullah Pasha, nominally in command at Lule
Burgas 124
" As the Turkish infantry got up slowly out of
their trenches and trooped back to the rear
with dignified deliberation, salvos of shrapnel
burst above their heads " 126
In retreat from Lule Burgas across the bridge at
Karisdiran 136
Turkish cavalry 202
Turkish veteran infantrymen 228
" At the first demonstration of faulty tactical lead-
ing with its attendant punishment, these undis-
ciplined soldiers .... fled like a herd of harried
sheep from the exaggerated terrors of the enemy
they had led themselves to believe that they
despised " 234
" Shoals of boats were battling around the steamer" 242
The late Nazim Pasha, Turkish Minister of War
and commander-in-chief of the Turkish Army 252
Bulgarian infantry advancing and throwing up
hasty intrenchments 256
In the cholera hospital-camp at Mukakuey behind
the Tchataldja Lines. "Actually in the vil-
lage there was nothing living except the dogs."
See page 2J5 274
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
During the operations on the extreme Turkish left
near the Tchataldja Lines : a Turkish battalion
at midnight on November 17, with the aid of
the searchlight, advancing and occupying the
village of Papas Burgas, on the heels of the
Bulgarians, who evacuated it precipitately be-
fore them 278
The Turkish army and navy in action near the
Tchataldja Lines 281
" A salvo of shrapnel burst overhead." See page 287 288
Cholera patients arriving by bullock-cart at Con-
stantinople 298
The dining-car armistice agreement near the Tcha-
taldja Lines: the late Nazim Pasha, Turkish
Minister of War and commander-in-chief of
the Turkish army, and General Savoff, the
Bulgarian leader, shaking hands after the de-
cision to suspend hostilities 308
WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
FACETS
THE six office slaves who imagined that
they were living out of London, settled
themselves into their first class carriage just as
the bread-winners' train was moving out of
Brighton station. Seduced by the Railway
Company into the belief that it was worth a
man's while to live an hour's journey away
from the metropolis, the six had formed them-
selves into a railway-carriage club. Six days
a week the guard reserved them a compart-
ment. They had just caught the train both
ways regularly with half a minute to spare.
They usually completed one rubber of bridge
each way.
The moment the train had started, the slip
table was pulled out and the packs of cards
appeared from the pocket of the Club's secre-
tary for the week. The six men cut. The
ix
x WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
two who had failed to make the partie carree
leaned back on the cushions and opened their
morning papers. They were true to type,
these six daily travellers. Five were business
men. The sixth was an officer of the General
Staff employed at the War Office. The latter
was dummy in the first deal and he sought to
improve the occasion by looking at his paper.
"By Jove!" he said, as he turned back the
pages, "so this great battle at Tchataldja has
begun."
The group of players took no notice of the
ejaculation. The others, however, looked up
quickly.
"The battle begun?" one said. "Why, there
is nothing about it in these papers. You have
got hold of another of these lying Austrian
reports."
"Devil a bit," answered the soldier. "I
only read this sheet and for a newspaper it
sometimes verges on the accurate. By Jove,
the Turks this time seem to be holding their
own."
FACETS xi
At this the card players showed some at-
tention. "What," said one of them, "the Bul-
garians have not walked over the lines?"
"Devil a bit," answered the soldier. "If
this fellow is right, it would seem that the
Bulgarians have taken the knock."
The two non-players having busily turned
over the leaves of their papers and found no
mention of the battle, asked the soldier for
further details. This was given, to the effect
that the Bulgarian force had made something
in the nature of an attack against the Turkish
lines at Tchataldja, and that, on the first day's
showing, the Bulgarian attack had not been
marked by any great success.
"It is a most curious thing," mused the elder
of the non-players, "that my paper should
have nothing about this affair. When did it
take place?"
The soldier, catching the question, referred
to the date at the top of the message he had
been reading, and replied, "By Jove, this is
quick work! They only started fighting yes-
xii WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
terday morning. What I have been reading
is what happened yesterday."
"I wonder how that has been managed?"
said the elder of the non-playing business men.
"I have taken this paper, man and boy, for
twenty years, and I have never found it fail in
giving the earliest and best information with
regard to wars."
"Well, my people have beaten you," an-
swered the soldier. "I have always taken this
old rag, and although it may not always be the
first with the news, it is generally pretty accu-
rate. The man they have been employing all
through this war seems to be the only corre-
spondent who has shown any sense of propor-
tion. He must, however, have been very
active to have got this information back so
quickly. What papers have you other fel-
lows got?"
The card players when referred to just
handed their papers over. These were
searched without success for news of the bat-
tle. The paper which the soldier patronised
FACETS xiii
alone had the account. As the bridge players
in turn became dummy they read the corre-
spondent's account of the battle. All Europe
had been waiting breathlessly for the Bulga-
rian offensive for nearly a fortnight. When it
came to the soldier's turn to be dummy again,
he settled himself down to a second perusal of
the short battle telegram, and then delivered
himself to such of his companions as were
listening of the usual military tirade against
war correspondents. The other five in the
compartment had heard identical strictures,
more or less daily, for the last six weeks.
"These correspondents are the curse of mod-
ern armies," said the soldier, plagiarising the
great field marshal with some vehemence.
"You see the trail of the serpent here in this
message. This correspondent says there have
been these particular forts at Tchataldja where
there were guns of large calibre and that they
were of the old pattern. This is giving infor-
mation to the enemy."
The elder of the business men looked up at
xiv WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
the soldier languidly. "But you also read out
before that this correspondent stated that these
old guns were firing black powder. Surely,
if that is so, the Bulgarians could have seen
for themselves the type of the guns in the fort-
ress. Personally, I don't think that you are
quite consistent in the way you revile daily
these wretched correspondents. To be con-
sistent, you should refuse to read their news.
As far as I have observed, old fellow, you are
the first to look for the war news. To-day
you have been pluming yourself ever since we
left Brighton, that it is your paper with your
own particular war correspondent, which has
alone got this news of the place with the
crackjaw name. You should be more consist-
ent. Don't read these wicked fellows' stories."
"Oh! that is quite another matter; one is
naturally anxious to know what has happened,
but there should be an official channel for all
this military news."
"Again, let us be consistent," said the
elderly merchant. "You were only inveigh-
FACETS xv
ing two or three days ago, against the official
channel used by the Bulgarians. What was
the name of your Austrian officer, whose un-
truthful messages so annoyed you? No, you
ought to be far more consistent. Personally,
I have heard that these poor devils of war
correspondents have no end of a time in fur-
nishing you with these dishes which you so
dislike and yet so ravenously eat. I don't
know whether all the stories one hears are
true, but looking at the map published in the
rag of which you are so proud this morning,
it would seem that this fighting took place a
good thirty miles from the nearest cable office.
You will see that the telegraph office from
which it was sent is Constantinople. The bat-
tle began at daybreak, the story takes you up
to 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon; and you
read it at your breakfast table to-day. I am
nothing of a soldier, but as a business man, it
seems to me that somebody has put in some
pretty quick work here. It may be all very
wicked and naughty and unpatriotic or any-
xvi WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
thing you please, but this bit of work is going
to make a lot of people buy this particular
paper to-morrow and the next day. From a
business man's point of view, it looks to me to
be good work. Well, here we are."
II
FOUR Englishmen were seated at the cen-
tre table in the elegant dining-room of
the Hotel Bristol, Vienna. They had all ar-
rived at Vienna that morning by different
routes. They were, however, all obsessed with
a single idea. This was to arrive in the Bal-
kans in the shortest possible time. They were
four latter-day adventurers; that is, they were
special correspondents of four great London
dailies. They had been sent out post haste in
order that they might arrive at the seat of
probable war before hostilities actually broke
out. It was quite evident that all the four
knew their business. They were old acquaint-
FACETS xvii
ances and they had met in the hotel dining-
room by chance.
As this brochure deals with a phase in the
life of some of these latter-day adventurers, it
may be permitted to give some description of
these four representatives as they sit at meat.
Three are men in the prime of life, the fourth
is younger. All four, however, have stamped
upon their features the expression found in
those who have done things in the world; men
who have been called upon to rely upon them-
selves in difficult and trying situations ; men of
self-control and indomitable energy; men of
quick, versatile wit. Although they are all
marked with this particular stamp of relia-
bility, yet neither of the four is like the other.
In reality, they have been engaged for the last
ten to fifteen years in the most cut throat com-
petition. In spite of this, they are the best of
friends, and discuss openly their hopes and
fears for the coming campaign; the different
spheres to which they have been allotted or
which they have chosen for themselves.
xviii WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
There is only one matter that remains secret
between them, and that is their own and indi-
vidual method of making their service to their
employers. Egypt, South Africa, Manchu-
ria, Persia, Morocco, have all been the scenes
of desperate rivalry between them. Still here
at Vienna, they meet on neutral ground, the
best of friends, albeit the best of rivals.
"What made you choose the Bulgars?" said
one of the adventurers, turning to the small
clean-shaven man of the party.
"Unfortunately, I had no choice in the mat-
ter. I wanted to go with the Turks, but my
people had a special man already in Con-
stantinople, and they thought that he was bet-
ter in with them than I should be. I don't
want to go with these Slav peasants. I know
that they will run at the first smell of a Turk,
and I don't want to run with them."
"Of course, they will run," said the young-
est of the group, a clean upstanding fellow.
"The Bulgarian army will never be able to
withstand the moral effect that centuries of
FACETS xix
the Turk have ground into the Bulgarian race.
I, myself, am going with the Turks, because
I think I shall have something of a pull, owing
to the fact that my people are well known in
Constantinople."
"Why are you going with the Turks? 1 ' said
the little man to the more silent of his com-
panions.
"I am going with the Turk, mainly because
I know the Turk."
"By which cryptic remark, you mean . . ."
"There is nothing cryptic about it. I mean
what I say. I am going with the Turks be-
cause I know the Turks and I hope to be of
greater service to my people with them, than
I should be if I went with the Bulgarians."
"That is," said the little man, "you want to
be on the winning side."
"It is always a good thing to be on the win-
ning side," said the grave man. "When an
army is winning, the authorities are inclined
to be slack in the censorship, but if you think
that the Turks are going to win, I should not
xx WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
advise you to back that opinion at very long
odds or at any price in high figures. Unless I
am very much mistaken, the Bulgarians will
just go through the Turks like a knife goes
through butter."
"There again you are wrong," said the
younger man. "I also know the Turks.
They have an absolute contempt for these Bul-
garians and Servians and you know how they
treated the Greeks. I was there and saw the
way the Turks rolled them up."
"I agree with that opinion," said the little
man. "The terrible Turk is just going to
wipe these people up."
"Very well," said the grave man, "we shall
then probably take you prisoner; we will be
very kind to you and we will prevent the Turks
from ill-using you."
"From which side do you think it will be
the easiest to get the stuff away," said the
fourth man of the party, a robust, full-blooded
member.
"I fancy it will be easiest to get it away
FACETS xxi
from the Bulgarian side," said the dogmatic
little journalist. "You see they are simple
folk, and they are sure not to understand the
higher methods of general staff censorship.
They have probably not given the matter a
thought yet, and of course when they are dis-
organised and are in retreat, they will lose all
control."
"I should not be over-anxious to bet on that
possibility either," said the grave man. "Per-
sonally, I am glad I am with the Turks."
About half an hour after this conversation,
the little party broke up, two of the group to
take the Constantinople Express, the little man
to join the Bulgarians and the fourth of the
party to try his fortune with the Montenegrins.
THE THEATRE OF WAR IN THE BALKAN STATES AND TURKEY
(The shaded sections are Macedonia and Novi-Bazar)
Copyright, IQI2, by the Review of Reviews Company, Xew York. Reproduced by permission
With the Conquered Turk
CHAPTER I
THE MEET
THE thirty latter-day adventurers were
out for all the journalistic plunder they
could lay their hands upon. At the expense
of the Ottoman Government they were to be
conveyed in a special train to the scene of their
depredations. This train was to carry the
thirty ruffians who were representing all the
great journals of Europe. It was also to carry
the thirty odd other ruffians who were their
servants, as well as wagon loads of horses and
impedimenta. It always takes the station
staff in Turkey some time to build up a train.
The building up of a train such as this, how-
ever, was no ordinary matter, especially as it
had to be tacked on to a troop train full of
Redifs for the front. It was, therefore, a
2 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
great occasion, and the platform of the Stam-
boul station presented a memorable scene.
The thirty latter-day adventurers them-
selves were a cohort worth while coming miles
to see. The average war correspondent has
evolved for himself his own style and fashion
in service dress. This is usually a mixture
between that of the horse soldier of fiction and
the stage villain. In some nationalities, this
affectation in dress is more exaggerated than
in others. For the most part the British ad-
venturers of experience have toned down the
exuberant affectation that marked the dress of
the original military journalist. It is now
even possible to find some of the more serious
adventurers who are content to take the field
soberly attired in civilian clothes. The ad-
venturers who were accompanying the Turks,
included Englishmen, Russians, Austrians,
Frenchmen, Hungarians and one accidental
Italian. Each group affected something of a
national idiosyncrasy in the general tone of its
outfit. That is to say, the Germans only
THE MEET 3
thinly veiled the fact that they were officers
in disguise and strutted the platform with
martial step. The Frenchmen, showing senti-
mental attachment to the cause which they
had espoused, had adopted the khaki kalpak
of the Turkish Army, The Russians, who are
nothing if they are not thorough, had com-
pletely equipped themselves for horrid war.
The Italian, who had slipped in by mistake,
the peace between his countrv and the Otto-
man Empire not yet having been arranged,
had essayed the picturesque and was more like
a corsair than any of his confreres. The
Britishers were ill-sorted. The recruits to the
fraternity had evidently seen some one of the
old and obsolete type of war correspondent on
the lecture platform. They were attired with
the straps, watercasks, revolvers, bowie knives,
Thermos flasks, Sam Brown belts, and all the
other truck which it is the first lesson of active
and serious-minded men to learn to discard.
The veterans, and there were not many, were
less pronounced in their official dress. In
4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
their cases a stout shooting suit usually suf-
ficed. There were, however, exceptions to
these, and one gaunt Englishman wore the
service uniform of the British army without
its distinguishing badges. Another, and it is
believed that he was a photographer, had evi-
dently instructed his tailor to dress him on the
lines of the boy scouts.
The Turkish General Staff had detailed
four officers to have charge of this motley regi-
ment. In reality, five officers were detailed,
but the senior, exercising the very subtle wis-
dom of which he was possessed, selected to
remain behind to escort the foreign attaches.
The Senior Officer told off to the adventurers
was a Bosniak, who had gleaned most of his
European ideas in Berlin. When it is under-
stood that this Bosniak shepherd was also an
ex-deputy his capabilities can be readily as-
sessed. His subordinates were a bibulous
Albanian Bey, whose only noticeable fault was
an excess of bonhomie, which on the slightest
encouragement became inarticulate affection;
THE MEET 5
a little Levantine-Moslem lieutenant of the
exquisite variety of Young Turk, a type easily
confused with a barber's assistant; and a gross
brute of a Pera corner-boy disguised for the
occasion as a reserve officer of cavalry. If one
dispensed with the veneer of politesse Turque,
it was easy to see that this little star! of censors
resented very much the duties that were thrust
upon them. The only compensation really
was the probability of being ab)e to add to the
daily ration through association with foreign-
ers with means at their command, and like-
wise to evade the stresses of battle.
But we are getting away from the platform.
The adventurers were due to leave Stamboul
at five in the afternoon. As the whole world
knows Turkish trains never run up to time.
There was, therefore, a long wait before the
adventurers were fairly under way. It was
not an uninteresting period. To begin with,
the first portion of the train, as has already
been stated, was a troop train. Just at five
o'clock, when the adventurers' express should
6 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
have steamed out of the station, the Redif bat-
talion which was to accompany them marched
on to the platform. It marched on bravely
with band and banner. The commanding of-
ficer never troubled to dismount from the
shaggy pony that served him as a charger, but
rode at the head of his regiment right up to
the train.
It might have been observed by any of the
adventurers or any of their friends who were
seeing them off, who, at the moment, had any-
thing but a personal interest in the war, that
this Redif battalion marched 600 strong. To
control these bearded ruffians, there were only
five officers including the commandant. It
might also have been observed that the whole
of the equipment of the battalion was freshly
drawn from store; that the boots were inno-
cent of dubbing or any kind of grease; that at
the moment ranks were broken to permit of
entraining, the majority of men took off their
boots and proceeded to examine their feet. It
might also have been observed that while this
Calling oul the reservists in a Turkish village before the war
THE MEET 7
regiment was being entrained, one of the men
in the rear company was taken ill. From the
symptoms, it looked as if the man had Asiatic
cholera. The medical officer with the bat-
talion, however, did not seem to come to the
same diagnosis, and the patient was put into a
compartment with his fellows. In parenthe-
sis, it may be said, that he was buried the next
morning outside the station, where the train
made a long halt.
As soon as the battalion had entrained and
the men for the most part had divested them-
selves of their boots, a little impromptu enter-
tainment was arranged to entice the foreign
element present. It was designed to show the
enthusiasm and patriotism of the assembled
reservists. A company of musicians with
knee-fiddles and reed-pipes fell in, and, to the
sound of their graceless music, the light-
footed of the battalion began a heavy Ana-
tolian dance. In the meantime, the censors
moved amongst the adventurers and pointed
out the extreme high spirits of those dull dan-
8 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
cing soldiers, and invited all and sundry to
make mental notes of the spirit stimulating the
Turkish army. The adventurers were, how-
ever, far too much engaged with their own
concerns. It was no mean business to control
the amount of baggage that the average inex-
perienced correspondent considered appropri-
ate to ensure mobility in the field. After
some further delay, when the dancing had
petered out, the battalion was entrained and
the portion of the train reserved for the guests
of the Ottoman Government backed into the
siding.
It is now time to begin to individualise. To
a large extent the story which is about to be
told is the adventures which befell one of these
latter-day buccaneers. The ordinary sub-
scriber to a newspaper knows little of the dif-
ficulties that have to be faced and surmounted
to enable him to read, over his breakfast coffee
each morning, a true, first-hand, and unvar-
nished account of the great happenings that
grace the pages. It is a little thing to open a
THE MEET 9
still damp newspaper and to read hurriedly
between the mouthfuls of a meal the few de-
scriptive lines that tell of a great battle fought,
a victory won, a defeat suffered. It is no con-
cern of the average reader that the appearance
in his morning paper of these few descriptive
lines is the result, it may be, of infinite re-
source, of terrible hardship, and perhaps even
of desperate danger. He little knows or
cares what anxieties have racked the mind of
the man who secures the news, or of the ex-
penditure of gold which the paper itself has
had to make, to enable its readers to say, as
they nod to friends at the railway station, "I
see they had another big battle in the Balkans
this morning."
The writer, therefore, in following the story
of the thirty latter-day adventurers, will con-
fine himself mainly to the adventures of one
particular group of British correspondents.
He will introduce this group for the first time
as they take their places in the compartment
allotted to them by the Bosniak Press censor.
io WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
It is composed of three adventurers. The
first is a robust, hardy looking man who re-
joices in the name of the Dumpling, and is
renowned amongst London journals as a tem-
pestuous recorder of stirring events. He has
not confined his energies to wars alone. If
there is a secret to be unravelled, a cause
celebre to be exploited, or a political eruption
to be described, he is the man chosen, that the
readers of his paper may have moving interest
in its strongest lights. He is also experienced
in the paths of war. He has followed the
drum in South Africa; marched with the
Japanese through Manchuria; and mixed
with revolutionaries in half a dozen capitals.
Of his two companions in the compartment,
one is a man of much the same age, and the
other a boy in the first flush of energetic man-
hood. The former is known to his friends as
the Centurion. He has the reputation of hav-
ing participated in more warfare than any
living man of his age. Usually he cloaks the
energy and experience thus gained, under a
THE MEET u
guise of fatuous levity. On this occasion,
however, he is starting his campaign over-
weighted with a common heritage of a stay in
Constantinople. He is suffering from a
Levantine form of influenza, that is a type of
disease in itself.
The youth is known to the confraternity as
Jew's Harp Junior. He is not really a bona
fide journalist, but is the brother of the repre-
sentative of one of the great London dailies,
who, owing to a certain nervous affection, and
being of a vibratory nature, had earned the
sobriquet of the "Jew's Harp."
By the time the adventurers and their bag-
gage had been bundled into the train, and
their retainers had been found places, there
were many visitors collected to wish them
Godspeed. Chief amongst these were some
members of the corps of journalists perma-
nently stationed in the Ottoman capital.
These gentlemen were generally responsible
for the ease and rapidity with which the ad-
venturers had been mobilised at the base.
12 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
There were even ladies present to wish the
press men adieux, for it would be a poor latter-
day adventurer who could not mobilise a heart
in the same space of time that it takes to mobi-
lise a caravan. Jew's Harp Junior was a
special favourite, and when at last frantic
blasts upon the horn suggested that the ad-
venturers were really leaving for the front,
fair hands deftly pinned a parte bonheur upon
the lapel of his coat.
A moment before the train started there was
a rush for the carriage in which our group was
installed. "How many are there in here?"
said an agitated voice, "three only?" The
owner of the agitated voice inserted his head
himself, and before the Centurion or the
Dumpling realised what was happening, a
superfluity of baggage including a loose sad-
dle and bridle were thrown into the compart-
ment. As the train moved off, the owner of
this new harness pushed himself in, stumbled
over the collective wares, and apologised with
true British directness, saying: "I am very
THE MEET 13
sorry, and I hope that I shall not inconveni-
ence you, but I had to get in somewhere."
The Centurion's remarks — his head racked
with an influenza headache — will not bear
repetition. The Dumpling maintained a dip-
lomatic silence, whilst Jew's Harp Junior was
overtly hostile.
The newcomer was a new recruit, a very
new recruit, to the corps of British war cor-
respondents. He was so new that he was
unknown to the other occupants of the car-
riage. He was a fresh, good-looking, soft-
spoken youth. From that moment, he was
called the "Innocent," and subsequent events
were to show how completely the soubriquet
described the fresh naivete of the man's de-
lightful character. The Innocent's history
requires a little elucidation. Although new
to the rougher work of the adventurer's
strange lot, the Innocent was no stranger to
the paths of journalism. He was the foreign
editor of a London daily. The directors of
his paper, having determined, late in the day,
14 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
to send a representative to the seat of war, had
not found a suitable selection ready to hand.
They had, therefore, driven forth the Inno-
cent and he had arrived at Constantinople
twenty-four hours before the train of adven-
turers started for the front. He knew noth-
ing of soldiers, less of horses and very little of
men. To begin with, he made a bad impres-
sion in the coupe that he had selected. He
had struck two old soldiers and the brother of
a third old soldier. Moreover, the severest
of the old soldiers was sick of a distemper.
The train glided slowly out of the station to
the clash of the brazen instruments of the
Redifs' band, playing discordantly from the
depths of an empty luggage van. It was
already dark and the lights of Stamboul on
either side, were augmented by a firework dis-
play from many of the windows neighbouring
the line. These displays were ordered to im-
press the foreign adventurers of the enthusi-
asm of the people at the state of war. As soon
as the sounds of the band subsided and the oc-
THE MEET 15
cupants of the coupe could make themselves
heard, Jew's Harp Junior remarked fatuously:
"Well, we are really off."
The Centurion who was trying to disengage
himself from the ill-ordered mass of saddlery
that had accompanied the Innocent into the
carriage, remarked: "We shall be lucky if
we get out of this train within three days."
"Three days?" Innocent said, in the midst
of an apology he was making to the Dumpling
on account of a trunk he was trying to put
upon the rack, "Why, I have .brought no food
with me."
This was too much for an old soldier like
the Centurion who was sick in body and ill
at ease:
"You don't mean to say that you have come
into this carriage without food. Don't you
realise what that means? You will have to
live on three men who know their business and
have brought just sufficient food for them-
selves. You have no right to come on this
kind of business unless you are prepared to
16 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
look after yourself. Not only do you come
and make yourself a nuisance to other people
by forcing yourself into their carriage, but you
make it imperative that they keep you as well."
Innocent was absolutely knocked out by the
sudden and savage attack. He apologised
again and offered to leave the compartment at
the first stop. The Centurion was somewhat
appeased and he sank back upon his own heap
of baggage to nurse his headache. Thus the
adventurers started for the front.
In order that the reader may appreciate the
condition of affairs at which this trainload of
correspondents were hoping to assist, it is
necessary to give some superficial detail of the
Turkish operations as they had so far devel-
oped. It must be remembered that this is
mainly the story of the Centurion. It does
not, therefore, profess to be a history of the
Balkan War, or even a comprehensive account
of the Turkish operations throughout Mace-
donia. It is really only a narrative of the
Turkish campaign in Thrace, as far as it was
THE MEET 17
possible for one single correspondent to fol-
low it, and to furnish his newspaper with a
consecutive narrative. All the side issues of
the campaign and the mire of diplomacy
which led up to the outbreak of hostilities
against the Montenegrins, Servians, Greeks
and whatnots, are affairs apart from this story.
The Turkish General Staff believed that by
the date of the outbreak of war they had dis-
tributed their armies in sufficient strength in
Macedonia to enable them to hold the minor
invasions in check until such time as their
main army in Thrace was able to defeat the
chief Bulgarian force. By this success, which
they knew must be gained in Thrace, they
trusted to turn the whole scale of battle. It
was their intention to march up the valley of
the Maritza and by sheer weight of numbers
to force the Allies to conform to their advance
and thus render any side-advantages that
might have been obtained in Macedonia or
elsewhere, to be but temporary. The Turks
argued that the dislocated invaders would be
18 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
forced to come tumbling back to their own
countries to defend them from their all-con-
quering progress. Such was the scheme of
the Ottoman General Staff working night and
day in the Shereskiet buildings in Stamboul.
It was an ambitious plan of campaign, and on
paper it read so true that the officers of the
General Staff themselves not only believed
that it was practicable, but also that it was cer-
tain of success. They worried little about
those affairs of administration and supply
which in all campaigns are the chief essential.
In order to carry out this proposed role of the
offensive, the Ottoman General Staff intended
to have concentrated four army corps on the
line Adrianople — Kirk Kilisse. They also
intended to prepare an expeditionary force at
the port of Media, which, when the main
army began its irresistible forward movement,
was to have been rapidly transported by way
of the Black Sea to some convenient point on
the Bulgarian coast line in the vicinity of
Varna. The Turks counted on their num-
THE MEET 19
bers. In this they made a similar error to
that which we ourselves made in South
Africa, when we foolishly counted a man, a
rifle and horse, no matter the experience of the
man, as a military asset. The Turks relied
upon their very excellent method of mobili-
sation, which they pushed with extreme vig-
our. The Redifs arrived up in their thou-
sands and were equipped and armed at the
arsenals, to be spirited away into Thrace by
the trainload.
Competent British observers who saw these
happenings at the base, however, shook their
heads and said little. They saw units pre-
pared to take the field that were so short of
officers, that the majority of the sections were
commanded by sergeants. They saw men
who had never used anything but sandals in
their lives, trying to march in cheap contract
boots that hurt the feet; they saw men who
were due within thirty-six hours to take their
places in the troop train, learning, not only the
goose step, but also the mechanism of the rifle
20 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
for the first time; they saw horses that had
been taken that very morning out of the hack-
ney carriages in the Grande Rue de Pera,
turned into gun-teams and driven by drivers
who knew nothing of the art. The competent
observers saw all these things and shook their
heads. Unless there was something that was
much better in front of this rabble, the chances
of their marching up the valley of the Ma-
ritza were very small indeed.
The General Staff, however, were satisfied
that all was well. In Kirk Kilisse they had
an adequate force sent forward as an advance
guard to cover the concentration that was tak-
ing place behind. It is true that they had
been forced to leave the first initiative to the
Bulgarians, but they had good information as
to their movements; they knew practically the
exact strength of the invasion that was already
pouring over the frontier. They were per-
fectly confident that they would be able to deal
with this invasion in due course, when the col-
umns of Bulgarians were entangled in the
THE MEET 21
mountains north of Kirk Kilisse. For this
reason they had only held Mustapha Pasha
and the Tundza Passes lightly. They were so
confident as to the results of the fighting be-
tween the Bulgarian and their own advance
guards from October 18th to the 22nd, that
they agreed that the moment was ripe to
allow their foreign guests to join the army at
the front. Kirk Kilisse, therefore, was the
destination of this trainload of adventurers
with whose fortunes the reader is now identi-
fied. As a matter of history, at the very mo-
ment that the train was moving out of the
station, the Turkish arms were suffering the
first of those paralysing disasters which dur-
ing the earlier weeks of the war, lost to them
forever their European provinces.
CHAPTER II
TO THE FIRST COVERT
TO understand the situation in the middle
of which the trainload of latter-day ad-
venturers found themselves at daybreak on the
following morning, it is necessary to continue
the brief sketch of the early history of the cam-
paign in Thrace. The Turkish armies had
been divided into two wings. Of these the
right wing was commanded by Mahmud
Muktear Pasha, the left was commanded by
Abdullah Pasha, the latter reserving to him-
self the right of Generalissimo provided he
ever had 'the opportunity of exercising con-
trol, or of communicating with his subordi-
nates. The selection of these two officers was
the outcome of a desire to humour German
military feeling and the leading sentiment of
the Committee of Union and Progress. Ab-
dullah was one of Von der Goltz's swans,
22
TO THE FIRST COVERT 23
while Mahmud Muktear was a Committee
bully. Goodness only knows from where
they raked up Abdullah, but Mahmud Muk-
tear was minister of marine when the war
broke out, and was transferred hurriedly from
the admiralty to a command in the field. Al-
together there were supposed to be five corps
d'armee composing the army of the offensive
in Thrace. These were the First Army com-
manded by Omar Taver; the Second com-
manded by Torgad Shevket; the Third com-
manded by Mahmud Muktear; the Fourth
commanded by Ahmed Abouk and the Seven-
teenth (commander unknown). The Seven-
teenth Corps was a kind of Colonel Bogie of
the Thracian links. Every corps commander
in turn was waiting upon it during the most
critical moments of battle. No one ever
seemed to have seen it, and every defeated
general, sooner or later, traced his failure to
its non-arrival. If the truth be known the
Seventeenth Corps was never really put to-
gether. It was to have been composed en-
24 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
tirely from Redif divisions. Such units as
should have gone to its credit, even if they
were mobilised — which is doubtful — were
probably stolen on the railway by the first di-
visional general who opined that he was short
of men and then ran away when battle was
joined. Anyway the Seventeeth were the
phantom cohorts of Lule Burgas.
The first four corps named above were to
have concentrated on the line Adrianople —
Kirk Kilisse in the following order from
right to left: — Mahmud Muktear, Omar
Taver, Torgad Shevket, Ahmed Abouk with
the phantom Seventeenth somewhere in the
rear on communications. It must not be
thought that either of these corps d'armee
were up to strength. Most of the Nizam
Corps had contributed their quota to the
Adrianople Garrison. Some of Torgad Shev-
ket's Second Corps had been left at the Darda-
nelles while no unit in the whole army was
up to the intended war strength. Many in
fact were skeleton units padded out with any
Mahmud Muktear Pasha, ( Command r of I he Turk sh '! hird Anm ' '.< irps.
Mahmud Muktear was am mg the earliest of the fugitives,
had misgivings as to the safety of the rest of his corps
established along the Yi/.a Road."
He
TO THE FIRST COVERT 25
class of Redif that the mobilisation agents
could lay hands upon and hereby hangs the
moral of the whole debacle.
When on October 19, 1912, the Bulgarian
invasion had become a very serious affair the
Ottoman armies that should have been upon
the alignment already indicated were really
very much in the following order of chaotic
concentration. An advance guard from the
Third Corps which was straggling up the
Sarai-Viza Road was at Kirk Kilisse. The
First Corps was concentrating at Baba Eski
preparatory to moving up into the line from
which the offensive was to start. The Fourth
Corps was collecting at Lule Burgas, while
the Second Corps, such as there were of it, had
left the railway at Tchorlu or the boat at Ro-
dosto to reach the line of concentration by
march route. On October 20th and 21st the
Turkish force in Kirk Kilisse seemed to have
held up the Bulgarian advance. Mahmud
Pasha was here in person. The war minis-
ters' staff at the Shereskiet was fearfully
26 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
"bucked." They issued orders for the for-
eign press correspondents to proceed on the
23rd direct to Kirk Kilisse. The foreign
attaches were warned to follow the next
day.
This optimism, however, was doomed to be
short-lived, because, before even the order di-
recting the correspondents to proceed to the
front could be countermanded, the disaster
which was the forerunner of the debacle that
befell the Ottoman arms in Thrace, had taken
place at Kirk Kilisse. On the night of Octo-
ber 22nd-23rd the Bulgarians rushed the Kirk
Kilisse outpost line. The Turkish estimate
of night outposts is conceived very much in
the same light-hearted spirit as that in which
the night watchman in India approaches his
duties. That they were rushed in the damp,
wet weather that initiated the campaign is not
a matter of surprise. It is only astonishing
that they have not been more often similarly
overthrown. The advance guards billeted
in and about the Forty Churches just broke
and fled down the Viza Road before the Slav
TO THE FIRST COVERT 27
bayonets. Mahmud Muktear was among the
earliest of the fugitives. He had misgivings
as to the safety of the rest of his corps estab-
lished along the Viza Road. The three divi-
sions of the First Corps were the nearest
Turkish gros to the scene of the disaster.
They were ordered up hot foot to repair the
desperate set-back. The three divisions of
the First Corps, like the units of the Third
Corps, on the Viza Road, were echeloned be-
tween the line of concentration and Baba
Eski. The Bulgarians, profiting by their ini-
tial success, caught the three divisions of the
First Corps in detail and severally defeated
them at Kavakli, Yenije and Islamkuey.
This, however, is another story. The situa-
tion, as it concerned the trainload of adven-
turers on the morning of October 24th was
that it was not expedient for the train to pro-
ceed to Kirk Kilisse as originally intended.
"Where the blazes are we?" It was broad
daylight and the Dumpling had his fat per-
son half out of the window. This remark
28 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
was addressed to his companions at large, who,
tied up in knots with their baggage and the
Innocent's saddlery, were pretending sleep.
The Centurion looked a perfect worm and his
cough suggested to all within earshot that he
had at least one foot in the grave. Dump-
ling's dragoman now appeared with a tray.
He had conjured two cups of Turkish coffee
from somewhere. He also had information.
The Bosniak Shepherd had been talking over
the telephone with someone. That someone
had given orders that the train was not to pro-
ceed, but was to be side-tracked at Seidler,
and there await orders.
This information interested the Centurion.
In spite of his influenza he pulled on his
leather jerkin and sauntered out. He walked
out past the station buildings behind which
the Redifs were burying the comrade who
had died of cholera during the night. As he
cleared the compound the Centurion thrust
his hands into his leather pockets and whistled.
"What a country for cavalry!" was the
TO THE FIRST COVERT 29
thought uppermost in his mind. As far as
eye could reach he was surrounded by an ex-
panse of rolling down-land.
It was a compromise between the high veldt
of South Africa and the grassy uplands of
Sussex and Hampshire. Then something
moving caught the Centurion's trained eye.
It looked like transport. A long line of men
and animals was coming out of one of those
depressions which are peculiar to this kind
of country. The Centurion was without his
glasses so he sauntered back to the train. By
the time he had returned with the glasses the
movement from the north had definitely ma-
terialised. The whole countryside was full
of country wagons. At first the Centurion
thought they must be empty transports com-
ing back from the army. The glasses, how-
ever, suggested another story. This was no
army transport; everything about the move-
ment was civilian. The columns consisted of
buffalo wagons, bullock carts and donkey
shays. Each conveyance was packed tight
3 o WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
with household goods, women, and children.
A crowd of peasants in frenzied haste were
urging the animals through the mire. The
Centurion put away his glasses and wandered
back to the train. Something had happened.
Either the Turks had found it necessary to
clear the country of the entire civilian popu-
lace, or there had been something of the na-
ture of a Turkish disaster up in the north.
It was not long before the head of this trans-
port column reached the confines of the sta-
tion. Then it was possible to see that this
was no ordinary clearance of the country.
Wild-eyed women with their legs and skirts
mired to the knees, were struggling through
the morasses that in Turkey pass for roads.
Numbers were dragging their children beside
them; many were weighted down with crying
infants. Old men who had almost reached
the perpetual fireside age, already foundered,
were clinging to the carts in which tired and
distressed animals were toiling under the
blows of younger peasants. It was a flight, a
TO THE FIRST COVERT 31
dishevelled flight of the populace; an exodus
brought on by actual terror. It was evident
that these wretched peasants had just seized
whatever Lares et Penates that came to hand,
and had cast them with their infants upon the
wagons without waiting to sort out the wheat
from the tares. Descendants of a Nomad
race they had instinctively taken the road to
save themselves from some terror that was be-
hind them. Judging from the state of the
animals and the wretched women and chil-
dren, these fugitives must have been toiling
down the mud tracks all through the livelong
night. Without doubt such a panic had been
caused by events of a serious nature. Of it-
self the state of these fugitives was a sufficient
military reason for the halt that the adventur-
ers' train had made since daybreak.
But what an occasion for the adventurers
themselves? As soon as the story went along
the train that refugees were arriving, there
was a kind of galvanic stampede among the
newspaper men in the train. The journalists
32 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
were anxiously calling for their dragomen.
These later were, with difficulty, unearthed
from beneath the horse rugs in the cattle
trucks. The photographers and cinemato-
graph artists brought out their cameras and
film-engines with such rapidity that the Bos-
niak Shepherd felt it his patriotic duty to for-
bid anyone from taking photographs.
Misguided worthy! If a squad of metro-
politan policemen have often found it impos-
sible to prevent the Cockney photographic
artist from taking pictures in London's Holy
of Holies, how much more impossible would
it be for the slow- thinking Turk to prevent
the same experts from carrying out their in-
stinctive functions when the magic word
"refugee" was in the air. This was the first
lance that the Bosniak Shepherd splintered
with the adventurers. It was not a heavy one,
but there was no question as to whom the her-
alds would have adjudged the success.
The Centurion who was still feeling as if
he had been beaten with sticks, retired to his
TO THE FIRST COVERT 33
compartment to study the map. The train
was at Seidler Station; that is, it would be
about twelve miles from Lule Burgas, the
nearest big village, and at least thirty miles
from Kirk Kilisse, where on the preceding
day the Turkish troops had been said to be
holding their own against the Bulgarians. It
was perfectly evident, therefore, that some-
thing untoward had happened at Kirk Kilisse.
As the Centurion argued: If these refugees
had travelled at the rate of two miles an hour
all night, they would just have made the dis-
tance from the environment of Kirk Kilisse
to Seidler. Whatever had happened, there-
fore, must have happened at Kirk Kilisse just
24 hours previous to the arrival of the ad-
venturers at Seidler. The Centurion sent for
his dragoman.
This is to introduce John. John was a
great man and, as he will appear on several
occasions throughout this narrative, it may be
just as well formally to introduce him here.
John is an Armenian from Broussa. That
34 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
will be sufficient for anyone who knows the
Levant. To those who are fortunate enough
to be ignorant of the Levant, it is necessary
to say that John has the flashing eye and the
truculent moustache of a desperado and gay
Lothario and the heart of a whelk. Never-
theless John has his points; one of which is
a great desire to be a British subject. He has
tried a good many things. He has done five
years in the French Foreign Legion, five
years in South Africa and Rhodesia. He has
also induced an English school teacher to
share his fortunes for better or worse. He
had, too, before he took service with the Cen-
turion, an inordinate estimate of his own qual-
ities. Withal the Centurion liked John al-
though it would have been very difficult for
anyone who might have seen the two together
really to believe this statement.
John of the flashing eye was instructed by
the Centurion to interview some of the refu-
gees. Whereupon John, quite understanding
what was required of him, strode out into the
TO THE FIRST COVERT 35
most prominent place in the station, sum-
moned four or five of the wretched peasants
to his presence and in strident tones proceeded
to harangue them. At this moment the Bos-
niak Shepherd was returning from a futile at-
tempt to coerce the cinematograph mongers.
His eye fell upon John. Here at least was
a responsive target. The Centurion was
watching this from the carriage. He didn't
even hear what the Bosniak Shepherd said to
John, but in one second the flash went out of
the latter's flaming eyes and the heart of a
whelk asserted itself. John slunk into ob-
scurity on the far side of the train.
To all intents and purposes, however, the
Centurion knew what had happened. A long
experience had sharpened his deductive facul-
ties. His colleagues in the compartment,
however, were boiling over with excitement.
The Innocent, his eyes flaming, came back,
and settling a luncheon basket, began to write
a despatch. The Dumpling, who was pos-
sessed of one of those natures who can never
36 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
see another man doing unnecessary and use-
less work without feeling that he too should
be working, began to buzz about the train to
find out if there were any means of despatch-
ing a telegram.
It is about time to introduce intimately an-
other of the chief actors on this stage. This
is the Diplomat. The Diplomat came to
take counsel of the Centurion. The Diplo-
mat is one of those charming young men that
the Universities from time to time push into
journalism. They are a sort of Heaven-sent
leaven designed by Providence to save Fleet
Street from the level of the Press Club.
Hypnotised by the great influence of the jour-
nal that employed him, the Diplomat lived
only to stoke its foreign department with
telegraphic fuel. It mattered little to him
whether the fuel he supplied was superior
silkstone or disreputable coke; the furnace in
London was a gaping maw; the heat there was
sufficient to devour coals of all qualities. The
Diplomat, moreover, was possessed of that
TO THE FIRST COVERT 37
particular genius of divination, which can al-
ways find value in news that the majority of
his colleagues, less gifted than he, would re-
ject as worthless. The Diplomat was bound
to the Centurion not only in the matter of
common sympathies and affection, but in a
business relationship in that they were equal
partners in a motor car. The Diplomat also
was new to the tented field, and he came to
the grey head of the Centurion, from time to
time, for advice. At this particular moment
he was red hot. He began with the magic
poison of the word "refugee," which had al-
ready permeated his brain. This indeed was
fuel of the silkstone brand. He also was pos-
sessed of a grievance.
"Look here," he said, addressing the Cen-
turion vehemently. "Do you know what I
have just heard? These refugees say that they
have come all the way from Kirk Kilisse, and
that the Bulgarians took the place yesterday
morning. They also say that the Bulgarian
cavalry is pursuing them. They say that we
38 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
may expect the troopers over those hills at any
moment. Also these brutes of Bulgarian cav-
alry have been committing the most outrage-
ous atrocities on the Mohammedan women
and children. That is why these poor people
are so terror-struck. Don't you think we
ought to get our horses out of the trucks?"
The Centurion slowly took up a bottle of
Aspirin, which he had called in to his personal
aid and remarked: "There are two things,
Diplomat, which contradict each other in
your story. Either the Bulgarian cavalry has
not been committing any atrocities on the
women and children — which from your stand-
point would be a pity — and is pursuing, or it
has been committing atrocities and is not pur-
suing. You see the two pastimes do not syn-
chronise. I am speaking now as a cavalry-
man. It is not, therefore, necessary to unbox
the nags. How are you going to get your
horses out of these trucks? It requires a plat-
form or a ramp. The equipment of Seidler
furnishes neither of these commodities. It is
TO THE FIRST COVERT 39
perfectly certain that something desperate has
been happening up Kirk Kilisse way. These
people are seeing red and have the fear of God
or rather the Bulgarians in their hearts, but I
don't think the trouble they fear is quite so
close as you imagine it to be. Anyway, we
have not heard the sound of a gun yet. It will
be time to become anxious when you can hear
the guns."
"But there has been desperate fighting up
there and we have not seen it," urged the Dip-
lomat.
The Centurion shrugged his shoulders.
"One cannot expect to see everything; one
must miss something."
"If I only felt sure," said the Diplomat, and
here it was that he came down to the real trou-
ble that was agitating his mind, "that Jew's
Harp Senior was not getting some special fa-
cilities out of this, I would be more than
happy. I don't believe a word of this story
of his being left behind in Constantinople sick.
It is just a plant by which he is going to get
40 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
some special facilities. He has got a car and
I believe he is going to get up to the front by
himself."
"That he was sick when we left yesterday, I
know," said the Centurion. "I went to the
trouble of ascertaining myself whether he had
a temperature or not, so you may dismiss your
theory in part. That he will get special fa-
cilities is quite possible. Everything is possi-
ble in this country if you can make it worth
anybody's while to do you a special service.
Anyway you are looking for trouble in ad-
vance. With the best motor car in the world,
and the best will of the Turkish General Staff,
Jew's Harp could not be in front of us at this
moment. You, Diplomat, are, therefore,
much nearer the guns than he is. You, like
the natural-born soldier you are, desire to
march for the guns. You are quite right, and
as soon as you hear the guns, it will be time
enough to march to them."
While the adventurers were agitating them-
selves over the refugees the Bosniak Shepherd
TO THE FIRST COVERT 41
was busily engaged at the station telegraph
trying to get orders. As was to be expected
it was totally impossible for him to find Head
Quarters Staff or anybody in authority who
could give him instructions. As a Turk with-
out instructions is always immobile the train
also remained immobile. The Bosniak Shep-
herd would not instruct the station-master to
let it go either backwards or forward.
About eight in the morning it was seen that
a down train was arriving from Lule Burgas.
As it was possible to see this train for at least
five miles before it arrived the Centurion wan-
dered up the line as far as the distant signal.
There was a water tank here and it seemed
probable that the engine would be stopped to
take water. As the train arrived it presented
the most remarkable sight that the Centurion
ever remembered having seen upon a railway
line. Not only was the top of every wagon
and car crowded with every class of Turkish
humanity, but the cow-catcher and plates of
the engine were covered with khaki-clad fig-
42 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
ures clinging on to the locomotive in the most
cramped and dangerous attitudes. At first
sight the Centurion thought that there must be
some truth in the story of the Bulgarian cav-
alry being in pursuit and that this train had
been furnished with a special guard for pur-
poses of protection; but as the great engine
snorted up to the water tank he saw to his
amazement that these men clinging to the
plates were unarmed.
The engine driver was a Greek who spoke
French and the Centurion climbed up and
joined him on the foot-plate. This train had
only come from Lule Burgas, a matter of
twelve miles away, yet the engine driver had
a most astounding story to tell. He said that
the Bulgarians had taken Kirk Kilisse by as-
sault on the previous night: that their success
had been made in collusion with a certain sec-
tion of Turkish Bulgars in the Ottoman
Army: that the entire Turkish force at Kirk
Kilisse had fled in disorder: and that the fugi-
tives, having thrown away their arms, began to
TO THE FIRST COVERT 43
stream into Lule Burgas on the preceding
evening. By early morning all the roads
leading into Lule Burgas were a seething mass
of panic-stricken soldiers, terrified peasants
and fleeing ammunition carts. Then, some-
where in the vicinity of the town, people had
begun to fire rifles. The cry immediately
went up that the Bulgarians were descending
on the town. The panic communicated itself
to certain Redif troops belonging to the
Fourth Army Corps that were camped behind
the village. Just as the engine driver had re-
ceived his line clear the crowd of refugees and
fugitive soldiers burst into the station and
boarded his train in the manner in which they
could now be seen.
A more astounding sight the Centurion had
certainly never seen in his whole experience of
war. Not only was the train packed with
fugitive soldiers, but there were fugitive offi-
cers as well. The Centurion tried to get into
conversation with one of them. He was of the
same type as the majority of the Young Turk
44 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
officers, — a young man well under thirty.
His eyes were starting out of his head and he
babbled confusedly. He was in such a state
of mental terror that it was impossible for him
to collect his ideas or to speak coherently. Of
such a quality is the half-baked soldier in
which England pretends to believe.
It was evident that a disaster of a very grave
nature had overtaken the Turkish arms, but
there was one saving clause. The Greek en-
gine driver, who was a man with perfectly
clear ideas, said that the panic had only been
partial, that the Nizam troops of the Second
and Fourth Army Corps in the vicinity of
Lule Burgas were unaffected by the stampede
and were being moved forward at once to re-
establish the Turkish positions.
The Centurion returned to the station and
was debating in his mind whether it would be
possible to find some planks to serve as a gang-
way by which to detrain his horses. He felt
sure that the Bosniak Shepherd would almost
immediately receive orders for that portion of
TO THE FIRST COVERT 45
the train containing the adventurers to be sent
back in the direction of the base. Providence
stepped in, however, to order the immediate
adventures of the correspondents. The rear
part of the train that had just come in from
Lule Burgas on its way south in passing
through the station left the rails, and for the
moment there was a definite block upon the
Turkish communications.
From midday to evening the situation inside
the station itself was interesting enough. Ad-
ded to the mass of fugitives that were passing
by road there was this derailed trainload of
panic-stricken deserters. The battalion of
Redifs that belonged to the adventurers' train,
as soon as they fraternised with the refugees,
became obstreperous. With their usual im-
providence or, should it be said, incapacity for
all administration, the authorities at the base
had started this battalion from Stamboul with-
out an ounce of bread. Now that their train
was apparently held up at Seidler, where there
was nothing to be procured, the poor wretched
46 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Redifs had the prospect of a forty-eight hours'
fast.
The stories of the fighting which the panic-
stricken deserters promulgated amongst them,
also, had no very softening effect upon their
nerves. The men paraded up and down the
length of the train and gazed with longing
eyes at the wagons packed with cases of stores
which were the property of the Giaours. The
panicmongers themselves were also feeling a
little hungry.
It is not quite certain what happened, but
the adventurers suddenly heard the voice of
their bibulous Bey raised in anger. He was
expostulating with the round dozen of Otto-
man officers who had come down from Lule
Burgas. It is quite evident, that in his more
sober moments, the bibulous Bey had the com-
mand of very caustic language. If the round-
ness of the backs of his brother officers as he
harangued them is any criterion, the sarcasm
was biting in the extreme. Anyway he put
some sort of life into the despicable crowd, and
u
o
o
~ -t-
CD c>3
I
*??*&â–
mS^t* ... EaJK
1 lUi'l^ . s •
s
CO
S 5
S 1
o
5.5
C j-.
in L
g
'3
TO THE FIRST COVERT 47
a certain number of the panicmongers were
arrested and thrown into an outhouse and kept
there under guard.
About two o'clock in the afternoon, another
train arrived from the direction of Lule Bur-
gas. This brought a breakdown gang with
the more assuring news that the panic had only
been partial; that it had been localised, and
that confidence was re-established. It was ob-
served all the same as a discount to this that
there were a certain number of skulking forms
in khaki in the train which did not belong to
the breakdown gang. The expert with the
gang, after he had looked at the wreck, said
that it would take him four to five hours to
make a deviation that would be practicable.
His gang set to work with a rapidity which
was quite remarkable in a country where man-
ual labour moves slowly. A new ramp was
thrown up beside the embankment, and the
whole permanent way was lifted up and
pushed bodily on to the new ramp.
As it was certain that the work would not
48 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
be effected in the time the expert suggested,
the Centurion, finding that it was impractica-
ble to think of detraining the horses, resolved
to do a little reconnoissance on foot in the di-
rection of Lule Burgas. A walk of three
miles to what appeared to be the top of the
ridge separating Seidler from Lule Burgas
only produced that sensation of an intermina-
ble rise which will be familiar to those who
have toiled up the slopes of the South African
veldt. There was nothing that could be ef-
fected by dismounted reconnoissance, and the
Centurion wandered aimlessly about until it
was time to return. The events of the day had
made a great impression upon him. During
his stay in Constantinople, he had come to the
conclusion that nothing but very quick and de-
cisive successes could have maintained disci-
pline in the troops he saw mobilised in the
capital. Ever since the revolution the officers
of the army, with the notable exception of one
corps, had divided the attention they should
have given to their military duties with politi-
TO THE FIRST COVERT 49
cal coquetry. The field of action of the poli-
tician is not a healthy training-ground for the
soldier. The politician's sphere of influence
and action is found in cities. The young offi-
cer of the Turkish army, therefore, instead of
concentrating his mind upon his one essential
duty, had fallen away after the flesh pots of
political interests. The progress towards real
efficiency in the Army which has been adver-
tised by the late Minister of War and the
Young Turk propaganda was mere eyewash.
It was almost entirely confined to the purchase
of material. The purchase of war-like stores
meant heavy commissions for those empow-
ered to make them. The Ottoman army,
therefore, soon possessed in great quantities the
material, arms, and other commodities upon
which the highest commissions are paid.
There was no real organisation or system of
economic administration. The Adjutant Gen-
eral's department under this system was not as
profitable as that of the Quarter-Master
General's. Therefore it escaped attention.
50 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Moreover the Turkish staff was obsessed with
the strange heresy that a half trained Turk
was the equal of any Greek or Slav soldier that
should take the field. Modern warfare, how-
ever, cares little for tradition and martial in-
stincts except as a basis for skilled workman-
ship. It is to-day a question of handling ex-
quisite machinery. None but skilled work-
men can hope to stand the strain. Those who
claim otherwise are either knaves or fools.
The first fruits of this vicious incompetency
had been demonstrated in the desperate scenes
witnessed at Seidler Station, which, be it re-
membered, was over thirty miles distant from
the nearest town where fighting had taken
place.
The firsl fruits of this vicious incompetency bad been demonstrated
in the desperate scenes witnessed at Seidler Station, which, be il
remembered, was over thirty miles distant from the nearesl
town where fighting had taken place"
CHAPTER III
BLANK
^pHE Centurion flattered himself that he
-■• could exercise control in all circum-
stances. In fact, he had been heard to say he
would sooner be seen dead than for it to be
apparent that he had lost his temper. There
are, however, the exceptional circumstances
which prove the rule. In the early hours of
the morning following the events narrated in
the last chapter, the train conveying the ad-
venturers arrived at Tchorlu. It will be re-
membered that the Centurion was suffering
from a severe attack of Constantinople influ-
enza. He had been harried by the events of
the previous day> and felt keenly the fact that
he had been forced, with the others, to go back
instead of forward, when big events were tak-
ing place at the front. Now that Tchorlu was
reached, the Bosniak Shepherd issued orders
51
52 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
that this was the place where the adventurers
would detrain. Things were very uncomfort-
able that morning. There had been difficulty
in getting any food other than canned tongue,
the most appalling of nutriments, when it is
the basis of four consecutive meals. The In-
nocent also had been troublesome. Half the
night he had been arranging his makeshift
table (which was a luncheon basket, not his
own, be it remembered) in order to write vol-
umes of copy. His arrangement of the table
had interfered with the night's rest of the
others. The Centurion dragged himself out
of the compartment at Tchorlu to be told by
the imperious John that somebody's servant
had stolen his (the Centurion's) bridle. At
this point he came very nearly forgetting all
his principles in the matter of self-control.
He told John to lead him to the man who had
dared to touch his bridle. It was a pet bridle,
a 9th Lancer bit, that he had had for nearly
twenty years, and it hurt him to think that
some knavish syce had stolen it in the night.
BLANK 53
But his troubles did not end here. As he hur-
ried forward to seize the delinquent, his foot
caught in a point-rod and he tripped headlong
into an ash-pit. Now the Centurion was not
seriously hurt, but it was a culminating event
in a sequence of trying circumstances. There-
fore, when he found his pet bridle adorning
the head of a scraggy looking Constantinople
pony, he forgot all his precepts, and then there
was the devil to pay. Three or four syces ran
howling into the wilderness.
The pathetic part of the whole affair was
that the master of the thief, who was totally
incapable of telling one bridle from another,
thinking that all looked like the things that
you put into a horse's mouth to stop him with,
was persistent in claiming the 9th Lancer bit
as his own. However, he saw murder in the
Centurion's eye and the matter was at last sat-
isfactorily arranged.
When the Centurion got back to the com-
partment, the orders were issued for the whole
lot to detrain. In the meantime, the Innocent
54 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
was to be seen surreptitiously stealing down an
adjacent train that was crammed full of refu-
gees. It was said that this train was on the
point of starting for Constantinople. The In-
nocent had a big envelope and a silver medji-
die in his hand. With the air of a conspirator
he was trying to find one or another amongst
the refugees intelligent enough to convey his
copious labours of the night before to the
British post office in Constantinople. The In-
nocent was taking his labours very seriously.
The Centurion, as he watched him searching
amongst the indescribable mass of humanity
that was crushed into the open trucks of that
south bound train, wondered whether he real-
ised that everybody's letters had gone south the
night before.
The detraining at Tchorlu was a very seri-
ous affair. The Bosniak Shepherd and his
staff were absolutely without official informa-
tion. They did not even know what they
would do with the thirty-odd ruffians that the
train vomited forth, to say nothing of their
BLANK 55
stacks of goods, their horses and retinue of
servants. Everything was bundled out on to
the roadside. By the mercy of Providence it
was not raining. Then came the question of
transport. With the exception of the Ger-
mans, none had come supplied with transport.
The old and wary knew they would be able to
hire or purchase transport locally. The new
and confiding had believed the promises of the
Turkish staff that transport would be supplied
them at the expense of the Government.
All things, however, right themselves in the
end. Horses were taken from the trucks and
hired transport was ultimately found. After
about five hours' delay, the Bosniak Shepherd
and his staff went out to prospect for ground
in which to camp. The village of Tchorlu is
some three miles distant from the railway
station. The Bosniak Shepherd first recon-
noitred in the vicinity of the village. This
reconnoissance evidently proved unsatisfac-
tory, as, after a lot of chat, it was decided that
the adventurers should pitch their camp on the
56 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
side of the hill about half way between the
military barracks, which are near the station,
and the village.
The troubles of the adventurers endured in
getting into that camp will interest few but
themselves. The Centurion, who at least
knew something about camps and camping,
had his tent standing before the rest were un-
packed. Then to him came the Corner Boy,
the junior of the Bosniak Shepherd's staff.
This Beggar-on-horseback seeing that the
Centurion's tent was already pitched, came up
with the request that it should be moved ten
paces to the left. The Centurion, whom the
events of the morning had made unapproach-
able, said something in Egyptian Arabic,
which conveyed a sufficiency of meaning to
the Corner Boy. His eyes flashed and he
said he "issued the order" that the tent should
be moved. The reply he got sent him off
to the Bosniak Shepherd, livid with rage, to
whom he explained that if it had not been
for the politesse Turque due to a guest,
BLANK 57
the Centurion would have been a dead man.
However, these little difficulties were ulti-
mately settled and an astonishing encampment
grew up on the slope of the bleakest and cold-
est hillside that was ever allotted to amateur
soldiers. It was an interesting camp to watch.
Fully half of the adventurers had never been
in a tent before. They knew nothing of the
ways of camping and horses. The tents
sprang up in little groups and above each
group there fluttered an indication of the
nationality of the occupants. Cook-houses,
horse lines, servants' quarters, were all indis-
criminately arranged in the smallest possible
space and it was obvious that if the spot re-
mained a camp for any period, it would soon
become so foul as to be untenable.
The several groups of adventurers seemed
to reck nothing of this. The French settled
down to the, to them, artistic business of ade-
quate feeding, the Englishmen to devise means
to work the Censor so as to fulfil the object of
their missions, the Austrians and Germans to
58 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
make themselves as comfortable as they pos-
sibly could without the trouble of mixing
themselves up with any dangerous adjuncts of
war, the Russians, who are desperate persons,
to fill note books with details that would be a
joy to the hearts of a German Bench trying an
espionage case.
It may be explained here, in parenthesis,
that in accepting the assistance of these thirty
adventurers, for the purpose of giving to the
world a true and faithful history of their suc-
cesses, the Turks had endeavoured to keep the
business of correspondents en regie. They
had drawn up a stringent schedule of rules
and regulations by which to order and control
the corps. The terms of this document were
so stringent, that any man who signed them in
good faith was, profanely speaking, putting his
head in a noose. The old soldiers amongst the
English adventurers put their heads together
rather than into the noose and decided to draw
up a set of conditions of their own, by which
they intimated to the Turkish Staff that they
BLANK 59
would never agree to the original conditions
unless their own were complied with. The
smiling head of the Censor's Department in
the Shereskiet, who always had an eye to the
main chance, and who was never too busy to
find time for a fat meal, said, there and then,
that the whole thing was a matter of form, and
that the old and trusted soldiers amongst the
adventurers might make whatsoever condi-
tions they liked. All conditions were agree-
able to his department, and so the matter was
settled.
Arrived at Tchorlu the correspondents of
the English papers were anxious to communi-
cate all that they had seen in the last twenty-
four hours to their journals.
The Dumpling took this matter in hand.
The Bosniak Shepherd and the smiling head
of the Censor's Bureau in Stamboul, however,
were not the same person. The Bosniak was
devoid of humour and imagination. He pro-
duced the official instructions. These insisted
that all communications, including even pri-
60 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
vate letters, must be written in French. It
was no use to insist that the Chief Censor had
made promises in a diametrically opposite
sense. The Bosniak's press formula was his
Bible. The Dumpling, though he wrote
French as easily as he spoke that language, had
visions of the mutilation his best Moliere
would undergo at the hands of English sub-
editors. He spoke his mind openly to the
Bosniak on the subject with the result that the
latter hardened his heart.
Then all the little world at Tchorlu began
to write telegrams in French. Goodness only
knows what they wrote about. No one else is
likely to know because after twenty-four
hours' delay the Bosniak returned all the tele-
grams with the intimation that, as there was
no operator at Tchorlu that could telegraph in
Roman, he suggested that the adventurers had
better put their messages into Turkish. This
was usurping the province of comic opera.
The mental condition of the Dumpling gave
grave cause for apprehension when he was
c
—
f.
BLANK 61
made to understand that the French tongue
was not a sufficiently high test for his paper's
sub-editors, but that they would have to be
tried in Turkish.
The Centurion only laughed as he intimated
all languages were equal to his paper. He
did not add that his already established dak
was taking messages in English daily to the
base. That was no one's affair but his own.
A considerable estrangement grew up at
this period between the Bosniak Shepherd and
his flock. The flock were now introduced to
that exquisite mental torture known as polite
Turkish passive resistance. The Bosniak had
broken his second lance with his charges, and
the heralds gave this bout to him. The Corps
of Adventurers was then politely but firmly
"gated." Orders were issued that no one was
to leave camp without special permission and
an escort. The Pera Corner Boy was placed
on picket duty at the gates of Tchorlu village
and everything living belonging to the adven-
turers' camp was denied entrance. The Cor-
6z WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
ner Boy was really "laying" for the Centurion.
The latter, however, was not walking into any
such foolish trap with his eyes open. He just
sulked and nursed his distemper in his tent.
The Innocent, however, improved the shining
hour by learning to ride a superannuated grey
pony and committing Von der Goltz and
Yorck von Wartenburg to memory. Nothing
but the shortest cut to the complete war corre-
spondent would satisfy his ambition.
Then something happened. No one beyond
the parties concerned quite knows what it was,
but the Centurion sauntered down to the Bos-
nians tent. He had evidently conquered his
cold. The next thing that was known was
that the Corner Boy was seen taking the road
for Constantinople. John says that he was not
consulted in this affair. For once John spoke
the truth.
The adventurers had barely got under can-
vas when the weather changed. Chill winds
blew. This brought up rain and the cold sud-
denly became arctic in its severity. This
BLANK 63
weather is to be expected in Thrace in early
winter even as far south as Tchorlu. The
snow and frost-steeped winds from the great
Russian steppes sweep across the Black Sea
and freeze Thrace tight. The weather, how-
ever, is rarely settled. To-day it may be arc-
tic with feet of frozen snow, to-morrow the
soft zephyrs from the Mediterranean may be
sweeping up the Marmora and the snow melt-
ing in a heat equivalent to that of an English
August.
Old soldiers have an adage to the effect that
in winter the worst hut is better than the best
tent. The adventurers began to feel this as
the driving north wind swept up the slopes of
their chill camping ground. There were cer-
tain amongst the correspondents who had es-
sayed to make this campaign after the manner
of the Spartans. They scorned both tent and
bed. The cold, however, found the joint in
their Spartan harness, and they joined in a
request lodged with the Bosniak, that, if
Tchorlu was to be a standing camp, the ad-
64 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
venturers at least might be allowed to take up
winter quarters in the village.
It is now time to introduce the Popinjay.
He was most remarkable for his independence
and the excellence of his servant "Joe." Joe
was the most expensive dragoman on the list
of Pera knaves that batten on Western curi-
osity and ignorance. Joe is also the best serv-
ant to take into camp that any man could
desire. He was eminently suited to the Pop-
injay, to whom expense was no object when
balanced against personal comfort. The Pop-
injay, however, had that estimable quality of
never being really happy and comfortable
until he had a wisp of fellows round him to
share his creature comforts. Joe had fore-
seen this cold and had fitted his master's tent
with charcoal braziers in scientific profusion.
The Popinjay was no niggard in his hospi-
tality. During the cold snap this tent became
the club house of the British section. Joe
served cordials with lavish hand. His master
smiled benignly, and lightened his guests'
BLANK 65
pockets through the medium of a game called
poker.
The necessity of rallying round the Popin-
jay's fire induced the British adventurers to
bring pressure to bear upon the Bosniak to
organise a move. There were other reasons
besides the cold. The Tchorlu valley was fast
becoming a gigantic concentration camp.
Division after division seemed to be marching
in. The rough bivouacs of the soldiers were
creeping closer and closer to ihe area in which
the adventurers were domiciled. The Ana-
tolian Redif, estimable fellow though he
doubtless is in many ways, is not an ideal
neighbour in a sanitary sense. This fact was
becoming alarmingly apparent to the adven-
turers, when suddenly the Bosniak sailed down
upon them and informed them that they must
hold themselves in readiness to strike camp at
any moment as Abdullah Pasha had issued in-
structions that they were to go into standing
camp in the village of Tchorlu.
Beyond a rather cryptic statement made offi-
66 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
cially by the Bosniak Shepherd to the effect
that "the Turkish army of the offensive had
found the advanced line of Adrianople — Kirk
Kilisse — unsuitable for the concentration, and
that it had, therefore, fallen back upon the line
Baba Eski — Lule Burgas — Viza," no single
word of direct information had been vouch-
safed to the adventurers. A smattering of the
facts, however, filtered through, and it was
realised that Adrianople was already invested
and that the Bulgarians and Turkish advance
guards were in touch in front of both Lule
Burgas and Bunar Hissar. As yet, however,
the sounds of the guns were not audible at
Tchorlu. The Centurion, who was now al-
most entirely recovered from his distemper,
had set the sound of the guns as the signal at
which it would be expedient to break away
from the Shepherd's flock.
tc
-
£
CHAPTER IV
STILL BLANK
THE village of Tchorlu, contrary to the
usual run of Turkish hamlets, is built
upon a hill, or rather upon the summit of one
of the rolling downs which are the features of
this portion of the Peninsula. It is a typical
Turkish township, with its narrow streets, cob-
bled roadways and tumble-down, ramshackle,
over-hanging houses. For a village, it is of
considerable importance, as it taps the three
main arteries and commercial roads leading
from Adrianople to the Sea of Marmora. It
is also a strategic point of considerable mili-
tary value. In fact, it is understood that
Marshal Von der Goltz, the military mentor
of the Turkish army, favoured the position of
Tchorlu as the most important in the whole
Peninsula, Tchataldja included. Although
the railway junctions further north covered by
6 7
68 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Lule Burgas possibly produce a more artificial
strategic value, yet on the merits of purely
natural positions plus the possibilities they
present of changing from the defensive to the
offensive, the Tchorlu terrain has much to
commend it. It was also a garrison town, and
had been largely used for the purpose of the
hurried mobilisation. It had been selected by
Abdullah Pasha as the headquarters of the
army in the field during the concentration.
The populace, like those of all Thracian
townships, was of course mixed. Mingled
with the true Turks were Armenians, Jews,
Greeks and Bulgarians. It was, however, a
prosperous place, and having received the mis-
sion to billet the adventurers in the town, the
Bosniak Shepherd proceeded to find accom-
modation. In carrying out these duties, the
Shepherd was perfectly sincere and hard-
working. Of course, like other Turks, he had
not the remotest idea of the nature or character
of the accommodation that even the meanest
European would require. When he entered
STILL BLANK 69
the town to find the billets, he had only two
ideas fixed in his head. These were that all
it was necessary to give a European was a roof
and a bed, and that his two Russian adven-
turers must sleep under the same roof as him-
self. It was firmly embedded in the Tartar
lining of his brain that the two Russian corre-
spondents were Bulgarian spies. On one or
two of the occasions when he had lapsed into
confidences, he had been heard to remark that
it would be an astounding thing if his Russian
guests survived the vicissitudes of the cam-
paign.
The Bosniak Shepherd found the billets for
the British adventurers in the chief han in the
village. As there may be many who have not
had experience of a Turkish han, it will be
as well to give some little description of these
dingy hostels. The han is really a relic of the
posting days. The serais or posting houses
were always built as rectangular enclosures.
The origin is quite obvious. In the old days
the roads were infested with brigands and
70 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
footpads. Every caravan was armed, whilst
each posting house of necessity had to be a fort.
During the night the animals were stabled
within the rectangle, whilst the grooms and at-
tendants slept in little receptacles below the
banquette of the walls. For travellers of bet-
ter degree, special rooms were added. Cus-
tom or convenience had it that these rooms
should be adjacent to the gates. Thus it was
that the local architects came to place the
guest-rooms above the gates. You will find
that this custom survives throughout the East.
You may go from Bosnia and Herzegovina
right away through Persia and Central Asia
until you finally finish in Manchuria, and you
will find traces of this old system in most of the
local post houses that you patronize.
Of such was the general design of the han in
which the British group of adventurers were
billeted. The landlord had perhaps half a
dozen small cubical rooms on the landing
above his entrance gate. Into each of these
tiny bandboxes were squeezed two or three
STILL BLANK 71
iron framed beds. The beds were so close to
each other that there was no space left for any-
thing else in the rooms.
The landlord, a fat, slobbery Greek, re-
ceived his new guests with every show of de-
light, and well he might, for a clientele of
fifteen or sixteen Englishmen meant wealth to
him. The majority of the adventurers just
looked at their rooms and at once decided that
they would billet themselves. They refused to
have anything to do with the filthy han, the
beds of which were crawling with vermin, and
went out with their dragomans to forage for
shelter. A few remained in the han; amongst
these was the Centurion, whose knowledge of
Turkey dated back some years. He imme-
diately organised his servants and without any
reference to the landlord, threw each of the
beds, mattresses and all, out of the window into
the street. The oily smile died on the Greek
patron's face. He essayed to stay the wreck of
his beds and the dismantling of his room.
The result of his ill-timed interference was
72 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
that he was gently dropped down the stairway.
As soon as the existing furniture had been
cleared from the room, the latter was washed
down from ceiling to floor, sprinkled with dis-
infectant and then furnished with the Cen-
turion's own camp furniture.
In the meantime, mine host had gone weep-
ing to the Bosniak Shepherd. The ex-Deputy
of the Turkish Chamber was conducted into
the street to the spot where the Turkish sol-
diery had already begun to make away with
the Greek's bedroom furniture. He looked at
the wreckage on the ground, then up at the
window. It is not often that the Turk will
allow any expression betraying feeling to per-
vade his countenance. Never before had a
Turkish officer been seen by the Centurion
with such an expression of utter hopelessness
as that worn by the Bosniak Shepherd, when
he surveyed the wreckage. What he said to
the Greek was overheard by John. In one ex-
pression he conveyed to the unlucky host that
he was unable to cope with the eccentricities of
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STILL BLANK 73
his charges. His one sentence was: "These
Englishmen are inexplicable."
It was no easy matter getting into the village
of Tchorlu that morning; the entire valley be-
tween the town and the barracks had become
one great camp. Battalion after battalion was
met marching through the town. The major-
ity of these troops belonged to Torgad Shev-
ket's Second Army Corps, the last divisions of
which were being hurried via Siliviri and
Rodosto from the Dardanelles and Smyrna.
They had no time to allow the mud of Tchorlu
to cake on their boots, for no sooner did they
arrive than they were marched hotfoot north-
wards in the direction of Lule Burgas. For
the most part they were good-looking troops,
Nizam battalions that had been stiffened with
first class Redifs. They were not so under-
officered as the units that had mustered in the
Constantinople area. They had been mobi-
lised for the Italian war.
They were, however, looking a trifle tired
and travel-worn, and one would have liked
74 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
to have seen them halting for at least a day
with the Redif battalions already in camp at
Tchorlu. The Turkish arms, however, had
need of its first line troops in the neighbour-
hood of Lule Burgas. How desperate was
this need was not yet appreciated in the billets
of the adventurers. It will be remembered
that October 23rd had been the crucial day of
the campaign at Kirk Kilisse. It was now
October 28th. Although precise information
was not yet available in Tchorlu by this date,
two out of three divisions of the First Corps
d'Armee, had been defeated by the Bulgarians
just south of Kirk Kilisse and were in broken
retreat upon Baba Eski.
Amongst the adventurers two groups had
provided themselves with motor cars. The
Centurion and the Diplomat shared one car,
while the Dumpling and the two Jew's Harps
were the proud possessors of another. It had
been impossible to convey the cars by train
and they perforce had to make the journey by
road. For some reason, which has never been
STILL BLANK 75
clearly explained, the Chief Censor at Con-
stantinople would not allow the cars to start
until two days after the train had left. The
doctors had advised Jew's Harp Senior to stay
behind for a day or two, as he was hardly well
enough to take the road.
The two cars arrived at Tchorlu the same
day that the adventurers went into their town
billets. The Centurion met his car in the
street. To his astonishment, he found seated
in it a cinematograph operator with all the
heavy parts of his picture-catching machine
piled about him. The Centurion was speech-
less. When he had issued his orders before
leaving Constantinople, he had impressed
upon his chauffeur that every available pound
of weight that the car could carry over and
above the driver was to be utilised for the car-
riage of petrol. He had realised that once
they were with the army in the field, petrol
would be to him of the same value as its meas-
ure in gold dust. It must be remembered that
petrol is not a commodity to be found in every
76 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Turkish village. It is probable that not more
than a few spoonfuls could be bought between
Stamboul and Adrianople. It was, therefore,
essential that the car should leave its base
loaded to the uttermost straw with the precious
fluid. The Centurion, biting his lip, took the
unlucky passenger to task. He said that he
had only done what he had been told by his
master who was a passenger in the other car.
The cinematograph monger's master proved to
be one of those free lance opportunists who in-
variably arrive at modern theatres of war in
the guise of journalists to see what is to be
made out of rollicking adventure. They are
usually adept in living upon the country.
Here was a case in point. The man who ran
the cinematograph had so ingratiated himself
with the Chief Censor in Constantinople that
the latter had offered him, with his operator
and material, space in the car of a man to
whom every square inch was of vital impor-
tance. The Chief Censor is not to be blamed ;
he could hardly be expected to know much
STILL BLANK 77
about the requirements of journalistic enter-
prise, or he would never have sanctioned the
cars at all. But what is one to say of the man
who accepted the Censor's offer, and in so
doing almost fatally handicapped a legitimate
correspondent? His action went within an
ace of wrecking the entire fabric of the Cen-
turion's carefully worked out plans.
It had taken the cars exactly three days to
reach Tchorlu from Stamboul. The distance
is not much more than forty miles. The state
of the roads they came through must be seen
to be believed, — they came, it must be remem-
bered, by the main Adrianople road, which is
reputed to be the best in Turkey. The ex-
periences were entirely desperate. In places
bullocks had to be hired to haul the cars out
of the mudholes into which they had fallen.
Before the cold set in, the weather had been
wet. The cars had started when this bad
weather had just set in.
There was a considerable flutter in the Brit-
ish dovecots at Tchorlu, when it was found
78 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
that Jew's Harp Senior had not come up in his
car. The cinematograph-master told a story
which added to the general disquiet at the
Jew's Harp's non-arrival, and fairly drove the
Diplomat into a frenzy of alarm. It appears
that Jew's Harp had started in his car in the
company of a Turkish officer, who had been
specially deputed to convey him to the billets
of his colleagues. The second day out from
Constantinople, Jew's Harp's car had stuck in
the mire in a manner that seemed hopeless.
Jew's Harp Senior, as his sobriquet suggests,
is a man on wires. It so irked him to stand
by while animal draught was employed to
drag his conveyance out of the slough, that he
suddenly struck off on foot followed by his
officer bear-leader. He disappeared into the
mists of night, just shouting back to the others
to make the best of their way up to Tchorlu,
as he was going to discover another and more
rapid means of getting to the front.
The Diplomat would not believe a word of
it. He argued that all his contentions were
STILL BLANK 79
correct, that the Jew's Harp had arranged
special facilities and that already he had stolen
a march on the rest of his colleagues and was
away to the forefront of the battle. To some
extent the Diplomat must have possessed the
faculty of divination. It did befall that the
Jew's Harp made his way to the fighting be-
fore the rest of the adventurers; but it did not
fall out in the manner the Diplomat had im-
agined. There was no malice aforethought
on the part of the Jew's Harp, but only a
singular round of extraordinary good luck.
But of this later. When by that evening,
Jew's Harp Senior had not turned up at
Tchorlu, his young brother became desperate
in his anxiety for his safety. As a matter of
history, Jew's Harp Senior did arrive at
Tchorlu that evening, but he was clever
enough, or fortunate enough, to maintain his
detachment from his other colleagues.
The general anxiety and unrest amongst the
British section of the adventurers at Tchorlu
that afternoon, was raised almost to breaking-
80 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
point by the sound of a distant cannonade
brought down along the frosty wind that had
now set in from the north. For the last three
days there had been champing at the bits.
All the indications from the north showed
that the great happenings were increasing and
coming nearer. Wounded could be seen at
the railway station. The great camp of Red-
ifs in the Tchorlu Valley had broken up, and
those half trained troops had followed in the
footsteps of the battalions of Torgad Shevket.
The Bosniak Shepherd, however, shrugged his
shoulders, and said he had received no orders
and that Abdullah Pasha, the generalissimo,
was still at Tchorlu.
The Centurion had now fully recovered his
health. It is probable that, had he not been
so demobilised by the grippe, he would have
taken an independent line before this. As it
was, now the car had arrived, the whole of his
own communications system was complete,
and the afternoon that the guns were first
heard, he called for his horse and started upon
STILL BLANK 81
a personal reconnoissance. He slipped out of
the village of Tchorlu by a back street, and
fetching a compass so as to avoid any exam-
ining posts in the vicinity of the railway sta-
tion, struck the Lule Burgas road two miles
north of Tchorlu. Once he was out on the
open down, the distant roar of the cannon was
more audible than it had been in the village.
Without a shadow of doubt the great battle
that was to decide the history of the Turks in
Europe was already begun.
It was evident to a practised ear that the en-
counter was at least twenty-five miles away.
The Centurion rode on from ridge to ridge
for about ten miles, always hoping that the
next eminence would produce some feature
from which he could draw a definite conclu-
sion. As he rode further, however, the sound
of the firing seemed to grow but little louder.
One thing was certain and that was that the
tide of battle for the moment was stationary,
for every movement that passed him on the
Lule Burgas road was trending northwards.
8z WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Save for one or two convoys of empties there
was nothing coming back. The fact that the
empties were not even utilised for the trans-
port of wounded proved that the battle, such
as it was, or wherever it was, was still in its
infancy. With his knowledge of modern war,
the Centurion felt that it was not necessary to
sever his connection with his base that self-
same night. Modern battles of the propor-
tions of this great struggle in Thrace are not
decided within the narrow limits of sun-up
and sunset on a short winter's day.
On returning to Tchorlu, the Centurion
found that he, with the others of the leading
British adventurers, was invited out to dinner
by "The General." Hitherto the General has
not been introduced. He was an adventurer
of many years' experience. At this campaign,
he was mainly noticeable by reason of the
weirdness of his dress. To all intents and pur-
poses, he looked like a British officer under
perpetual arrest. He wore a British Service
uniform of correct design, but devoid of all
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distinguishing marks, so that at first sight, he
conjured up the picture of the arrested officer
shorn of sword and spurs. Being an old cam-
paigner, he knew how to make himself com-
fortable, and on arrival at Tchorlu, he refused
to have anything to do with the hospitality of
the han, and proceeded to instal himself in a
well-proportioned, and moderately clean Ar-
menian house that his servant found unoccu-
pied.
On this particular night he invited the more
intimate of his colleagues to dine with him.
It was an interesting dinner. With the excep-
tion of the brothers Jew's Harp, all the British
adventurers who have hitherto been mentioned
in this narrative were present at his hospitable
board. As a matter of fact, this was the last
occasion on which the British adventurers
accredited to the Turkish Army were all
gathered together in one place. Before the
dinner, the Centurion and the Diplomat, as
partners in the motor car, had made a plan to
break away from the control of the Bosniak
84 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Shepherd in the small hours of the following
morning. The Dumpling, who, now that
Jew's Harp Senior could not be found, was
sole owner in their joint car, had also made
his arrangements to leave the fold. The ma-
jority of the others had done likewise, yet since
secretiveness was the essence of success in each
of the contemplated manoeuvres, none of the
adventurers wished his colleagues to know that
any change in procedure was in contemplation.
The entire company at the dinner, therefore,
dissembled throughout the meal. The Cen-
turion spoke as to what they would be able to
do in Tchorlu on the morrow. The Diplo-
mat, who was a raconteur of more than ordi-
nary merit, kept the company in roars of
laughter with his droll stories. First one
then another had suggestions which were in-
tended to disguise the various projects for the
morrow. There was only one note that
seemed to ring untrue. When the Diplomat's
stories began to flag, and others of the guests
showed symptoms of disquiet bred of subdued
excitement, the General suggested that the
STILL BLANK 85
table should be cleared for the usual game of
poker. To his surprise, not one of the com-
pany felt inclined to play poker. One had a
mail message to write; another was beastly
tired; a third wanted to go round and see the
Censor; in fact, everyone had some excuse
with which to cover up the real design at the
back of each man's mind, which was to get as
much sleep as possible before slipping away in
the early hours.
As the several British adventurers are dis-
missed to their homes to make the final prep-
arations for their early start on the following
morning, it would be just as well to introduce
Hamdi. Hamdi is a great fat boy of an
Egyptian and is the Centurion's chauffeur.
He came to Turkey in the employ of Prince
Aziz Pasha, the unsuccessful commander of
the second division of the First Army Corps.
Why Hamdi left the prince's employ is not
part of this story. He became the joint serv-
ant of the Diplomat and the Centurion for the
purposes of the campaign. Without exagger-
ation, Hamdi is the stoutest and most skilful
86 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
driver of a car over a difficult country that
ever sat behind a steering-wheel. It requires
a man of iron nerve and responsive skill to
steer a car over Thracian roads. Hamdi had
only one fault, which was a very serious one
when he was associated with men of the type
of the Centurion. He was a great talker, and
besides having wonderful powers of narration,
had a great memory for detail. Hamdi had
instructions to have the car ready for the road
between five and six on the following morning.
A careful calculation showed that he had just
sufficient petrol to take the car to Lule Burgas,
bring it back to Tchorlu and then make the
journey to one of the Marmora ports for the
purpose of replenishing the supply. To en-
able this to be done, the greatest economy
would have to be effected in the expenditure
of the spirit. The story of how closely the
husbanding of this source of mobility was to
affect the business that the two interested ad-
venturers had in hand, must be left to another
chapter.
CHAPTER V
for'ard away
THEY sell in Vienna for twenty-five
francs a little pocket reveille watch
which is the best value in the way of time-
pieces for the money, in which anyone con-
nected with war's alarms can invest. At 4:30,
the chime of his pocket watch burred under
the Centurion's pillow. Almost to the minute,
a fainter chime from elsewhere told him that
another of the adventurers was likewise an
early riser. This was the Dumpling, who,
finding the Centurion waking, took him into
his confidence.
"Having heard nothing of my partner in the
car, I shall have to move on my own to-day.
I don't mind telling you that I am pulling out
from this gang, because I know that you will
play the game by me, and besides, in case of
accidents, I should like someone of the crowd
87
88 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
to know where I have gone. The truth of the
matter is I am short of petrol. My partner in
the enterprise brought up all these amateur
trimmings when he should have loaded up
with a dead weight of spirit. I find that I
have only just enough to take me down to
Rodosto. If I cannot find petrol there, I am
done, but I know, old chap, you will see me
out if anything big happens, or if I get into
difficulties. What I propose to do, is to slip
down to the coast, get what petrol there is in
the town, and if things work out properly, I
want to be back again at the front inside of
three or four hours."
The Centurion promised to play the game
by his companion. There is a great bond of
loyalty between the professional adventurers.
If it were not so, it would often be impossible
for them to carry out their enterprises. The
Dumpling crept out of the room, so as not to
disturb the other adventurers sleeping in the
han, while the Centurion wished him luck.
As soon as he was dressed, it was the Cen-
FOR'ARD AWAY 89
turion's business to see that Hamdi had the car
in running order. Everything had been pre-
pared over night and the game Hamdi was at
his post. He pointed out a rather serious dif-
ficulty. One of the petrol tanks had been
damaged during the rough journey up. Now
that it was filled with the last supply of petrol,
it showed signs of leakage. Every drop of the
spirit was of vital importance and an effort
was made to calk the leak. A quarter of an
hour before the appointed time of the start,
the Diplomat, who was billeted elsewhere,
arrived girded for the fray. He was a great
boy, the Diplomat, and as he walked into the
dimly lighted yard of the han, he reminded his
companion of those peony cheeked yeomanry
officers of the South African war who arrived
in Cape Town, hung from head to foot with
that superfluity of leather trappings which the
wholesale outfitter in London maintains to be
the necessary equipment of the man proceed-
ing to a battlefield.
The great John was also in evidence. To
go WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
him had been assigned another role. It was
his business to take out two horses which were
to meet the car at a certain place in the vicin-
ity of Lule Burgas towards midday. The
dashing Armenian, who relished the impor-
' tance of being trusted with a special commis-
sion, assured his master that only death would
prevent him from appearing at the tryst at
the appointed hour.
One last look round the car, a trial run of
the engine, and then the two adventurers took
their seats in the car, which backed slowly out
into the cobbled streetway. It was still dark,
in fact it was thought there would not be suf-
ficient light to follow the Adrianople road
until close upon seven o'clock. The road,
however, from Tchorlu village down to the
station was perfectly good for passage in the
dark. It was argued also by the Centurion
that with the powerful headlights burning, the
car would establish a moral superiority over
any examining post or picket outside the town
and station. Under cover of night it would
FOR'ARD AWAY 91
be believed by the ordinary Turkish regi-
mental officer, if there was one on duty, that
the car was taking officers of the General Staff
to the front. On the preceding day, the wind
had set in the north, and during the night
there had been a heavy frost. This was al-
most providential, as much of the vaunted
Adrianople road — which is marked on the
maps as metalled throughout — is simply maize
fields. When the crust of these is frozen
tight, the going is excellent.
It was up and out of Tchorlu village with-
out let or hindrance. As the surmise had been,
the pickets and examining posts stepped back
to let the car race past. By the time that the
railway station was reached, a dim visibility
appeared in the morning sky indicating that it
would soon be light. At the first hill outside
the military encampment proper, the great-
coated pickets showed clear against the fast
disclosing horizon, and the men turned in-
wards at the unexpected noise of the approach-
ing automobile. It was, however, none of
92 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
their business to interfere with so fearsome an
object, that seemed to look through them with
its great acetylene eyes, and by the time that
it was light enough to see the road, the Cen-
turion and his companion were clear of all the
pitfalls that might conceivably have upset
their carefully calculated plans. It was now
light.
The first thing that forced itself upon their
attention was the abrupt vanishing of the
metalled road. Up and over an old and steep
Turkish bridge, the metal came to an end.
Just as if it had been pruned off with a knife,
the work of the engineers ceased. For the rest
of the way there was a mere track, furrowed
into deep ruts by the passing of guns and heavy
transport, but at the moment frozen hard and
easily negotiable.
It is difficult to describe the sense of elation
which seized upon the feelings of the two ad-
venturers, as they realised that they were at
last free of the trammels of the Bosniak's soul-
less officialism. It was exactly eight days
FOR'ARD AWAY 93
since the train had carried them from Stam-
boul. These eight days had been crowded
with excitements, disappointments and innu-
merable heartburnings. During the last
twenty-four hours the situation had become al-
most unbearable, for the gall of their thral-
dom in that stinking Turkish village had been
made more poignant by the distant rumbling
of the guns. Now all that was over and the
two men had their heads turned in the right
direction.
The country they were crossing was the ex-
panse of rolling downland which the Centu-
rion had reconnoitred on the previous after-
noon. It was a wonderful terrain — miles and
miles of gently undulating downland, one low-
lying ridge succeeding another with regular
monotony. It was almost devoid of habita-
tion and practically treeless. In places low
down in the valleys, at long intervals, occa-
sional villages and plantations forced them-
selves upon the landscape, but they were so
small and modest in comparison to the gi-
94 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
gantic sweep of the uplands, that these human
habitations were overshadowed in the gor-
geous vastness of the natural waste.
From a military point of view, it appeared
to the Centurion to be the most magnificent
country in which to conduct operations on a
grand scale that Providence in its wisdom had
ever fashioned. From ridge top to ridge top
it was generally a matter of a couple of thou-
sand yards, whilst there was nothing in the
gradients to break the hearts of galloping gun
teams or quickly moving infantry. As a cav-
alry country it was superb, and as the Centu-
rion leaned back on the cushions of his car he
wondered to himself what the greatest cavalry
leader of the day would think, if, in such a
country, he were given the present opportunity
and a division. It was an expanse of negoti-
able waste, such as the true cavalryman sees in
his dreams but rarely in the finished works of
nature.
The Centurion felt confident that they had
not lost much by the last two days of enforced
FOR'ARD AWAY 95
inactivity in Tchorlu. The Diplomat, who
was taking the field for the first time and who
was less versed in the proportion of military
affairs, was not so sanguine. As events were
to prove, matters had marched in this great
battle of Lule Burgas more rapidly than the
Centurion had calculated, more rapidly indeed
than anyone had anticipated. In reality the
outline of the situation justified his optimism.
The Turks having had the original plans for
their concentration put out of gear by the un-
fortunate disaster at Kirk Kilisse, had intended
to rectify this failure by establishing a semi-
defensive front from Viza on the right to
Baba Eski on the left. It was to this purpose
that Turgad Shevket's units of the Second
Corps had been pushed mercilessly through
Tchorlu, and the two divisions of Redifs, once
concentrated round the adventurers' original
encampment, had been pressed forward to the
line of battle.
According to the information that was be-
lieved by Abdullah Pasha's staff, the Bulga-
96 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
rians had made their invasion of Thrace in
three columns. These three columns had
practically concentrated in the territory they
had violated, on the same line as it had been
the intention of the Turks to establish their
advance alignment. After Kirk Kilisse, it
was understood at Turkish Headquarters that
one of the columns had been detached to fur-
nish an initial investment of the Adrianople
fortress, whilst the other two advanced south
on almost parallel routes. The Turks, for
some reason, believed that the right Bulgarian
column would move south upon Baba Eski.
The actions fought at Yenidje and Kavakla
against the first (Constantinople) division,
doubtless gave colour to this impression. It
was, therefore, the Turkish intention that
Mahmud Muktear with the Third Corps
should deal so heavily with the left Bulgarian
column as it advanced down the Bunar Hissar-
Viza road, that even if he did not defeat it,
he might so detain it that the Fourth Turkish
Corps, supported by the Second, pushing up
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FOR'ARD AWAY 97
from Lule Burgas, could divide the invaders'
strength. The Bulgarians, however, although
they took a very considerable risk in the line
of their advance south from Kirk Kilisse, had
no intention of committing the extreme folly
of following the Baba Eski road any further
than had been necessary to enable them to de-
feat the echeloned divisions of the First Turk-
ish Corps.
It was not until the car had passed about a
third of the distance between Tchorlu and
Lule Burgas that the adventurers found any
direct evidences of the battle. They had over-
taken one or two ammunition columns toiling
northwards. They had passed also a kind of
communication rest camp that had been
pitched by a drinking fountain. When, how-
ever, the car was toiling up the rise which
overlooks Muradli a considerable body of men
was seen to be marching southwards.
"Good God!" said the Centurion, "that
looks like a retreat."
A close scrutiny, however, showed that the
98 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
men were for the most part wounded. It was
a large convoy of slightly wounded who had
left the front on the preceding day. The ma-
jority of the men had shrapnel wounds in the
head and arms. An Armenian hospital as-
sistant when interrogated volunteered the in-
formation that "These are not all shrapnel
wounds. Do you notice how many men are
wounded in the left hand. We have every
reason to suspect that these wounds are self-
inflicted."
This doubtless was the case, as throughout
the war, the Turkish authorities had been
much troubled by faint-hearted soldiers plac-
ing themselves hors de combat in this manner.
There are few sights in this world as pa-
thetic as a column of wounded returning di-
rectly from the battlefield. It is moving
enough to see suffering in the accident wards
of a great hospital. Here, however, after sci-
ence has come to relieve the suffering, the
tender hands of the nursing staff have gen-
erally obliterated the more pronounced indi-
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In the bitter cold of thai bleak winter's morning it was a fearful sight to se< the i
wretched victims of international hate and greed, plodding their weary,
painful and hungry way back to the railway." See pagt qq
FOR'ARD AWAY 99
cations of the grisly hurts. The unfortunates
who leave the dressing stations on the battle-
field, however, have little to relieve their suf-
fering or to disguise the hideous wounds which
have been their fate.
In the best organised army this is so, but in
the Turkish army the sights were even more
heartrending. In the first place the first field
dressing was generally inadequate, and in the
second, the Turkish medical officer's estimate
of a walking case is totally different to that of
his western colleagues. In the bitter cold of
that bleak winter's morning it was a fearful
sight to see these wretched victims of interna-
tional hate and greed, plodding their weary,
painful and hungry way back to the railway.
Behind the column of toiling foot patients,
came a string of springless wagons. Here the
adventurers found lying-down cases. The
condition of the poor fellows in the wagons
was terrible. They were heaped upon each
other so that the bloody rags that were meant
as dressings seemed to be doing double duty to
ioo WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
the gaping wounds. Some of the men had
great-coats, the blood soiled tunics of others
were frozen stiff as boards. The acute agony
which each was suffering was writ large upon
their drawn and livid features. When out of
the debris of what had been half a dozen men
a reeking face pushed itself above the side of
the cart — a great bloody socket where once
there had been an eye — and the swollen lips
imploring mercy, the Centurion could stand it
no longer. He told Hamdi to restart the
engine.
The car was scarcely clear of the sick con-
voy when it ran into another concourse of men.
The first impression was that this was a further
column of slightly wounded. To the Centu-
rion's astonishment, however, the gangs of uni-
formed men they were meeting were all robust
and strong. It was a great rabble of soldiers,
many of whom were without firearms. The
men were totally disorganised and were mak-
ing their way south without any attempt at
military formation.
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FOR'ARD AWAY 101
The Centurion was now all attention. He
turned to the Diplomat and said anxiously:
"Heavens! it looks as if the whole army is in
retreat. This is a broken force."
The men certainly looked as if they be-
longed to a routed army. They were haggard,
hunger-wasted and travel-stained. Their uni-
forms were filthy and their legs were mired
up to the knees. They all regarded the car
with furtive apprehension as if they expected
it to contain some grim-tongued Pasha who
would rally them and send them back to the
Hades of shot and shell they were deserting.
The Centurion was totally nonplussed, be-
cause whilst these men in their hundreds were
drifting southwards, disciplined bodies of
troops and organised transport columns were
dividing the route with them as they marched
hotfoot in the opposite direction.
The adventurers saluted the commandant of
a north-going battalion and finding him ami-
cably disposed drew him into conversation.
The Centurion asked him the reason of this
io2 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
extraordinary rearward trend. The Bey
shrugged his shoulders as he answered:
"These are the men of Nazir Pasha's Division.
They have been defeated and they don't want
to fight any more." The Bey gave this insight
into the obvious as if it was a sufficient reason
for his own indifference.
"But," said the Centurion vehemently, all of
the soldier in him concentrated in the question,
"but, surely you are not going to let them go
walking away like this? Why don't you stop
them yourself and collect them with your own
battalion?"
The Bey answered smilingly, "It is none
of my business. They belong to another divi-
sion, and, besides, I have orders to come
quickly to Karisdiran." He seemed to look
at the whole of this terrible business as a mat-
ter of course.
"Is the whole army coming back like this?"
asked the Centurion.
"Oh, no!" answered the Bey, "this is only
the First Stamboul Army Corps, which was so
FOR'ARD AWAY 103
badly beaten at Yenidje. This has nothing to
do with the Fourth Army Corps and the Sec-
ond, which are fighting strongly at Lule Bur-
gas. I am on my way to help them."
The Centurion let himself fall back on the
cushions of the car. As it seemed to him the
whole thing was inexplicable. One half of
the Turkish army refused responsibility for
either the failure or success of the other. Sa-
luting the Bey, who waved an ciffable farewell,
the adventurers pushed forward. They had
now covered about half the distance to Lule
Burgas. As the sun rose the going began to
get difficult, so that the car could hardly make
more than eight miles an hour. Not only was
the road bad but the route was thronged with
transport wagons, wounded, and this continued
stream of craven casuals returning from the
battlefield.
By this time the Centurion was really be-
coming anxious, especially since, up to the
present, there had been an ominous silence on
the part of the artillery. No sound of guns
104 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
broke the stillness of the morning air. It cer-
tainly looked as if the battle was over and that
he and the Diplomat were too late for the fair.
His sudden pessimism, however, was some-
what dissipated by the optimism of a youthful
staff officer whom they met on his way to the
rear.
"Battle over?" he said. "Why, it is only
just beginning. The reason why you have not
heard the guns firing this morning is easily ex-
plained. The gunners on both sides are wait-
ing for these heavy mists to clear. How is the
battle going? It is going very well for Tur-
key. I am going back with a message to
Seidler to bring up the head of one of the divi-
sions of the Seventeenth Corps. Yes! There
has been heavy fighting all about Lule Burgas ;
in fact, Lule Burgas is neither in our posses-
sion nor in that of the Bulgarians. Owing to
their artillery positions we had to vacate the
village of Lule Burgas. We shall, however,
retake it to-night, and you have heard no doubt
that the battle is going magnificently for us on
FOR'ARD AWAY 105
the Viza side. Yesterday the Bulgarians fell
back in front of Mahmud Muktear and the
Pasha has now taken Bunar Hissar."
The Centurion then asked this youth where
they should find Abdullah Pasha and the di-
recting staff.
"I left His Excellency at Amurdza, which
is close to the village of Sakiskuey. That is
where he has made his headquarters. That is
where you will find him."
With a cheery nod and wave of his hand this
light-hearted popinjay cantered down the
slopes towards Seidler, firm in his optimistic
belief that the victorious march of the Cres-
cent to Sofia had really begun. The Centu-
rion did not know how much of his story to
believe. One part of it, however, received al-
most immediate confirmation. They had
barely restarted the car after this conversation
when the guns began to boom. It was almost
as if a match had been put to the whole line.
The sound of the firing seemed to break out
simultaneously along the whole front. As the
106 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
adventurers were now within ten miles of the
Lule Burgas front the roar of the cannon in
this neighbourhood was heavy, and it was pos-
sible between the lulls of the firing to hear the
fainter reverberation of the battle taking place
in the direction of Viza. These sounds of war
greatly cheered the Centurion and his partner.
It was certain from these evidences of battle in
their ears, that in spite of the continuous rear-
ward trend of casuals, the Turks were still
holding their own. The car was now passing
the village of Karisdiran, which seemed to be
the position chosen for the General Reserve.
At least a Division was halted in the valley.
Leaving the village on the right the adven-
turers took the direct road to Lule Burgas.
They had to negotiate one of the arms of the
Ergene River. It was bridged with an an-
cient Turkish bridge, but the approach to this
could only be made by way of an ancient cause-
way. The surface of this causeway was faced
with worn stone flags. If any owner of a
garage in Paris or London had been asked if it
FOR'ARD AWAY 107
were possible to take a car along that viaduct,
the writer is positive that his answer would
have been in the negative. Hamdi also had
his doubts and was obliged to go forward on
foot to reconnoitre. It looked very much as if
the adventurers would have to leave the car at
this fearsome relic of ancient engineering and
make their way to the battlefield on foot.
Hamdi took nearly a quarter of an hour to
complete his reconnoissance. He stopped at
places and shook his head, and then worked
laboriously to cast stones out of the path.
Finally he sauntered back to the car and with
a pessimistic shake of his head murmured:
"Can go." Hamdi was like the Chinaman.
When he said "Can go," he meant that he
would try his best. In all conscience Hamdi's
best when he was driving the car along the
saw-tooth surface and the precipitous edge of
the causeway was a hair-raising experience.
How he ever managed to get that car across
will remain a mystery to the Centurion to his
dying day. Not only did Hamdi get the car
108 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
across, but later in the day he brought it back
by the same route. Both times when he had
accomplished the feat the perspiration was
running down the Centurion's cheeks from
sheer excitement at the thrills of the passage.
This causeway was the last serious obstacle.
From here onwards the road mended and the
car began to eat up the few remaining miles
that separated the adventurers from the stir-
ring scenes of battle.
They also found on this section of the road
the first evidences of an effort being made to
induce some of the absentees from the firing
line to return to their duty. The mounted
gendarmes had evidently received orders to
stop the systematic percolation of the fighting
strength. Turkish methods of persuasion
with their own people are rough. There was
no doubt that the occasion called for rough
treatment. The mounted gendarmes, some
with whips, some with naked sabres, were just
driving the malingerers back to their duties.
It did the Centurion's heart good to see the
FOR'ARD AWAY 109
way the gendarmes went about their work,
also it was edifying to realise that the Turkish
soldier dreaded the gendarmes' whips more
than he feared the Bulgarian shrapnel.
The adventurers spoke to one of the gen-
darmes and discovered from him that they be-
longed to the Second Army Corps. They had
received their orders from Turgad Shevket
Pasha to bring every straggler back to the
front, irrespective of the corps to which he
might belong. According to this gendarme,
whose conversation was interpreted by Hamdi,
matters had become rather serious on the
previous day in the vicinity of Lule Burgas.
In fact there had been a somewhat similar
stampede to that which had taken place at
Kirk Kilisse. Luckily, a division of the Sec-
ond Corps which was moving up into its posi-
tion on the right of the Fourth Corps, was
near at hand to steady matters. What was
more fortunate was that Torgad Shevket was
with this division. As he is one of the few
officers exercising high command in the Turk-
no WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
ish Army who is equal to the responsibilities
of his office, he was able to do much to re-
establish the Turkish defensive. Nor was
Ahmed Abouk, the Commander of the Fourth
Corps, foolish enough to resent Torgad Shev-
ket's level-headed usurpation of authority.
The backwash of his energetic control was
found in the gentle means of persuasion which
his mounted gendarmes were dealing out to
the malingerers.
CHAPTER VI
FULL CRY
THE car climbed to the top of a steep rise
and the whole panorama lay in front of
the adventurers. "Thank God! we have got
here," was the remark of the Centurion. He
told Hamdi to stop the car and jumped out to
examine the petrol tank. The Centurion real-
ised that the thing next in importance to ar-
riving at the battle was getting away from it.
In this case it was a question of petrol. The
road had been far heavier than either he or
Hamdi had expected, and he feared that the
consumption of spirit had defeated all their
calculations. While the Diplomat was en-
tranced with the spectacle of bursting shrap-
nel, the Centurion was down on his hands and
knees measuring the balance in the petrol
tanks. Working the calculation out roughly,
it seemed that there was just enough spirit to
in
ii2 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
take the car back to Tchorlu and then com-
plete the journey to the sea coast. When the
extra consumption that the state of the roads
had necessitated was considered, it looked as if
it would be a near thing. The Centurion de-
cided, however, that there was just enough
spirit, only it would not be safe to take the car
another yard further away from the base.
It is difficult to describe in any detail a mod-
ern battle. If the spectator takes up a posi-
tion which gives him a comprehensive view of
the operations, all he can hope to do is to gain
what may be called a telescopic impression of
the fighting. If, however, he joins himself to
some small unit and participates in the actual
hurly burly of the fray, he misses the true per-
spective of the fight and is only able to dis-
course upon the tiny fraction in which he
himself assisted.
The battle of Lule Burgas covered a front
of at least thirty miles. Along this front there
were two main salients. One was before Lule
Burgas, the other twenty miles away in the
FULL CRY 113
environment cf Bunar Hissar. The position
to which chance had brought the adventurers'
car gave the occupants an admirable oppor-
tunity of viewing the operations along the
salient of Lule Burgas, A long and detailed
description of the battle would be tedious.
Let it suffice to say that on that particular
morning, the Bulgarians were battling to drive
the Turks out of the wonderful position they
held just southeast of Lule Burgas village.
The Ottoman army had the possession of one
of those long interminable downland ridges,
which in this country often stretch with
hardly a break sometimes for thirty miles.
The left of the Turkish position was where
this wonderful ridge fell away rapidly to give
passage to the Ergene River. Here also the
railway line bridged the valley to permit the
permanent way to turn due west to Baba Eski
and Dimotika. This wonderful ridge did not
stand out as a single feature. It was one of
the first and most pronounced of the many
sweeping southwest all down the Tchataldja
ii 4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Peninsula, with the monotonous regularity al-
ready described. It was the first step in the
wavelike conformation which renders south-
ern Thrace unique in the battlefields of the
world.
Until he had been compromised by the fugi-
tives from the First Army Corps, Ahmed
Abouk had disposed his Fourth Army Corps
to the north of the vineyards of Lule Burgas.
Suddenly finding himself overwhelmed by the
broken cohorts of the Constantinople Army
Corps that came falling back upon him in hur-
ried rout at the same moment that the Bulga-
rian left column suddenly came into action
from the Ajvali ridges, Ahmed Abouk had
found it imperative to evacuate Lule Burgas.
This evacuation had been rendered precipitate
by a night scare, for which the refugees from
Omar Taver's army corps were mainly respon-
sible. The Fourth Army Corps, after its re-
tirement was disposed along the southwest end
of the Amurdza range, whilst the Second
Corps, which was only partially concentrated,
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FULL CRY 115
was marched to the right flank to prolong the
line.
All this had happened in the forty-six hours
preceding the morning on which the adven-
turers arrived at the battlefield. There had
been heavy fighting to the north of Lule Bur-
gas. The wounded whom the adventurers
had seen that morning, were just a few of the
more fortunate who had escaped from that
stricken field. The majority of the Turkish
wounded had been abandoned where they fell,
and if still alive, were dependent upon the
mercy of the enemy.
There was no natural weakness in the new
position in which the Ottoman army found
itself, but the decision to occupy had been
forced so suddenly upon the troops, that the
infantry had practically had no time to use
the spade.
The unfortunate stampede from Lule Bur-
gas village had resulted in a very consider-
able quantity of the artillery ammunition
remaining in that Tom Tiddler's ground.
u6 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
If the administration of the rearward services
of these two Turkish armies had been even
moderately efficient, there was not the slight-
est reason why the Bulgarians, with the force
with which they attacked, should ever have
made headway. The Turk, however, left to
himself, has not sufficient administrative fac-
ulty to work a windmill. His armies, there-
fore, if they were to defeat their enemy,
would literally have to live on air.
It was about ten o'clock in the morning
that the Bulgarian artillery really seemed to
get down to its business of shelling the posi-
tions held by the Turkish Fourth Corps.
They first developed a heavy attack upon the
railway bridge on the extreme left of the
Turkish position. On the right bank of
the Ergene River, the Lule Burgas planta-
tions come right down to the shelving banks.
The Bulgarian infantry, although the Turk-
ish guns forbade them Lule Burgas village
proper, had been able to work down to the
river's edge and to bring both rifle and ma-
FULL CRY 117
chine-gun fire upon the bridge-head guards.
This fire was too much for the guards on the
right bank, and the adventurers suddenly saw
the little men jump out of their trenches and
hustle back across the bridge. The Bulga-
rians appeared to have been waiting for this
and the burst of infantry fire that announced
the Turkish movement showed that they were
attempting to turn this flank in force. As the
burst of firing subsided, the gunners of the
Turkish battery that was nearest to the car
suddenly swung round the gun trails and
opened a rapid fire upon the vacated bridge
head. It was a quick piece of work and the
distance being under 3,000 yards, the range
was effective. It could then be seen that the
Bulgarians, to about the strength of a bat-
talion, were attempting to force the passage
of the river. They had not, however, counted
upon the Turkish bridge guards on the left
bank. Here was a long line of concealed
trenches. These began to spit fire and in
one five minutes of murderous mechanical
n8 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
energy, the Bulgarian attempt had failed.
The divisional commander on the extreme
left, however, was becoming anxious for this
front, and without delay he withdrew a bat-
talion from his reserve and marched it across
his rear to support the company that held a
hillock overhanging the river. It was a
movement that might have been made with
some haste. Turkish infantry, however, seems
incapable of haste. The men saunter in and
out of battle, be it victory, be it defeat, in
much the same lethargic way as they saunter
through their simple lives. Although the
reinforced battalion seemed to be moving un-
der sufficient cover, yet the Bulgarian gun-
ners either guessed at the movement taking
place or were apprised of it by some clever
forward scouting, for they suddenly began to
burst their shrapnel most opportunely above
the heads of this moving unit. The Turkish
soldiers took the punishment philosophically.
They opened out just a little; that is, they
shook out from their usual loose formation a
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trifle more freely and plodded slowly on. A
man or two was hit by the shrapnel; nobody
seemed to care. The wounded men sat down
where they had been struck and nursed their
hurts; no one stepped aside to look after them.
Whether it was the unexpected and vicious
outburst on the part of the Turkish battery
that surprised the Bulgarians or whether it
was the sustained fire from the trenches in
front of them and the failure of their first at-
tempt to rush the position of the river is not
certain, but they seemed suddenly to give up
all effort to make ground on this particular
front.
Matters, however, were warming up to-
wards the centre of the Turkish left. Here
Ahmed Abouk's infantry were lining an
underfeature to the main ridge. The Bul-
garian gunners had found these trenches and
were searching them with concentrated fire
from nearly twenty batteries. Much has been
written concerning the superiority of the
French guns, with which the Bulgarian Army
120 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
is supplied. A great deal of this is wild writ-
ing inspired by the sentimental feeling that
French war material is superior to that of
Germany. The Centurion who watched the
artillery practice closely, formed no such high
opinion of the Schneider-Canet field pieces,
as demonstrated by the practice which the
Bulgarian gunners made with them at the bat-
tle of Lule Burgas. Instead of pushing their
batteries up to ranges from which it should
have been possible to turn their enemy out of
its cover, they were content with the practice
they could make at distances which were
often barely effective. Nor did they seem to
fuze their shrapnel with a true gunner's in-
stinct; they only seemed to burst it low by ac-
cident. They must have fired at the battle
of Lule Burgas hundreds of rounds that burst
so high that the result was purely innocuous.
It must not be thought from this that the
Turkish artillery fire was superior to that of
the Bulgarians. The service of the Turkish
batteries, generally speaking, was not so bad.
FULL CRY 121
Their chief trouble seemed to lie in the de-
fective ammunition and inability to protect
their batteries from falling into the hands of
the enemy.
By midday it looked as if the Turks were
perfectly safe in their positions and that there
was no chance of the Bulgarians making good
at any point along the line. The Bulgarian
positions were established in a series of low
ridges which ran parallel to that on which
the Turks were lying. The Bulgarians had
the advantage of a certain amount of visual
cover given to them by plantations. Their
front, following more or less the line of the
Karagarch rivulet, had the advantage of one
or two villages that clung to the banks of that
stream, whilst their left was firmly ensconced
in the hamlet of Turk Bej. For the most
part the firing lines were separated by nearly
two thousand yards.
All through the morning, except for the
incident on the Turkish extreme left, the bat-
tle had been confined to fire tactics. At cer-
122 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
tain places there had been attempts to occupy
positions a little closer to the hostile line.
Such movements as these drew perfect tor-
nadoes of rifle fire. There was not, however,
any indication that either side contemplated
decisive movement.
The Diplomat, who had come to his first
battle full of the stories of fighting conjured
up to the youthful mind by such experts as
Fenimore Cooper and Henty, was not back-
ward in giving expression to his bitter disap-
pointment on the non-realisation of all his
youthful hopes. In fact, he became so bored
at the monotony of the modern battlefield,
that he stretched himself out on a rug beside
the car and went off comfortably to sleep, in-
voking the Centurion to wake him if anything
really interesting should occur. The Cen-
turion also insisted that Hamdi should sleep,
for he realised that the next twenty-four
hours might see a fearful strain placed upon
the endurance of the driver of the car.
The Centurion walked up and down look-
FULL CRY 123
ing anxiously to his rear for the appearance
of John with the horses. For the reasons of
economy in spirit already mentioned, it was
essential that the horses should arrive in time
to enable the adventurers to visit the various
headquarters of the nearest units to learn first
hand from the Corps and Division command-
ers, the exact progress the operations were
making. It was now past midday and yet
there was no sign of John and the horses.
As the Diplomat and Hamdi were sleep-
ing, side by side, the dead sleep of youth
exhausted by excitement, the Centurion hired
a gendarme to keep watch over them and the
car, while he made a personal reconnoissance
in the hope of finding someone in authority.
After half an hour's trudge, he was fortunate
enough to stumble across an officer of Ahmed
Abouk's staff, whose confidence he had
gained, when they had soldiered together in
Albania. The staff officer was frankly opti-
mistic. He stated that their only trouble was
that most of their stores had been pushed up
i2 4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
towards Kirk Kilisse before they themselves
had gone forward ; that owing to the disaster
to the Constantinople corps, they had lost all
their supplies and it was not now a question
of whether their men could fight, it was,
rather, a question of whether they could be
fed or whether they must starve as they lay
in their positions. He confirmed the infor-
mation that Mahmud Muktear was having a
big success against the Bulgarian left. He
stated that his general's information was to
the effect that the Bulgarians had practically
fought themselves to a standstill and that now
that the Turkish right was moving forward,
it was the intention of this army on the left
to make a desperate effort this very afternoon
to roll up the enemy in front of them. He
admitted that Torgad Shevket Pasha had
practically usurped the chief command from
Abdullah Pasha, and had unofficially in the
name of the latter, organised the whole of the
present resistance.
The plan was as follows: In about an
Abdullah Pasha, nominally in command al Lule Burgas
FULL CRY 125
hour's time the centre division of the Fourth
Army Corps was to be retired. This was to
draw the concentrated fire of the Bulgarians
towards the left of the Turkish position and
if possible to induce them to attempt a for-
ward movement. Simultaneously the two di-
visions of Torgad Shevket Pasha's corps that
were between Karajatch and Sakiskuey, were
to be thrown in upon the Bulgarian left hold-
ing Turk Bej. The little staff officer was con-
fident that such a counter attack must carry
all before it. "You will see the greatest bat-
tle of the war to-day and a great Turkish vic-
tory," he said cheerfully, as he galloped away
to deliver some message.
It was between two and three in the after-
noon when the centre division of Ahmed
Abouk's corps began to retire from its for-
ward position in front of Amurdza. The
first movement of the infantry was heralded
by a crash of artillery fire. The Bulgarian
gunners had evidently been expecting some
change in position, either forward or back-
126 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
wards on this front. As the Turkish infantry
got up slowly out of their trenches and
trooped back to the rear with dignified de-
liberation, salvos of shrapnel burst above
their heads. The whole firmament seemed to
be turned into a Hades by the whip-like
crackling of this devilish instrument of war.
Let the Bulgarian gunners burst their shrap-
nel never so rapidly, never so accurately, they
were unable to make those Turkish troops
move one pulse more quickly than if their re-
tirement was a parade operation.
Then on the far right from the direction
of Turk Bej arose another tumult. The head
of Torgad Shevket's counter attack had risen
out of the trenches. The Second Army Corps
was making its supreme effort. Down the
slope came the brown infantry in rapidly
moving lines. Of a truth the Turks had taken
the offensive. It was a wonderful spectacle
and for the moment it looked as if the suc-
cession of waves must be irresistible. On and
on they came like a swarm of bees leaving a
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FULL CRY 127
disturbed hive. Then suddenly from in front
of them came a crash of fire, the like of
which the Centurion had not heard since his
Manchurian days. It was as if a million
rifles were firing as one. The shrapnel from
overhead was nothing in comparison to this.
It seemed as if the whole line of advancing
Turks shuddered under the shock. There
was no period to the crash; it was but the
prelude to a sustained series that demonstrated
to the utmost the devastating power of the
modern firearm. The line of advancing
Turks shuddered and, shuddering, the men
seemed as if they had been shaken from their
balance by some gigantic earthquake. With
one impulse four to five thousand men had
thrown themselves on their faces. The im-
petus had gone out of the attack. There was
a lull in the crash of fire from the cover
of the plantations surrounding Turk Bej.
Spasmodic efforts were made by the Turks to
infuse life again into the movement, but these
efforts were but the signal for further out-
128 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
bursts of terrific fire from the enemy, whilst
the whole hillside seemed shrouded in the
dust which the shrapnel and rifle bullets
churned up around the prostrate Turks. The
forward impetus was killed.
Suddenly there was another movement.
Again the hoarse-throated quick-firers spoke.
Again the wicked automatics poured forth
their leaden stream of destruction. Again
the Mannlicher breech blocks worked to the
fullest extent of their mechanism. The great
counter attack had failed and the survivors
were flying back to the cover of their posi-
tions.
When the Centurion woke the Diplomat
the centre division of the Fourth Corps had
just begun its retirement. It was a won-
derful spectacle for a man who had never
before seen a battle. The Bulgarian shrap-
nel was burst in such rapid confusion over
the heads of the Turkish infantry, that the
white smoke became a dome-like canopy, and
the bursts were so incessant that the glint
FULL CRY 129
of the flashes rose superior to the winter sun-
light. As company after company of ex-
tended infantry sauntered back over the crest
line it looked as if some gigantic ant's nest
had been disturbed, and that the angry work-
ers, pouring over the hillside, were evacuat-
ing their home.
The movement seemed to communicate it-
self to all the troops within view. The first
line transport, the small residue of reserves,
the ammunition columns came steadily down
the reverse slopes. The only groups that re-
mained detached from the general movement
were the Turkish batteries nestling below the
crest lines. These, alas, were few, but they
made a noble effort to reply to the artillery
inferno that the Bulgarians had marshalled
against their devoted infantry. At last their
effort had run its course. The teams came
trotting up from below. The guns were
hooked in and the batteries came thundering
down the slopes.
The Centurion looked at his watch. He
130 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
had given up all hope of ever seeing his
horses.
He detached the Diplomat from the thrall-
dom of his field glasses.
"Look here, young feller," he said, "this
is a retirement. They must be coming back
to this ridge. The story of to-day's doings
has got to be in Saturday's paper. It took us
four hours to get here. It will take us all
that — perhaps a little more to get back to
Tchorlu. We must away. We cannot afford
to take any risks. It is possible that Jew's
Harp Senior has seen all this, and he may
have a means of getting his news down by
train to-night. We must get back. The Aus-
trian Lloyd fortnightly packet is due to call
at Rodosto to-morrow afternoon. It will be
in Constantinople in six hours after it leaves
there. That will permit censored messages
to reach London in time for Saturday's paper.
The uncensored big story will catch the Con-
stanza boat on Saturday and be in Monday's
paper. As for John, the idiot has missed his
FULL CRY 131
way, been arrested, or done something fool-
ish. We must give up all thought of him and
the horses to-night. Much as I hate desert-
ing the guns, especially at such a juncture,
when anything may happen, yet, as far as we
are concerned, no situation is interesting to
our employers until they have the story of it
in the paper."
"But has anything decisive happened?"
protested the Diplomat who was looking for
more concrete dividends.
"Matters are on the fair way to be deci-
sive," answered the Centurion. "Personally,
I don't quite understand why the whole of the
Fourth Corps is coming back. You will re-
member that young Ahmed Riza Effendi said
that the spoof retirement was to be confined
to only one division. Presumably the abso-
lute failure of the counter attack has upset
all the preconceived intentions. Anyway
there seems no valid reason why these people
should come back. They are retiring in good
enough order. Beyond the dressing down
132 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
with shrapnel that is being burst too high to
be generally effective, they can have nothing
pressing them. There must be some strategic
reason for the withdrawal. Anyway they
won't be coming far back, for there are forty
positions that they can dispute between this
and Tchorlu. We will get back to-night —
send off our story, and, even if it be necessary
for one of us to go to Constantinople, he will
be back in time enough to get the next instal-
ment of this battle. Both sides must take a
breather soon. - "
Thus the adventurers turned back again.
As the car descended into the west valley
it drove into Salih Pasha's Independent Cav-
alry Division. The division was halted with
the First Lancers in front. Both the Diplo-
mat and the Centurion had several acquaint-
ances amongst the officers of the Constanti-
nople Regiment. A couple of these spotted
them and rode out from their squadrons to
pass the time of day. These gay young swash-
bucklers looked very different after a month's
FULL CRY 133
campaigning to what they had done in Pera
when they swaggered up and down the lead-
ing cafes.
When asked why the Fourth Corps was
falling back, they offered the opinion that
Ahmed Abouk had not heard that the Inde-
pendent Cavalry Division was on its way to
support him. Then they gave the adventur-
ers the first definite news that they had had
of the whereabouts of the Jew's Harp Senior.
The Cavalry had seen him in Lule Burgas
during the stampede the night before. They
had just imparted this information when
Salih Pasha ordered the Division to move on.
The Pera youths galloped back to their troops,
and the Division lumbered heavily away, giv-
ing a definite demonstration of the utter
weariness of both men and horses.
So the rival adventurer Jew's Harp had
been in Lule Burgas when the stampede took
place. What means had he to get his infor-
mation back to the cables? It was possible
that he had already slipped from the line on
i 3 4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
an empty troop train. This uncertainty made
it imperative that the adventurers should re-
gain touch with the communications.
A couple of miles further back the adven-
turers met the first of their associates from
Tchorlu. The General, attended by a syce,
was found riding aimlessly across the veldt.
The Centurion asked for news of the Bosniak
Shepherd and his flock. The General could
give but little information. He knew that
the Dumpling, Jew's Harp Junior and one or
two others had broken away. He believed
that the residue of the adventurers, taking
with them three days' food, had left Tchorlu
that morning for the front. The General was
absolutely without food. It is difficult to re-
fuse a colleague meat, but when the telegraph
office calls, the latter-day adventurer has no
time for hospitable dalliance. A packet of
milk chocolate was all that those in the motor
car had time to disgorge.
Except for a few detachments of troops
pushing up to the front, the road between the
FULL CRY 135
actual battlefield and Karisdiran was practi-
cally clear. Here, however, further groups
of the routed First Corps were met paddling
their way back from Baba Eski. With them
were strings of hospital carts freighted with
the mangled frames of poor suffering devils
who had been wounded in the early contacts
of the battle. Some of them had not yet had
their wounds dressed, and their hideous hurts
were just bound up with any rag that came to
hand.
It is important that the reader should real-
ise that this broken soldiery met here, and
spoken of as the fugitives of the First Army
Corps, had not been engaged in the battle of
Lule Burgas. They had been routed six days
before at Yenidje; had fled thence to Baba
Eski without reforming, and had then pushed
on to Lule Burgas. Here, as has been shown,
their presence had prejudiced the dispositions
of the Commander of the Fourth Corps.
Some had been rallied; but the majority, ter-
rified by the appearance of the Bulgarians at
136 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Lule Burgas, had continued their flight round
the left flank of Ahmed Abouk's Corps to-
wards Tchorlu. It was these disreputable
soldiers that the foreign correspondents fell
in with while the battle of Lule Burgas was
being decided. It was their broken ranks and
terror-stricken flight that furnished the lurid
lights in the graphic description of the Turk-
ish rout which galvanized Europe, and inci-
dentally deceived the Bulgarians.
Just as Hamdi had skilfully negotiated the
Karisdiran Causeway for the second time the
adventurers met the Bosniak Shepherd for the
last time. Supported by the bibulous Bey
and his immaculate subaltern he was sailing
along at the head of his flock, at least at the
head of such of them as remained loyal to
him. The Centurion was terrified lest he
should attach the car. In reality the Bosniak
was the personification of amiable simplicity.
He was anxious to know if matters were mov-
ing favourably for the Turks at the front.
To this query the Centurion replied, truth-
to
u
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h-1
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FULL CRY 137
fully enough, "that the battle was progressing
as well for the Turks as could be expected."
It never crossed the Bosniak's mind to de-
tain the car, and with a wave and blessing to
the few British adventurers who remained
true to the flock the Diplomat and the Cen-
turion disappeared from the official ken.
The Centurion never returned to it.
It was dark before the adventurers, after
many vicissitudes brought the car back to the
han in Tchorlu. It had been a long and ex-
citing day, at the end of which soul and stom-
ach yearned for an appetising and full meal.
The Diplomat, therefore, was duly compli-
mentary concerning the Centurion's methods
of organisation, when he found that an appe-
tising hot meal was awaiting them at the han.
It was none of your canned meats, by which
campaigners pretend to live. It was a dish
of stewed fresh kidneys and a chicken pilaff.
It had been prepared in a private Armenian
house hard by and only required warming to
be ready for use. John as a caterer had his
138 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
points even though he had lost himself and
the horses.
Over the repast the two adventurers laid
their plans. There was just enough petrol
to take the car to Rodosto to catch the Aus-
trian Lloyd Packet. The Centurion sug-
gested that he himself should go to Rodosto
with the car and try to find petrol there. If
there was none, then Hamdi, or even the Cen-
turion himself, must go to Constantinople to
secure a supply. It, therefore, behoved the
Diplomat to write his great battle dispatch at
once, as the start must be made at daybreak.
The Diplomat fell to immediately and be-
tween semi-somnolent periods was writing
through the night.
At daybreak the following morning the
Centurion and the Diplomat parted company.
The Centurion, doing messenger for the lat-
ter, sped in the car away to Rodosto and the
cables; while the Diplomat taking to horse
returned to the battle area.
CHAPTER VII
A LONE LINE
IN ordinary circumstances the journey from
Tchorlu to Rodosto should have been
made within the hour. Owing to the fact,
however, that the road, for the last six weeks,
had been one of the main communications of
the Turkish Army, it was in a terrible state.
It, therefore, took the car just over two hours
to reach the coast town. Considering the
great events that were taking place between
Tchorlu and Lule Burgas, the road was ex-
tremely empty. Here again the Centurion
witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of fresh
troops marching up hotfoot to the front, be-
ing crossed on the journey by stragglers from
the beaten army, wandering at their ease to-
wards the coast. There was no surveillance
of the line of communications, no one in au-
139
i 4 o WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
thority to check the fugitives or to arrange for
the orderly passage of the communications
transport. It may be said here in parenthe-
sis, that in spite of the fact that the coast towns
of this portion of the Marmora were ringing
with stories of excesses and depredations ef-
fected by the savage soldiery of the disorgan-
ised Turkish Army, yet as far as the Centu-
rion was able to judge, there was not an atom
of truth in any of these wild stories. It
seemed to him that the Turkish soldier was so
stupid and heavy, that he was more likely to
starve from his own impracticability than to
attempt any outrage upon the villages through
which he passed.
The town of Rodosto lies in a picturesque
enclave between two hills on the Marmora
coast line. It is a commercial town of some
considerable importance, and when once
Thrace is opened up and exploited, as its fer-
tility warrants, Rodosto should become one of
the most flourishing open roadsteads in the
Levant. It is a chief centre of the canary
A LONE LINE 141
seed trade, an industry which, the writer is
told, is in its small way as speculative as that
of cotton. Nearly all the canary seed grown
in Turkey is exported to the United States.
One wonders how many of the dear old ladies,
buying their five cents' worth of canary seed
at their favoured store, realise that the fields
in which this commodity is raised have re-
cently been trampled by the carriages and
tumbrils of cannon, and the weary feet of
thousands of striving soldiery.
There is no need to give a minute descrip-
tion of Rodosto. In the matter of squalid
architecture and filthy dressing, all Turkish
towns are similar. The last few miles before
the car reached Rodosto, it caught the tail end
of the mighty exodus that had taken place
from all the up-country villages. It appears
that the Turkish authorities had let it be
understood that all the refugees from the vil-
lages in Northern Thrace would, if they made
their way .down to the Marmora, be given free
transport across to Asia.
142 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
A Turkish intimation of this nature does
not by any means bear the interpretation of im-
mediate fulfilment. Rodosto's narrow streets
were packed with thousands of country carts.
Each of these carts had a living freight of
old men, women and children. To the Euro-
pean, these people appear to be not only in the
last stage of destitution, but of absolute mis-
ery. It does not do, however, for the Euro-
pean to order his sentimental feelings by
comparison with similar conditions among the
peoples of his own kind. These people were
not feeling the privations as would have a
more civilised race. Instinctively, all the
Turks settled in Europe are nomads. Four
hundred years ago, their ancestors trekked
into Thrace in the wake of Mustapha Pasha's
successful armies, in much the same state of
poverty and discomfort, as these their descend-
ants were now suffering. As one of the old
men amongst them said to Hamdi: "Our
forefathers were from Asia, and we their de-
scendants are going back." This simple sen-
A LONE LINE 143
tence seemed to include the entire philosophy
of this wandering race.
As is usual in all Turkish coast towns and
villages of any commercial importance, there
are two distinct quarters that have foreign in-
terests. The first of these is the group of
commercial offices raised as close to the cus-
toms quay as possible, in which all commer-
cial business is transacted. The other is
usually a little removed. It is the residential
quarter of the consular corps.
Rodosto was no exception to this rule.
With infinite difficulty, the car was forced
through the crowded streets until it reached
the customs sheds. Here the Centurion left
Hamdi to fke the car to the nearest han,
whilst he set himself to discover the domicile
of the British vice-consul. The moment he
stepped out of the car, he was surrounded by
a group of wild-eyed Greeks, who plied him
for information regarding the battle he had
just left. t Was it true that the Bulgarians
were only an hour's march away from Ro-
i 4 4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
dosto? Did he think it was likely that the
Turks would order the massacre of the Chris-
tians before they left Rodosto or before the
Bulgarians could make an entry? Was it a
fact that the Turks had been absolutely de-
feated and that Adrianople had been burnt to
the ground on the previous evening?
If the Centurion had not had some experi-
ence of Levantine nerves, he might have been
upset by this evidence of really heartfelt dis-
tress. He thought it best to dissemble and he
assured his anxious audience that they had
nothing to fear, that the Turks might be win-
ning "hands down" all along the line, for
there were no Bulgarians nearer than Lule
Burgas. The way that the Greeks' faces fell,
when they heard that the Turks were winning,
was a definite indication of their feelings.
Although they were anxious that the Turks
should be beaten and driven out of Europe,
yet they were so fearful that in the process of
elimination the Turks, in their own kindly
way, would have one last chance of getting
A LONE LINE 145
even with the Christian element, that they
were torn with hopes and fears which only
those who have knowledge of the Levant can
appreciate.
The Centurion was led by one of the Greeks
to the office of a gentleman who was intro-
duced to him as the British vice-consul. This
gentleman, who could speak no English and
who rejoiced in an Italian name well-known
in the Levant, repudiated the soft impeach-
ment that he was the responsible British func-
tionary. He explained the mistake in this
manner. Until the outbreak of the Turco-
Italian war, he had held the office of British
vice-consul. Owing to the fact that he was an
Italian, it was impossible for him to continue
in this exalted position whilst his nation was
at loggerheads with the Ottoman government.
He, therefore, had been permitted to transfer
his dignified mantle to the only British resi-
dent in the town.
There is* something very wrong with the or-
ganisation of the British consular service in
146 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
these places. Presumably, the duty of the
British consul is to look after the interests of
British firms and British shipping. Is it to
be believed that any satisfactory assistance can
be given to a bluff sea captain of a coasting
tramp, when he cannot converse with his con-
sul, except through the medium of an untrust-
worthy dragoman? Is it to be believed that a
Levantine Italian could ever judge of a Brit-
ish sea captain's troubles from the standpoint
of British thought?
This criticism may go further. In all its
ramifications the Levantine consular service is
organised as a kind of subsidiary secret service
for the British embassy. The officers in the
Levantine service, imagining themselves to be
diplomats, erroneously think that their first
duty is that of secret service agents, and they
only regard their commercial duties as a neces-
sary evil subservient to the diplomatic position
they pretend. This is totally wrong and Brit-
ish trade and British interests would be far
better served if some strong influence at the
Foreign Office would make it be clearly un-
A LONE LINE 147
derstood that the services for which the Brit-
isher pays his taxes, is that the Empire's
commercial interests and enterprises shall be
fostered and furthered by the consuls em-
ployed to this end. How often has not the
writer seen a humble British sea captain kick-
ing his heels in the waiting room of some con-
sulate, or a merchant in desperate need of
immediate assistance, while the pseudo-diplo-
mat is wasting their time and the public money
by putting into cipher the foolish and lying
gossip which is the stock in trade of the Levan-
tine consular corps. The German and Ameri-
can services can teach the British service
many trenchant lessons in the true conception
of consular duties, but the frog that imag-
ines he can reach the dimensions of a bull,
will learn no lesson during the period of his
inflation.
In the special circumstances of the Centu-
rion, it was a blessing that the Englishman was
acting as vice-consul. The Centurion at once
discovered from him, as he had feared, that
the Dumpling, having arrived in the Panhard
148 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
early on the preceding day, had bought up
every litre of petrol in the town. There had
not been a great quantity, but one or two peo-
ple had motor launches. The Dumpling had
made an absolute corner and there was not
another piastre's worth to be found.
The vice-consul told the Centurion that it
had taken the Dumpling about three hours to
make his corner in spirit. Then he had gone
off in his car by the Muradli road to the front.
With regard to communications, the consul
said there were two boats due to go to Con-
stantinople that evening. One was the Mar-
mora express and the other, the Austrian
Lloyd packet. He had heard that there w r as
some delay to shipping at the Dardanelles.
It was, therefore, possible that the Austrian
Lloyd might be detained.
The Centurion's car had arrived at Rodosto
with hardly half a litre of petrol to spare.
Without the spirit, therefore, he was abso-
lutely immobile. Knowing the ways of Tur-
key and the Levant, he made up his mind that
A LONE LINE 149
it was essential that he himself go to Con-
stantinople to buy the essence so vital to his
mobility. By doing this he served every pur-
pose. He would be certain of the despatch
both of his own and the Diplomat's messages,
and he would also be certain of getting the
spirit back to Rodosto in the shortest possible
time. With the best will in the world, agents
in the Levant, however highly paid, however
trustworthy, have that vague appreciation of
the value of time which is one of the main
characteristics of all the races who live w T ithin
the shadow of Asia Minor. It is a character-
istic which is even acquired by those trained
in other schools, after a short residence in the
Levant.
The vice-consul pointed out, that although
there were two boats to sail for Constantinople
that evening, it was probable there would be
no further sailing for two or three days. The
spirit of rivalry is so poignant amongst these
»
latter-day adventurers, that the Centurion,
metaphorically speaking, rubbed his hands at
ISO WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
this information. It meant in all probability
that he and the Diplomat alone of the four
Englishmen who had been expeditious enough
actually to participate in the battle of Lule
Burgas, would be the only ones that got the
news to London in time for Saturday's and
Monday's papers. The boats, however, were
not due to leave Rodosto until sundown, and
the Centurion spent the day dividing his time
in writing his own despatch and anxiously
listening for the sound of the Dumpling's
Panhard. As far as the Centurion could
make out the probabilities, it was only by
means of the Panhard, that he could be caught
in the race for the wires. There had been the
probability of the railway as an alternative
route, but experience had shown that empty
trains returning, sometimes took as long as
sixty hours to cover the distance from Tchorlu
to Stamboul. The Centurion's anxiety was
not altogether alleviated, however, when by
sundown the Austrian Lloyd packet had not
arrived. Although the Centurion by booking
A LONE LINE 151
a passage on the Express steamer would carry
out his own plans as he had calculated them,
yet the non-arrival of the Austrian Lloyd
meant that she would probably arrive on the
morrow. This, conceivably, would give his
rivals an extra twenty-four hours in which to
catch the Constanza connection from Con-
stantinople. Anyway, the race was his as far
as the censored messages direct from Con-
stantinople were concerned.
Lay readers may not realise how much these
estimates in hours mean to newspapers. In
certain circumstances, a great London journal
will stand the expenditure almost of a king's
ransom, if such expenditure will place its
news twenty-four hours ahead of its rivals.
As the Centurion installed himself on the
deck of the Express steamer, which was
crowded to its full capacity by well-to-do
Levantine refugees, he observed that at the
military pier, work was being pushed strenu-
ously forward to re-embark the warlike stores
that were heaped up on the wharf. This in
152 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
conjunction with the fact that he had found no
confusion on the road up to Tchorlu, sug-
gested that orders had arrived that day for the
abandonment of the Rodosto-Tchorlu road as
a line of communication to the army. This
was rather a disquieting discovery, as it sug-
gested that the Turkish field armies proposed
to retire further south than Tchorlu. As far
as the Centurion had been able to form an
opinion on the ground, there was not the
slightest necessity for such a precipitate retire-
ment. At least he could see no such necessity
upon the merits of the action as it had been
fought. He did not then know how abso-
lutely the administrative services of those
armies had failed, and that want of food and
ammunition, rather than Bulgarian shrapnel,
had determined the minister of war to order a
general retirement upon Tcherkeskuey.
CHAPTER VIII
BACK TO THE HUNT
THERE is an expression in American
slang, which is eloquently descriptive
of personal satisfaction. As the Centurion
stepped out of his araba and entered the Pera
Palace Hotel on the following morning, he
"felt good," as this expression has it. Bar-
ring a truculent censor and the Act of God,
there was nothing between him and the real-
isation of the object of all his efforts. The
Marmora Express lands its passengers at
Galata full early in the morning. The Cen-
turion was able, therefore, to disappear into
the privacy of his room without going under
the cynosure of all and sundry of the guests
at the hotel. As everybody who has stayed in
this institution knows, the hall porter is the
personification of discretion. The Centurion
had only to suggest to this functionary that he
153
154 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
was still to be considered as being at the front
with the Turkish army, and he knew that his
presence would not be disclosed.
How a message was sent to the Centurion's
colleague in the capital, and how this col-
league loyally placed himself at his disposal
throughout the day, is not part of this narra-
tive. It will suffice to say that all arrange-
ments for the despatch of the messages were
satisfactorily accomplished, a supply of petrol
puchased and placed upon a special launch
that was hired to take the Centurion back to
Rodosto that evening.
It was considered expedient that the Centu-
rion should not appear openly in the capital,
as it was just possible, in the circumstances,
that the General Staff might not appreciate
the fact that there was direct information from
the armies in the field already arrived in Pera.
Constantinople itself was in a fever of excite-
ment. Although the General Staff had issued
daily bulletins to the effect that Mahmud
Muktear Pasha was having big and continued
BACK TO THE HUNT 155
successes on the Viza front; that the Fourth
and Second Corps were holding their own
manfully at Lule Burgas, yet there was other
and more truthful information circulating,
which told of disasters in the field and hinted
at the general retirement which had already
taken place.
Pera is the home of rumours and even dis-
tances Shanghai in the amazing quality of its
falsehoods. It was generally believed that
morning, in European circles, that the Turk-
ish Army, utterly routed and actively pur-
sued, was stampeding for Tchataldja. Colour
was given to this exaggerated statement of the
situation at the front, first by the wish of
Levantine circles that was father to the
thought, and secondly by the clever fabrica-
tions which the Bulgarian General Staff per-
mitted to pass as news to a privileged paper in
Vienna.
From this latter source, the whole of the
press of Europe was inspired with a continual
story of Bulgarian heroism. In spite of the
156 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
fact that the Bulgarian successes were admira-
ble enough in the naked narrative of truth, the
world was informed of magnificent exploits
by independent cavalry; of terrific carnage at
the point of glistening bayonets; of tactical
successes, Napoleonic in their conception and
Japanese in their realisation. Before these
word pictures, a truthful narrative was a tepid
and unworthy lucubration.
The Bulgarian General Staff had doubtless
entered the province of the news agency busi-
ness with a definite object. With admirable
secrecy they had veiled the conduct of their
campaign in its earlier stages. They did not
at this moment wish Europe to know that their
much vaunted system of supply and transport
had developed unexpected limitations. It
was not to their advantage that Europe should
realise the poignant truth of the casual remark
which it will be remembered the Centurion
had made to the Diplomat: "Both sides must
take a breather soon." While the British
Ambassador, upon information received from
BACK TO THE HUNT 157
the British legation at Sofia, was telling his
colleagues that the Bulgarian independent cav-
alry had appeared athwart the line of retreat
of the Turkish armies and had turned that
retreat into a hopeless rout; while the privi-
leged Vienna newspaper was telling Europe
of the Turkish Sedan which had made the dry
bed of the Tchorlu River run red with Otto-
man blood, the Bulgarian armies, faint and
exhausted, were resting on their arms, count-
ing their losses and thanking the Christian's
God that something had intervened to make
the Turks evacuate the positions which they
themselves were too exhausted to face again.
The launch which the Centurion hired to
take him and his petrol back to Rodosto, was
timed to leave the Galata wharf at seven in the
evening. It was a stout little harbour tug of
about sixty tons, and it was considered capable
of doing the voyage to Rodosto in six or seven
hours. Although the vessel flew the British
flag, it was captained and manned by Greek
and Italian Levantines. When the Centurion
158 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
went on board, he found that neither the skip-
per nor crew could speak a word of English
or French. In ordinary circumstances this
should not have mattered. There had, how-
ever, been an angry sunset, and it looked very
much as if the tug might chance into dirty
weather. These Levantine sailors are par-
ticularly weatherwise, and as the tug cast off
its moorings, the sailors in a neighbouring
boat gave them a peculiar send-off, which was
ominous in its friendly sarcasm.
The elements of fortune enter into our daily
lives in some inconceivable manner. Without
worrying about the psychology of the law of
chances, it is certain that there is some rule
which intervenes to mend or mar all enter-
prise designed by human artifice. During
the earlier portion of this campaign, there was
a vein of misfortune that put a certain drag
upon the carefully laid plans in the Centu-
rion's campaign. To begin with, he had
started the adventure weighted down with a
transient malady that might well have con-
BACK TO THE HUNT 159
fined him to his bed. Once free of this
malady, he was faced with the shortage of
petrol on the arrival of his car. Again, on the
culminating day of the battle of Lule Burgas,
his henchman had failed to arrive at the tryst
with his horses, and now he was to be faced
with another set-back in the spin of the wheel
of fortune. This is not set down as a peevish
endeavour to explain away any element of
failure. It is only mentioned to show how
one adventurer may have to struggle against
the many elements of adverse chance, while
another will have the good fortune to find suc-
cess through channels totally unforeseen.
The launch had not been an hour at sea
when she struck one of those furious local
gales, for which the Marmora is famous. Of
the malady from which the Centurion suf-
fered, stowed away in a narrow fo'c'sle bunk,
there is no necessity to speak. The passing
personal inconvenience of mal-de-mer is noth-
ing in the scheme of things. What that storm
meant, however, was that much of the Centu-
160 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
rion's energy and despatch was wasted, since
the rain that fell in sheets would render the
road impassable for his car between Rodosto
and Tchorlu. The writer will not dwell upon
the hideous sufferings in that fo'c'sle, but at
one period towards midnight, the situation be-
came so desperate that the skipper, dripping
wet, made his way down to the Centurion, and
shaking his head with gloomy energy, pointed
suggestively to his feet. Being unable to con-
verse with him, except in the most primitive
Italian, the Centurion realised, between the
paroxysms of his malady, that the captain sug-
gested that any attempt to continue the voy-
age was courting destruction. On personal
grounds, the Centurion was in such a state of
collapse that he felt that the sinking of the
craft would have been a happy release, but he
had his duty to consider, and so he murmured
"Courage" and turned over on his side, leav-
ing the captain to work out the salvation of
his boat as best he could. Three times be-
tween midnight and morning the skipper
BACK TO THE HUNT 161
came down to try and induce the Centurion to
agree to a return passage to Constantinople,
maintaining that in the last three hours the
boat had not made more than a knot. With
daylight, however, the tempest somewhat
abated and by ten in the morning the tug was
almost rolling her boilers loose in the open
Rodosto roadstead.
CHAPTER IX
A ROGUE HOUND
THE Centurion's worst fears were realised.
The hills behind Rodosto were clouded
in dim mists and it was pouring rain. It was
evident that it must be days before the car
would be able to negotiate the road to Tchorlu.
There were, too, further disappointments in
store. After the usual difficulties of landing,
the Centurion made his way to the house of
the British Vice Consul, to learn, as he had
feared, that on the previous day his most dan-
gerous rivals had reached Rodosto in the Pan-
hard. What was worse, the Austrian Lloyd
that should have run to time, came in the
same afternoon that they arrived. They had
boarded her and were now safely in Constanti-
nople in time to catch the Constanza com-
munication. This meant that although they
had missed Saturday's paper, yet they would
162
A ROGUE HOUND 163
run equal with the Centurion and the Diplo-
mat in the long and uncensored messages that
would appear in the Monday's papers. Of
such is the fortune of war.
The Centurion learned that, if that particu-
lar Austrian Lloyd boat had not run twenty-
four hours late, there would not have been
another boat to take the adventurers to Con-
stantinople for at least three days. Three
days in the life of war news is a very big affair.
The disappointment was natural. The Cen-
turion could not but feel at the same time some
satisfaction that his close friends and col-
leagues had not been put in the humiliating
position of having to wait days to get their
messages away. They were both dear fellows
and had undergone the same strenuous diffi-
culties as himself. The Vice Consul said that
the two had passed a nerve-shaking day in
Rodosto. They of course knew that the Cen-
turion was away with the news, and it was un-
certain, owing to the existing state of war and
its attendant difficulties at the Dardanelles,
1 64 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
whether the Austrian Lloyd boat would put
into Rodosto at all. As the afternoon drew
on and there seemed to be little chance that the
boat would arrive, both the Dumpling and his
companion had fallen into the depths of de-
jection. Then suddenly the packet appeared
round the point and they were transported
to the seventh Heaven of delight. Only a
journalist can appreciate their feelings at this
moment.
The Centurion tried to glean some informa-
tion from the Vice Consul of what had hap-
pened at the front since he himself had left.
The latter, however, knew nothing and said
that both his visitors of the previous day had
discreetly maintained an absolute silence con-
cerning the happenings in which they had
participated. There was, however, consider-
able evidence in the town that much disinte-
gration had taken place in the Ottoman armies
of the left wing. Rodosto had rilled up in an
extraordinary manner with deserters from the
army. A large percentage of these were of
A ROGUE HOUND 165
the Christian element, which since the revolu-
tion the Turks had admitted to military serv-
ice. The craven attitude of many of these
was deplorable. They were without money
or food and were begging from door to door,
not only for bread, but for civilian clothing,
that they might shed their uniforms and thus
disappear from the military ken.
Rodosto is full of Geeks and Armenians.
This particular type is not over-scrupulous in
its methods of making money. Brand new
Mausers were purchasable for five piastres,
while handfuls of ammunition were thrown
gratis into the bargain. The Armenians who
engaged in this traffic in arms defended their
action in these transactions by claiming that
they feared every moment the Turks would
let the canaille of the town loose upon them;
they, therefore, had no compunction in buying
Turkish arms m order to defend their homes
and families from the final vengeance of the
Crescent. This, of course, in the majority of
cases, was all eyewash. The Armenians were
1 66 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
not content with this one traffic; they carried
their nefarious transactions into another field.
They were battening on the misfortunes of the
thousands of Turkish refugees dumped down
upon them. They purchased for a song the
live stock of these poor wretches. In spite of
their nomadic traditions, the refugees were
now suffering awful experiences. It had
rained without intermission since the preced-
ing night. The town being on the slope of a
hillside, the streets in places had become rivu-
lets. The mud and filth collected during the
recent extraordinary conditions of life was in
most places ankle deep. The rain had come
in with a piercing cold wind and it was a
heartrending sight to see families curled up
in the slush, trying to keep their miserable
bodies warm by burning the cart wheels which
had brought them to the coast. Babies were
cradled in slush. Women and children were
drenched to the skin. The live stock that was
these poor vagrants' sole worldly wealth, was
sold for a trifle to the rapacious Armenians in
A ROGUE HOUND 167
order that the simplest necessities of life might
be forthcoming. Trust an Armenian or a
Greek to miss an opportunity! They knew
that they had the refugees in the hollow of
their hand and they at once made a corner in
bread, and no refugee could purchase this
simple commodity except at extortionate rates.
Is it to be wondered that the simple and slow-
thinking Turk has at times risen in his wrath
and exterminated in their hundreds these
parasites?
It was to unhappy surroundings that the
Centurion had returned. The consular corps
which consisted of a group of Levantine Vice
Consuls, was still obsessed with the belief that
the moment the Turks finally evacuated the
town, they would leave orders behind them for
a general massacre. The wires which were
still working to Constantinople, were kept red
hot with pathetic appeals in cipher for foreign
warships to be sent to save the Christian from
the onslaught which was never even medi-
tated. The Centurion did his best to allay the
1 68 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
fears of this cowering section of the European
race. He pointed out that there was no cer-
tainty that the Turks were in such desperate
straits, that they would leave the town with-
out a garrison. The word "massacre," how-
ever, has been so seared into the brain of the
Christian Levantine, that the conditions of his
squalid life have only to be removed a fraction
from the normal and he believes himself and
his compatriots to be in imminent danger of a
violent death.
Having been interviewed by each of the
Levantine representatives of the foreign pow-
ers domiciled in Rodosto, and having heart-
ened up each in turn with the promise tha^t
they would not be massacred forthwith,
the Centurion wandered down to the han
to see how matters went with Hamdi and the
car.
At the han he found Adolphe, Adolphe is
the Dumpling's dragoman. He is altogether
a very estimable personage. He calls him-
self an Austrian and he carries himself with
A ROGUE HOUND 169
the dignity of a man of knowledge and ac-
count. Adolphe, knowing the close relation-
ship between the Centurion and the Dump-
ling, was expansive as to the latter's adven-
tures. After he had made the corner in
petrol, the Dumpling took the Muradli road
and arrived at that station on the Thracian
railway just before sundown. As has already
been explained, the road from Rodosto to
Muradli is the only real provincial road in
European Turkey. The Dumpling's chauf-
feur, who was a young, excitable youth, hav-
ing gained confidence at the progress he had
made on the sound metalled bottom, thought
that he could take the heavy Panhard with
equal audacity along the country roads. The
result was disastrous and the great forty horse-
power car stuck hopelessly in the slough.
The disaster was so complete that it was im-
possible to correct anything that night. The
car had to be left where it was and, on foot,
the Dumpling and his retainers made their
way to Muradli Station. Here they were on
170 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
the fringe of the operations. Muradli was a
point that many hundreds of broken troops
from the First Corps touched. The Dump-
ling found the station commandant hospitable
and discursive. Even with his good will it
was impossible to move the car that night. It
remained where it was and in the morning,
with the aid of bullocks, it was at last dragged
out of the mudhole. The Dumpling then cut
across country to the Tchorlu road to find
himself in the midst of the retiring Turkish
army. With great difficulty the heavy car
was urged on through phalanxes of retreating
soldiers, and reached the han at Tchorlu late
in the evening. Here the Dumpling found
some of the other adventurers, who, during the
retirement, had broken away from the Bosniak
Shepherd. Here was found Jew's Harp Sen-
ior, who after most terrible experiences at the
front with Abdullah's headquarters had, by
an almost miraculous succession of fortunate
events, arrived back at Tchorlu almost in the
last state of exhaustion. If he had not been
A ROGUE HOUND 171
able, on this particular night, again to join
forces with his partner in the Panhard, it is
probable that the brilliant description of his
desperate experiences would never have
reached his paper in time to have realised the
success that they deserved. Early the follow-
ing morning he and the Dumpling fled in the
car to Rodosto and by the skin of their teeth,
as has been shown, caught the overdue Aus-
trian Lloyd boat. In such circumstances are
journalistic triumphs made.
Hamdi was next consulted as to the possi-
bility of the car making the journey to
Tchorlu. He shook his head despondently.
Hamdi was as anxious to get back to the front
as his master. Nature, however, had inter-
vened. As there was no definite information
to be found in Rodosto, the Centurion deter-
mined to make a reconnoissance to Muradli
Station. The me'talled road to this point was
possible in all weathers. Local reports in the
town were definite that Bulgarian troops
would be found half a dozen miles outside the
172 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
town. Circumstantial evidence was tendered
as to the treatment the invaders had extended
to the villagers. The Centurion would accept
none of this. According to his calculation
there was still no reason why the Turks should
have fallen back from this point.
The members of the consular body looked
upon the reconnoissance as a foolhardy affair,
but they were a chicken-hearted body. The
road to Muradli was all that was claimed for
it. It was ominously deserted and the car just
spun along. Within three miles of the Sta-
tion the car met a great collection of village
carts heading for the town. They were in
charge of an aged Mulazim in faded uniform,
and a round dozen of decrepit mustafiz (last
ban reservists). The Centurion learned from
the officer that he was clearing the villages of
all food stuff that could be of any use to the
enemy. He was confident that Ottoman
troops were still at Muradli. The Centurion
was pleased to find that the Turks could show
such workmanlike energy as to clear the coun-
A ROGUE HOUND 173
try before the enemy, but this energy foretold
a contemplated evacuation.
As the car crossed the iron bridge into
Muradli village there seemed an absolute lack
of life about both the village and the station
buildings. There was no rolling stock. The
place was deserted. Hamdi took the car right
on to the metals, and pulled up in front of the
booking office. Save for a tame little brown
mongrel, that showed unwonted signs of joy
at the arrival of humans, and a flock of aston-
ished geese there was nothing living in the
place. The station offices were locked. Ex-
cept for a few jettisoned pontoons and a half
dozen old pattern ammunition wagons the
place was cleared of all military stores. Sign
of living Turk or Bulgar there was none.
The Centurion swept the far horizon of the
gently sloping downs with his glasses, and
peered long down the parallel of the dead
straight, permanent way. Crest line and van-
ishing point betrayed not the slightest evi-
dence of any living thing.
174 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
The Centurion was nonplussed. It was evi-
dent that the Turks had retired. It was just
as obvious that the Bulgarians had not ad-
vanced. The Turks had retired in good
order, since they had taken everything with
them. The useless material they had jetti-
soned was neatly parked in the station yard
as for inspection. It was impossible that the
Bulgarians had pushed on, on the heels of the
Turks, without occupying Muradli. Strate-
gically such an omission was unthinkable.
The railway was of vital importance to them,
for though Adrianople still refused them the
main line, yet they had captured two loco-
motives and rolling stock at Kirk Kilisse.
There was only one solution. The Bulgarians
at Lule Burgas had, as the Centurion had
thought, put their last ounce into the battle
and had not been able to advance since. No
other reasoning would stand examination.
Although Muradli was not on the direct
march route from Lule Burgas to Tchorlu,
yet the top of the ridge over which that road
A ROGUE HOUND 175
passed was visible from the station. Muradli
Station lay two-thirds of the way between
Lule Burgas and Tchorlu at the bend of the
Ergene River. There was no movement on
the ridge. It would have been impossible for
an army to pass that way without first occupy-
ing Muradli.
"Well," said the Centurion to Hamdi, "if
the Bulgarians are not here, they ought to be.
Anyway they are likely to come here pretty
d — d quick. We had better not stay or we
may be nabbed by some inquisitive patrol."
On returning to Rodosto the Centurion
found unexpected confirmation of the diag-
nosis he had made at Muradli. The Vice-
Consul reported that he had heard that three
more adventurers had arrived at the han from
Tchorlu. The Centurion straight away went
down and discovered his French colleagues.
They had left Tchorlu that morning and rid-
den down to the coast. They were overjoyed
at finding the Centurion, who had already been
reported killed.
176 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
As soon as they could be induced to talk
coherently, the Centurion gathered that they
had broken away that morning because the
Bosniak Shepherd had ordered the residue of
his flock to abandon their stores, and take train
immediately for Tcherkeskuey. They said
that on the night when the Centurion had last
seen them they had had a trying experience.
They had bivouacked out on the veldt. On
the morrow they had been overtaken by the
army in retreat and hustled back to Tchorlu.
Rather than suffer further at the hands of
the Turks, the Frenchmen had thrown in their
hands and determined to take the first boat to
Pera. They said that all the English adven-
turers had disappeared and that the Germans
and Russians alone remained loyal to the Bos-
niak Shepherd. They dilated on the horrors
they had seen; the dangers on the road to
Tchorlu; the corpses of refugees dead of chol-
era and a thousand and one terrors. It was
evident that they had contracted the epidemic
known as "cold feet." This epidemic was
A ROGUE HOUND 177
curiously prevalent at that period in the Turk-
ish Army. It was, however, almost exclu-
sively confined to the ranks of the partially
trained troops.
The concrete information that they were
able to give the Centurion was encouraging.
There was still a very large Turkish force in
occupation of Tchorlu and, to the Frenchmen,
it looked as if this force intended to stay there
as it was busily engaged in throwing up field
works on positions covering the town on the
north.
On the following morning Hamdi gave a
dubious assent to attempt the return journey to
Tchorlu. An early start was made. For the
first five miles progress was fair. There were
evidences on the road, as suggested by the
Frenchmen, that some epidemic — or perhaps
starvation and exhaustion — had overtaken
several of the fugitives. It was curious to
find that the rearward movement of fugitives
seemed to have stopped. The only troops that
were passed on the road were small formed
178 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
bodies heading to Tchorlu. After the fifth
mile the road passes over a long swampy
plateau. Here misfortune overtook the car.
Hamdi had feared this plateau. His worst
fears were realized. The car sank into a
morass ; the wheels lost their purchase, and the
machine became hopelessly bogged. Hamdi,
however, was an energetic fatalist, and he said
cheerily, "No good — go fetch cow." There
was no village in sight, but he trudged off
happily.
There are moments when it is legitimate
even for an optimist to give way to despond-
ency. For the next six hours the Centurion
sank as deeply into the Slough of Despond as
his car had penetrated into the trough of the
morass. The wind had veered round to the
north again, and blew in bitter draught across
the plateau. There was not a living thing in
sight. Only the boundless area of the billowy
downs. It is hard to imagine a more oppres-
sive solitude. To be absolutely alone with an
immobile car in the centre of a great grassy
A ROGUE HOUND 179
wilderness in Thrace! The impotence of it
all!
From time to time groups of Turkish sol-
diers sauntered past and gazed upon the in-
congruous spectacle with lazy indolence. A
few of the more curious came and passed the
time of day and earned as a remuneration for
their welcome curiosity the gift of a cigarette.
It was the sense of impotence that crushed the
spirit. The Centurion fell to wondering what
the Diplomat, his partner in the car, must be
thinking and whether he was waiting his re-
turn to Tchorlu. Perhaps he also had given
him up as lost or dead.
After an absence of two hours, Hamdi
loomed up on the horizon with his "cow."
He had commandeered a pair of buffaloes and
a driver. It would have seemed just if, at
this period, the tribulations of the journey had
ended. However,*it was not so. The buffa-
loes were hitched in, and with Hamdi and the
driver at their tails, they took the strain.
There was a sickening crack, and the yoke
180 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
broke into two pieces. With this the cup was
full. Even Hamdi ceased to smile.
After a moment's reflection he borrowed a
cigarette from the Centurion, and bade him
mind the cow-boy and the team while he
trudged back the three miles to find another
and a stronger yoke. The next two hours the
Centurion passed in absolute misery. At last
Hamdi returned with a serviceable harness.
Opportunely a squad of soldiers arrived
simultaneously. With their help, and that of
the engines, the buffaloes finally towed the car
at a snail's pace through the swamp. The re-
mainder of the journey was tedious going.
There was not, however, another serious delay
and towards evening the minarets of Tchorlu
separated from the winter mists, and the car
climbed the last rise into the village. It had
taken eight hours to do the twenty-two kilo-
meters.
There was no doubt about the Turks still
being in occupation of Tchorlu. The tem-
porary barracks on the Rodosto side of the vil-
A ROGUE HOUND 181
lage were teeming with soldiers. For the first
and only time during the campaign the Cen-
turion was stopped and questioned by an ex-
amining post at the entrance to the village.
The interrogation was perfunctory. It was
remarkable, nevertheless, what inadequate
measures for protection had been taken. The
Centurion found that Hakki Pasha's division
and the headquarters of the Fourth Corps
were at Tchorlu. Although an adequate line
of outposts had been thrown out to the north
of Tchorlu cantonments and railway sta-
tion, there was nothing protective along the
front by which the car had arrived beyond
the one examining post. An enterprising
Bulgarian squadron leader could have had
a lot of fun if he had slipped round by way
of the Rodosto road. But there had been
little worthy of the name of enterprise on
either side in this dully conducted campaign.
It was a pleasure to the Centurion to feel
that he was back with Ahmed Abouk's com-
mand. He now discovered the Fourth Corps
182 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
had not had much to be ashamed of in spite of
the brilliant word-painting of those of his col-
leagues, who had let themselves go on the "re-
treat from Moscow" racket. It is curious
how quickly the accomplished journalist can
see red, and how difficult he finds it to draw
the line between rout and retirement. Fortu-
nately there were no professional journalists
with the Tirah Field Force when it scuttled
down the Bara Valley in 1897. If there had
been, the historical exactitude of the operation
would have been as prostituted as has been
the retirement of the Turkish Armies from
Lule Burgas. These things are difficult to ex-
plain to the lay mind. The proof of the pud-
ding, so runs the time worn adage, lies in the
eating. Here was the Centurion at Tchorlu,
six days after the general retirement of the
Turkish Army was ordered from the line Lule
Burgas-Viza. Tchorlu was only thirty-five
kilometers — that is one day's march — from the
battlefield. At Tchorlu was a Turkish rear-
guard consisting of the complete infantry di-
A ROGUE HOUND 183
vision which had covered the retirement of
the left wing of the Turkish armies and be-
tween it and the enemy again, was Salih
Pasha's independent cavalry division. For
five days neither of these divisions had fired
a single round. Where then was the rout?
Someone or another has lost his sense of pro-
portion. It was the First Corps that was
routed, and this was at Yenidje days before the
struggle at Lule Burgas.
Tchorlu was simply bristling with troops.
It was with difficulty that the car was able to
make its way through the streets. The batter-
ies were all lined up in the main thoroughfare.
The teams were feeding with their harness on
ready to hook in if an emergency should re-
quire sudden movement. The Centurion
drove direct to the han, hoping that he should
find the Diplomat and his own caravan there.
The hanji, who recognised him as the trucu-
lent adventurer who had destroyed his bed-
room furniture and then paid handsomely for
it, received him with open arms. Alas! John,
1 84 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
the Caravan, and the last of the foreign adven-
turers had left the previous day by march
route for the south. Somehow the Centurion
did not fancy the han, so he went out and tried
the empty house in which the Diplomat, the
Innocent and the Popinjay had lodged. The
caretaker, having reaped a rich harvest from
these three, welcomed the Centurion. The
latter having shared his last lunch-tongue with
Hamdi for the evening repast, was only too
glad to turn in.
CHAPTER X
STILL A ROGUE
r T would be difficult to describe the true
â– *â– state in which the Centurion found the vil-
lage of Tchorlu in the morning. As the north
wind of the previous day had foreshadowed, it
had again turned bitterly cold. The town
was absolutely packed with Turkish soldiers
muffled up to the eyes in their overcoats and
bashliks. They looked the picture of misery,
but all soldiers look thus when they are cam-
paigning in winter weather. There was,
however, no disorder. All the bakers' shops
were working at high pressure. There was a
guard upon every bakery, and no issue of
bread was allowed unless it was through the
agency of the particular non-commissioned
officer in charge of the supply. The town was
picketed throughout and thoroughly patrolled
by the gendarmerie. All these duties were of
185
1 86 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
course carried out in the casual, slovenly man-
ner which is characteristic of Turkish meth-
ods.
There was one matter, however, that es-
caped all surveillance. This was the sanitary
control. The state of the Tchorlu streets ab-
solutely beggars description. One has read of
the filth that was wont to accumulate in the
middle ages in English towns. In the midst
of modern conveniences, one shudders to think
of what those conditions were. Imagine,
therefore, the state of the narrow streets of this
Turkish village after thousands of soldiers
had passed through and an entire division had
been billeted in it for a matter of five or six
days. It was simply horrible and in the win-
ter's stillness a kind of pungent reek hung over
the whole place. If ever epidemic disease
was courted it was in these filthy surroundings.
As soon as Hamdi had refreshed him with a
jorum of cocoa, the Centurion made his way
to the headquarters of Ahmed Abouk Pasha.
On occasions like this the man who observes
STILL A ROGUE 187
the formality of sending in his card to a Turk-
ish dignitary only courts delay. The Centu-
rion walked boldly into the corps commander's
room. The dear old fellow, who looked more
like a bronzed English farmer than a Turk,
showed no resentment. He was obviously
surprised to find the Englishman at the front
and his first remark was:
"Why are you here? All the foreigners
and attaches have been sent away long ago."
The Centurion answered that he had been
fortunate enough to lose his way, but he was
now glad that he had done so, since it gave
him the opportunity of rejoining the best corps
in the Turkish Army, and that, anyway, it was
his business to see fighting and not to hear
about it second hand. The old man's eyes
twinkled at this naive confession of faith, as
he answered: "You are not going to see any
more fighting just yet' because the Bulgarians
will not come on, and I have orders to retire
my division to Tcherkeskuey."
The Marshal then gave a resume of all that
188 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
happened to his corps since the eventful day
when the Centurion had been with it in front
of Lule Burgas. Much of the information
he gave has already been inserted in the pre-
ceding narrative. He said that Hakki
Pasha's division had remained as rearguard
until the whole of the rest of his own Corps and
the Second Army Corps had been withdrawn.
The Bulgarians, it appears, made one rather
feeble essay to force in this rearguard, but
they were easily checked, and it had fallen
back without opposition to Ciflikkuey and
Sandakli and then to Tchorlu without firing a
shot. Mahmud Muktear's corps, on the ex-
treme right of the Turkish line, according to
Ahmed Abouk's information, had been forced
to retire, both from Bunar Hissar and Viza in
conformation with the retirement on the left.
Here there had been some effort at pursuit
by the Bulgarians and when the right Turkish
wing, still conforming to the general retire-
ment, fell back to Sarai, it was still feebly
harassed. At Sarai all pursuit had finished
STILL A ROGUE 189
and Mahmud Muktear's army had fallen back
leisurely upon the new alignment.
" But why did you retire at all, Excel-
lency?"
The Pasha's face hardened.
"We fell back because it was ordered so by
fate. You may tell your friends in England
that if the Fourth Army Corps was beaten, it
was beaten by ourselves. My men had no
food for over fifty hours. The best soldiers
in the world cannot fight in these circum-
stances. What is worse, the supply of am-
munition failed. I had to collect every un-
used round from my other divisions in order
that the batteries of Hakki Pasha's rearguard
should have sufficient at least to make a pre-
tence of keeping the Bulgarians back. But
the enemy were in no better condition than
ourselves and if I had only had food I would
have driven them back upon the Maritza with
the bayonet."
"And the future, Excellency?" asked the
Centurion. The Pasha turned up the palms
190 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
of his hands in the impressive gesticulation of
the East. "It is in the hands of God. It was
the first intention of Nazim Pasha that we
should hold Tchorlu. Then it was changed
to Tcherkeskuey. Now I am ordered to fall
back to Tcherkeskuey to cover the army that
has been withdrawn right back to Tcha-
taldja."
"And what of the Seventeenth Army Corps,
Excellency?"
"As far as I know, there is no Seventeenth
Army Corps. We have all believed in it.
We have all been told that it was coming to
our help. Mahmud Muktear Pasha held on
to Bunar Hissar expecting it. Torgad Shev-
ket was driven to make a counter attack in or-
der to give time to it to come up. It has
proved a fantasy. The Redif units of which
it was to be formed were never properly con-
centrated and they consisted for the most part
of untrained troops. As they came up the
magnetism of battle absorbed them in every
direction, mostly to the rear."
STILL A ROGUE 191
"What of the First Army Corps, Excel-
lency?" The old man as he answered got up
from his seat, thereby indicating that the in-
terview was shortly to be closed. "Don't
speak to me of the First Army Corps. It is
their half trained intellectuals that lost me the
battle of Lule Burgas."
As he shook hands with the Centurion, he
added,
"What do you propose to do?"
"With your permission, Excellency, I will
stay with you as long as I may."
"We shall be enchanted for you to stay with
us as long as you like. Perhaps you would
like an escort?"
"There is no need, Excellency, for an escort.
With the Turkish Army I am chez-moi."
The old man smiled as he said on parting,
"You pay us a great compliment; it is true no
escort is necessary."
The Centurion went back to his com-
mandeered house to find that he had two un-
expected visitors. These were Jamal Bey, a
192 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
civilian volunteer, and Ismail Hakki Effendi,
a cavalry officer with whom the Centurion had
been intimate during the Albanian campaigns.
Jamal Bey was a friend from Constantinople
who, flushed with patriotic enthusiasm, had
volunteered for service. Owing to his capa-
bilities he had been attached to the signalling
staff of the unfortunate First Army Corps.
Before he left Constantinople, the Centurion
had arranged with him for a service of infor-
mation. During the disastrous retreat of the
First Corps, Jamal Bey had contracted a bad
attack of dysentery. He had crawled into
Tchorlu the evening of the day the Centurion
had left for Rodosto.
Herein lay further evidence of the vein of
bad luck in the Centurion's calendar. Jamal,
in drawing the han for him, had fallen into
the net of a rival, who had pumped him dry.
The poor fellow was now almost at death's
door and the Centurion insisted that he should
immediately lie up in the commandeered house
until he himself could take him in the car to
STILL A ROGUE 193
some place where adequate medical treatment
was available.
Ismail Hakki, however, was in the best of
health and spirits as far as a Turkish officer
could be in spirits at this period of their un-
fortunate campaign. He had an independ-
ent troop of cavalry attached to the divisional
headquarters, and since the battle of Lule Bur-
gas, had been employed by the divisional com-
mander as an officer's patrol. He had come
in on the previous evening, and hearing that
the Centurion was at the han, had come down
to invite him to accompany him that afternoon
when he went out with a new patrol. Ismail
Hakki, like Ahmed Abouk Pasha, the corps
commander, was a Circassian. He was one of
the few Turkish officers w 7 ho had done mili-
tary training in France. He was a thorough
soldier, imbued with the keenest intelligence
and a constructive cavalry genius. The Cen-
turion jumped at the ofTer. He had no horse,
but Ismail offered him a troop horse.
As Ismail's patrol rode out of Tchorlu early
194 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
in the afternoon, the Centurion felt the fas-
cination of again being a mounted swash-
buckler. They had given him the best horse
to be found in the troop, a great rakish Hun-
garian with a mouth of iron and heart of steel.
Ismail took only six men with him. He had
but fourteen horses fit for duty and he was
wise enough to use them in relays. His men
were tough looking fellows. Riding in their
overcoats with their carbines slung across their
shoulders they looked like Cossacks. Ismail's
information was that there were Bulgarians
at Seidler Station and at Ciflikkuey. Salih
Pasha's cavalry division should have been on
the line of the Ergene River, somewhere in
the vicinity of Karahansankuey. The orders
were for the patrol, if possible, to work round
to the west of Seidler and discover if there
was any movement behind the Bulgarian ad-
vance guard. Ismail's orders gave him per-
mission to remain out twenty-four hours, after
which he was to report back at Tchorlu to the
headquarters of the cavalry division and then
STILL A ROGUE 195
rejoin his own divisional headquarters, which
would by then have fallen back in the direc-
tion of Tcherkeskuey.
As the horses were sufficiently fresh, the pa-
trol moved rapidly to the Ergene River, pass-
ing along the high ground that overlooked
Muradli Station. A couple of troopers who
were detached for the purpose reported
Muradli Station to be in the same deserted
condition that it had been two days before
When the Centurion visited it. Seeing no evi-
dence of their own cavalry division at the point
on the Ergene at which he selected to cross, it
was necessary for Ismail to proceed with some
caution as he approached Seidler. Crossing
the railway line at Inanti, the patrol moved
cautiously, parallel to the railway line and
river, up towards Seidler village.
The village is some thfee miles south of the
railway station. The scouts who went on
ahead reported all clear, and the patrol trotted
in amongst the ramshackle houses. At first it
seemed as if the village was entirely deserted.
196 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
It was marked in the intelligence report as
being chiefly occupied by Greeks. This
proved to be the case, as at its northern end
were found the houses of two or three sub-
stantial Greek farmers. These men and their
families were all at home. There was also in
the place a small posse of mustafiz.
It was now almost dark and Ismail, being
wise enough not to bivouac in the village,
especially in which there were Greek inhabi-
tants, just remained long enough to drag with
the aid of the mustafiz as much information as
was possible out of the Greeks. The Greeks
were at first a little reluctant to talk. Ismail's
treatment of them might perhaps be considered
a little rough, but with the aid of the butt ends
of the mustafiz' Martinis, he learned that a
patrol of Servian cavalry visited the village
that morning, that it came from Seidler station
and had gone back there. One of the
mustafiz also said that a Greek, who had come
from the direction of Lule Burgas, passed
through Ciflikkuey, and had seen there a num-
STILL A ROGUE 197
ber of mounted men. He had not said
whether they were Servians or Bulgarians.
The patrol moved out of Seidler, and Ismail
with the cunning that he had acquired in
France, moved out in the opposite direction
to that which he intended to follow to find his
bivouac. After he felt he was out of earshot
of the village, Ismail changed his direction
and moved to the back of a hill that com-
manded both Seidler village and the station.
Here the patrol ran into a shepherd driving
home a flock of belated sheep. This man was
a Turkish Bulgar. He was immediately
seized and, perhaps, a little roughly handled
to put him in the necessary obedient frame of
mind. He was then instructed to lead the
patrol to some place in the vicinity where it
could make a convenient bivouac. He was
led to understand that if his memory failed,
he would cease to be a shepherd pretty d — d
quick.
After an extremely short march, he led the
patrol to an ideal spot. There was an empty
198 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
kind of sheep pen and stone penthouse, with
a spring quite close, the water from which had
not yet frozen sufficiently hard to prevent the
horses from watering. As soon as the horses
were tied up in the corral, Ismail, the Centu-
rion and his Choush (troop sergeant) climbed
to the top of the hill to select a spot for the
posting of a night sentry. The night outlook
from this point of vantage confirmed the in-
formation that had been gleaned in the vil-
lage. There were a number of fires blazing
in the vicinity both of Seidler Station and
Cliflikkuey, and further away to the north
little twinkling points of light suggested that
there were other troops bivouacking above
Karisdiran, but these latter were so distant
that they might have been only the usual vil-
lage lights.
Having instructed the Choush where to post
the night sentry, Ismail and the Centurion re-
turned to make themselves as comfortable as
the cold would permit. Already the troopers
had pulled a rafter out of the penthouse and
STILL A ROGUE 199
had a fire blazing under the mask of the south
side of the corral. There is something very
brotherly in the intercourse between officers
and men in the Turkish service. It must also
be remembered that amongst Mohammedans
all men are equal in the eyes of God. This
philosophy leads to an intimate intercourse
between all ranks which could hardly be un-
derstood by those used to the European meth-
ods of enforced discipline.
With the exception of the night sentry, the
whole party grouped themselves in a semi-
circle round the fire and proceeded to par-
ticipate in the evening meal. This consisted
simply of rough bread and water. Ismail
himself had nothing better, but the Centurion
had three tins of cheap sardines in his haver-
sack. These he at once produced. Turkish
politeness forbids, that in like circumstances,
gifts should be accepted from a guest. It was
only by the most vehement insistence that the
Centurion could induce these rough brigand-
like looking soldiers to partake of this relish
200 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
to their simple meal and to dip morsels of
their bread in the oil of the sardines. The
Bulgarian shepherd also did not escape at-
tention. As he had produced an adequate
bivouac, he was admitted to the fraternity of
the camp fire, and was also provided with
bread and a sardine from the common stock.
The only precaution taken with him was that
his right wrist was bound securely to the left
wrist of one of the troopers.
It was a bitter cold night. Mercifully
there was no wind. Although he was clad in
a sheepskin, it was far too bitter for the Cen-
turion to think of sleep. In short, it was an
all-night sitting, and the monotony was only
broken by the periodical relief of the night
sentry. Ismail Hakki opened his heart to the
Centurion during the weary watches. He
traced most of the evil misfortunes that had
overtaken the Turks to the part the army had
taken in the revolution. He said that the
whole country had gone to pieces because the
people did not know to whom to extend their
STILL A ROGUE 201
loyalty. He suggested that if Abdul Hamid
had been left at the head of the State this fear-
ful debacle would not have overtaken the Em-
pire. For this line of argument he had two
reasons. The first was that the old man was
so clever in the fields of diplomacy that he
w r ould never have permitted the Balkan Al-
liance. By some means or other, by the gift of
Crete here, or economic concessions elsewhere,
he would have detached one or another of the
allies. The second was more intimate. The
old man had exercised an influence and con-
trol over the army which had found no sub-
stitute under the new regime. It may be that
Ismail himself believed that there was more
general pilfering of public funds and jobbery
under the Hamidan regime than with the ad-
vent of the Constitution, but there was that
factor of personal control by the Sultan, which
in a moment of emergency welded the army
together. Some subtle force in his authority
produced results that were beyond the powers
of the new General Staff. It did not matter
202 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
how these results were effected; if Abdul
Hamid's Irade went forth there was an im-
petus that somehow carried them through. If
Abdul Hamid had been in power there would
have been no failure of food at Lule Burgas or
shortage of ammunition. Ismail Hakki felt
the situation keenly. Although not a Turk
in the true sense of the word, he had a large
share of the traditional amour propre of the
nation. From the bottom of his heart he
cursed the Young Turks and all their works.
Nor was he singular in this feeling. The
Centurion, as he extended his circle of ac-
quaintances amongst the Turkish officers,
found there were many who thought like his
Circassian friend.
Ismail was also inclined to be bitter at the
handling of the independent cavalry division.
He did not wish to be disloyal to his chief,
but realising how the division would be led in
the field, he made a personal application that
resulted in his detachment from the independ-
ent cavalry division to those duties in which
STILL A ROGUE 203
the Centurion found him. He traced the in-
different handling of the cavalry to the Ger-
man instructors. "If you want to know any-
thing about cavalry in Europe," he said, his
eyes gleaming in the light of the logs with
the fire of the true cavalryman, "you should
not go to Germany but to France. Cavalry
work is not in our days a matter of weight and
masses! It is a question of finesse. No Ger-
man understands finesse, while every French-
man is an adept in it. Look what has hap-
pened to our cavalry here in this campaign.
It has all the time been bundled about from
place to place on the pretence that it was look-
ing for an opportunity to charge the enemy.
Where do you find an enemy's cavalry? Is it
behind your own infantry? What has Salih
Pasha done with his fine division? In twenty
days of war, he has reduced its effectives by
fifty per cent. Does he ever spare his horses?
The men rarely dismount during the day and
have never off-saddled at night. How has he
done protection duties? Has he detached in-
2o 4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
dependent squadrons while he was resting the
remainder of his forces? Has he ever prac-
tised his men in defending or taking a position
dismounted? I know that he has not. It can
almost be said that these men do not know how
to dismount or to unsling their carbines. He
has been content to work his horses to death,
up hill and down dale well out of range of any
circumstances that could be turned into mili-
tary utility."
This is a scathing criticism. The Centu-
rion did not know how far Ismail was justified
in placing the responsibility with the German
instructors. The question is whether these
German instructors had had an opportunity
of really instructing the Turks. Is it possible
to break down the inveterate conceit of the
Tartar mind and make it receptive of instruc-
tion? Did the German officers set about their
duties w r ith enthusiasm, or were they just
wasters from the Prussian service attracted by
the shimmer of piastres? These are questions
which the Centurion was not competent to an-
STILL A ROGUE 205
swer, but he could endorse every word of the
strictures which Ismail passed upon the inde-
pendent cavalry division that finally marched
through the Tchataldja lines and was sent to
recuperate at the Sweet Waters. The veteri-
nary hospital at Daud Pasha was a sight war-
ranted to break most cavalrymen's hearts. The
Turkish horse soldier, officer and man, knows
nothing and cares less about horse mastership.
Thus the night was passed. In the last bit-
ter hour before dawn the horses were fed with
the last bite of corn remaining in the nose-
bags. The patrol then set out to glean some
definite information with regard to the camp
fires they had located the previous evening.
Nor had they far to go, since it was soon light
enough to make out the surroundings of
Seidler Station. It was seen that at least a
regiment of cavalry was standing to its horses.
At the same moment the nearest outpost that
had covered the bivouac, opened fire on the
patrol. It was a foolish thing to do, as it gave
Ismail time to get away before any of the
206 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
enemy were in a position really to interfere
with him.
The patrol fell back rapidly due west, then
getting into the folds of the downs, climbed up
a formidable ridge that overlooked Kajabali.
From this point Ismail secured all the infor-
mation that was necessary. He was in an un-
approachable position, as any attempt to turn
him or force him out could be seen for a radius
of five miles. The panorama gave a sweep
of the entire Ciflikkuey-Karisdiran valley.
There seemed to be a cavalry regiment mov-
ing out of Karisdiran, while on the main Lule
Burgas road was bivouacked a force of all
arms which, by counting the artillery park,
was estimated at the strength of a division.
At last the Bulgarians were making their
forward movement. Ismail was quick-witted
enough soldier to see that he had accomplished
his mission. It was his duty to get back to
Tchorlu in the shortest possible time. The
patrol returned by much the same route as it
had come and was back in Tchorlu village just
STILL A ROGUE 207
after midday. Here a great change had taken
place. Hakki Pasha's division with all its im-
pedimenta had disappeared. Its place had
been taken by the independent cavalry which
at this time was reduced by the wastage of
war to about the strength of a single regiment.
CHAPTER XI
STILL SHIRKING
WHEN the Centurion got back to his
commandeered house, he found still
another surprise in store for him. He found
the General in possession. It will be remem-
bered that he and the Diplomat had last seen
the General when they were in the car on their
way back from the battle of Lule Burgas.
The General was delighted to find a pal. He
had had a desperate time of it. After they
had left him he had caught up Salih Pasha's
cavalry division and, being hospitably re-
ceived, had attached himself to the Pasha and
had remained his guest ever since. Once he
came back to Tchorlu to get something to eat,
since existence with the cavalry had proved
almost synonymous with starvation. The
General had been back in the village just at
the period when the organisation of the latter-
208
STILL SHIRKING 209
day adventurers had broken up. He was,
therefore, able to give the Centurion more
definite news than the latter had gleaned from
the excited Frenchman. It appeared that all
the foreigners had been suddenly ordered to
"footsack" from the front. By this time the
English section of the Bosniak Shepherd's
flock were absolutely desperate, and on receipt
of these orders they had vanished to the four
winds. He himself, having been made an
honorary member of the cavalry division, had
no intention of going back to the base, and had
slipped off to the front again.
He was able to give the Centurion news of
his own caravan and John. It appeared that
the General had found John in the han in the
last state of despair. He had had one of the
Centurion's horses commandeered; he had
been captured by the- bibulous Bey and or-
dered under threat of instant execution on no
account to wait longer at Tchorlu and he was
without funds or orders. In the circumstances
the General came to his rescue and lent him
210 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
£15. Thereupon John had collected the cara-
van and marched south with the retreating
army.
As far as the General knew, the majority of
the English adventurers had also ridden south.
Some had gone to the coast in the direction of
Siliviri. It was the General's intention to
continue to follow the fortunes of the cavalry
division. This the Centurion believes he sub-
sequently did, for he was reported missing for
a long time, until it was discovered that he
had been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians and
spirited away to Kirk Kilisse.
As the Centurion learnt at Tchorlu that the
cavalry division's orders were to fall back the
moment the Bulgarians showed any sign of ad-
vancing in force, and as what he had seen with
Ismail's patrol convinced him that this ad-
vancing force was less than twenty-four hours
distant, he considered that he would be cutting
it rather fine if he remained longer in Tchorlu.
The choice was open to him of taking the car
down the Adrianople road in the track of the
STILL SHIRKING 211
main army, or of returning to Rodosto and
shipping the car from that port to Constanti-
nople.
The Centurion argued that if he returned
by the Adrianople road, he would be much
impeded by the impedimenta on the march
and he would also run the risk of falling
into the hands of the Bosniak Shepherd at
Tcherkeskuey or Tchataldja. Knowing as he
did the orders that had been received by the
commander of the Fourth Corps, it was ob-
vious that even with the best will in the world
and the utmost energy, there could be no fight-
ing at Tchataldja for at least ten days. There
might be, however, most interesting develop-
ments if the Bulgarians followed the example
of the Russians in their campaign and made
Rodosto their first point of contact with the
Marmora. He, therefore, decided upon the
Rodosto road and instructed the now very sick
Jamal to be ready to make the journey at
daybreak on the following morning. Jamal
somewhat demurred because it was stated in
212 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
his hospital certificate that he was to proceed
to Hademkuey for treatment. The Centurion
told him frankly that if he went down by cart
to Hademkuey he would be dead in forty-eight
hours. He pointed out that his only chance
was to come down to Rodosto, where he could
get medical attendance, and then take the first
ship to Constantinople to be nursed in his own
home. One or two friends from the cavalry
division who came in to see him in the after-
noon, also endorsed this view and prevailed
upon him to accept the Centurion's advice.
There was some difficulty in getting the sick
man away in the morning early. Besides, the
Centurion wanted to satisfy himself that Salih
Pasha really intended evacuating Tchorlu.
The Pasha was some time making up his mind
and finally said that he would not begin his
rearward movement until the enemy reached
the Karahasankuey ridge.
The Centurion, realising the easy way there
was round to the southwest of the village, de-
termined not to chance any untoward develop-
STILL SHIRKING 213
ment. He watched the cavalry division bring
its solitary battery of horse artillery into posi-
tion on the high ground near Tchorlu station.
Satisfying himself that the demolitions which
had been effected were of sufficient extent to
delay the enemy, and transferring the sick
Jamal from the house to the car, he started on
what was to prove an adventurous journey
back to Rodosto.
There is one beauty of the Thracian soil as
viewed from the standpoint of the motorist.
The result of rain soon vanishes, except in the
bottom of the valleys. After three days the
going on the Rodosto road was moderately
good again. The car made the journey at an
average speed without adventure until half
the distance had been covered. Here at the
top of a rather steep rise is the village of
Hadzi Muradli. The climb up to this village
is severe, but once the ridge is passed a long
gentle decline faces the traveller for nearly six
miles before he meets the last big ridges which
lie between him and the sea.
2i 4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
The car was just beginning to make the as-
cent up to the village, when, at the bottom of
the valley, about three miles away to the right,
the Centurion observed five horsemen. There
was something suspicious about the attitude of
these horsemen. They were halted. With
the naked eye it looked as if they were grouped
in astonished observation of the car. The
Centurion pointed them out to Hamdi, who,
throwing the quick eye of the accomplished
chauffeur in their direction, murmured the
word "Bulgar."
The Centurion turned round and saw that
Jamal was half somnolent in the back seat.
At the very moment that Hamdi made his
diagnosis the horsemen started to gallop at a
slanting angle up the ridge. Their direction
showed that it was their intention to cut the
car off before it reached the summit.
"You are right, Hamdi," said the Centurion,
"those are Bulgars. Give her all you can."
Hamdi's only reply was the monosyllable
"Pump, pump." This referred to the Dur-
STILL SHIRKING 215
kopp system which required the passenger
seated beside the driver to pump petrol up
into the feed pipe when any special effort was
wanted on a hillside.
Many years had practised the Centurion in
estimating distances. The Bulgars had two
miles of up-hill to gallop on horses that were
probably tired. The car had about half a
mile of stiff climb in front of her. She was
doing her best, and she was a kind car; but a
hillside was her weak point. The Centurion
could see that it was going to be a close thing.
Hamdi, who was staunch to the backbone, set
his teeth and nursed his engine up that hill yet,
pump the Centurion never so rapidly, the beat
of the engine became slower and slower. To
the Centurion it seemed that the car was only
crawling. Already the horsemen had covered
half the distance. There remained what
seemed to be an interminable height of road
in front. The time was past for exclamations.
Hamdi, from moment to moment, cast a quick
glance to his right. As the machine crawled
216 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
slowly on it seemed that the horsemen were
certain to overtake her. The Centurion
looked anxiously back at Jamal. He was ly-
ing back peacefully unconscious of the danger
that was threatening him. Jamal, dressed in
his volunteer uniform was a heavy dead
weight to the Centurion at that moment. The
presence of a Turkish soldier in uniform in the
car would be difficult of explanation when
they fell into the hands of the enemy.
There was nothing now that Hamdi could
do to get a better pace out of his engine. Al-
ready the Centurion could hear the chafing of
strained leather and the heavy breathing of the
pursuers' horses. "Thank God the horses are
blown," was his mental conjecture. There
only remained now about thirty* yards to
climb, and yet it was the steepest of them all.
Moreover the car was moving so slowly that
it almost seemed to be stationary.
Shouts from the pursuers were now audible.
Thev were yelling to the car to stop. Five
yards more and the car began to feel the level
STILL SHIRKING 217
of the summit. She was picking up. The
Centurion gave one look round. He could
see the whites of the eyes of his flat-capped
pursuers. In less time than it takes to write
it the crest was collared and passed. As if by
magic the car picked up impetus, felt her
power, and was dashing down the slope. Five
miles of this pace and all pursuit on horse-
back was unthinkable. There remained the
rifles. The Centurion cared nothing for the
rifles of men who for two miles had been rid-
ing an up-hill finish.
Never had Hamdi driven as he now drove
the car down that incline. It was not a
metalled way. In places she simply bounded
from rut to rut; she swayed backwards and
forwards, now on two wheels, and now on one.
The wretched Jamal, knowing nothing of the
reason for the haste that had so rudely broken
his slumbers complained weakly of the pace
from somewhere in the hood to which he was
now clinging. A mile below the summit
there was a temporary plank-bridge across a
218 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
sluit. Hamdi remembered it, but he dare not
touch his brakes. The bridge was a rotten
affair and its breadth was barely more than
the span of the car. Hamdi set his teeth as
he swerved her on to it. She slithered, then
leapt like a springbok, and, God only knows
how, was over. The planks cracked and fell
away behind her.
Once over the bridge the Centurion turned
round to see if the pursuit was pressed. The
Bulgars had given it up though they were
busily dismounting and disengaging their car-
bines for action. The Centurion never knew
if they fired, for at the pace Hamdi took the
car down the remaining five miles of slope,
the immediate circumstances were far more
terrifying than the chance bullets of indiffer-
ent riflemen whose hearts must have been
pumping a full twelve to the dozen.
An hour later the car was descending into
Rodosto town. It was observed that there
were now three Turkish warships lying in the
roadstead.
STILL SHIRKING 219
As the car rounded the bend that brings the
road into the town, one of the warships in the
Bay fired a heavy gun. For the moment the
Centurion thought that a warning shot had
been fired against the car. Then Hamdi sug-
gested in his nonchalant way that it was prob-
ably the midday gun. As, however, the sound
of a shell bursting well inland followed his re-
mark, it was evident that the gun was fired by
the Turkish sailors against some target in the
direction of the Muradli road.
The Centurion returned to Rodosto to find
the township convulsed with another of those
paroxysms of terror which periodically seized
upon it during the period that the Bulgarians
were expected. As soon as the car was lodged
in the han, he made his way to the British
Vice Consul. The firing of that one shot by
the Turkish battleship had put the nerves of
the whole town on edge. The story that the
Vice Consul had to tell was that the Kaima-
kam had gone on board one of the Turkish
ships and had resigned the conduct of munici-
220 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
pal affairs to a Board of Christian residents.
Early that morning, villagers had come in
with information that a mixed force of Bul-
garians and Servians was three miles out on
the Muradli road, and that the commandant
had summoned the town to surrender.
The leading Levantine residents, advised by
the senior Greek ecclesiastic, had, therefore,
taken upon themselves to go out and interview
the invaders. Four of them, dressed in their
Sunday best, had hired a phaeton and had pro-
ceeded along the Muradli road to implore the
Bulgarians not to press matters in the confines
of the town, as they had certain information
that if any such attack was made, the Turkish
warships would bombard the town.
When the Centurion reached the town, these
worthies had not yet returned from their mis-
sion. As far as other news was concerned,
the Vice Consul reported that nearly all the
military stores had now been removed; that
the town was practically cleared of soldiers;
the gendarmerie had whipped up all the fugi-
STILL SHIRKING 221
tive refugee deserters, while a couple of
Turkish boats had been sent to begin the trans-
port of refugees across to Asia.
The Centurion himself was very little con-
cerned with the affairs of Rodosto, his one ob-
ject was to find a steamer sailing for Con-
stantinople that would take his car back to
the capital. He handed this business over to
the Vice Consul who was also agent for the
leading shipping firm in the Levant.
Shortly after midday the reason of the shot
fired by the Turkish battleship was disclosed.
Four very frightened and out of breath par-
lementaires returned from an abortive mission
to open up communications with the enemy.
It seems that after the Kaimakam had retired
from his duties on shore, the Turkish naval
commandant was informed that the Christian
Levantines had started their deputation to
carry "bread and salt" to the invaders. Un-
der martial law, the naval commandant, being
a post captain, was ipse facto, in both chief
military and naval command of the town.
222 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Not unnaturally, he resented the attitude of
these weak-kneed Christians in toddling out
to endeavour to make arrangements with the
enemy. He, therefore, when his signalmen
saw their phaeton toiling up the Muradli road,
ordered a persuasive round to be fired in front
of them. There never was a quorum of men
who more quickly took a hint. The shell
burst about half a mile beyond their carriage.
The horses were immediately put about and
brought back to the town at the best pace their
sorry condition would permit. In reality, it
is doubtful if any Bulgarian officer of suffi-
cient rank was there to demand the surrender
of the town, or yet within twenty miles of
Rodosto. It is probable that one of the bands
which were doing eclairage for the Bulgarian
General Staff, and predatory missions for
themselves, had hoodwinked the peasants,
who brought the news, with some cock-and-
bull story about their strength and demands.
The advent of the Turkish warships and the
putting ashore of a strong naval landing party
STILL SHIRKING 223
had worked wonders in the commercial quar-
ter of the town. The Centurion had no hesi-
tation in saying that out of all the Turkish
services with which he came in contact during
the war, the only one that showed any ap-
proximation to a European standard of smart-
ness and address was the Navy. Both officers
and blue-jackets of the landing party were
smartly turned out. The moment they were
put ashore, they mounted sentries over all the
Government material remaining in the mili-
tary department yards. They picketed the
main thoroughfares of the town. There was
no doubt that the naval officers, as long as they
were ashore, intended to control all matters
that appertained to this final embarkation of
the Government stores. It is not saying too
much to suggest that this very marked differ-
ence in the efficiency of the Navy as compared
with the system existing in the army, is en-
tirely due to the British naval instructors at-
tached to that service.
The naval commandant intended, as long
224 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
as he was carrying on his embarkation duties,
to keep the enemy at a distance with his heavy
ordnance. In order that his gun firing might
be accurately directed, parties of bluejackets
were landed and sent to observation points on
the summits of the hills that command the
town. Here the telegraphic wires were
adapted to the portable telephones that the
sailors brought with them and the observation
posts connected up with the military pier from
which point the messages were semaphored to
the ships. The difference in executive ca-
pacity between the two services was here
brought into strong relief, for the Centurion
had seen the army in the field without tele-
phonic communication of any kind. Even
though telephones were lying idle with the re-
serves, the officers in the firing line were ab-
solutely without means of learning what was
happening on either flank.
Although perfect order was maintained at
the Military Pier, yet no attempt was made to
regulate affairs at the commercial wharves.
STILL SHIRKING 225
The firing of that signal shot from the flagship
was responsible for another wild rush to the
waterside. The Centurion had never believed
that such epidemics of panic could seize upon
a populace. For days the commercial jetties
had been packed tight with crowds of refugees,
who, camped on the quays, were content to
await the arrival of some vessel to take them
across the water. The apprehensions raised
by the report of the big naval gun roused this
hitherto placid medley into a state of frenzy.
To them was added a wild rush of the town-
folk. The scenes on the jetty were pathetic
without parallel. The Greek boatmen knew
the value of their services. They paddled
their boats away from the landing stages and
drove outrageous bargains with the frenzied
crowd. This miserable picture was not con-
fined to those of the poorer classes. Well
born and gently nurtured Turkish ladies, for-
getting the traditions of the harem, bare-
headed and wild-eyed, beat their breasts or
clasped the rough knees of the boatmen in
226 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
their frantic terror. Rude men hustled these
cringing beauties from their path as they
dragged their screaming children to the ships.
Boatmen slashed at the crowd with their oars
to beat a passage for those who would pay
their exorbitant demands. When a boat drew
to the quay-side demented mothers would cast
their infants into the mass crowding the
thwarts, and then leap blindly after them.
Many were roughly pushed into the water and
left to drown unless their rescue was worth
a price. It was unbelievable that men could
be such brutes; but the Levantine Greek has
no soul if there be money in the scale.
That night the Centurion enjoyed the hos-
pitality of the Vice Consul. The arrival
of the express packet from Constantinople
brought a surprise. On board the little
steamer were Jew's Harp Senior and the
Dumpling. They had come ostensibly to re-
trieve their Panhard. It is conceivable, how-
ever, that they were, professionally speaking,
concerned at the long absence of the Cen-
STILL SHIRKING 227
turion. They were full of information. In
the first place they had covered themselves
with journalistic glory. Having caught the
Austrian packet, as has been described, they
immediately took ship at Constantinople for
Constanza. There on neutral ground they
had settled down to write and despatch the
long and graphic cables that had made each
famous. They both had received congratula-
tory messages from their papers. None de-
served this more than the Jew's Harp. He
had taken inordinate risks and had suffered the
utmost privations at Lule Burgas.
The information they had brought of the
other adventurers was instructive. They were
nearly all back again in Pera. The Bosniak
Shepherd was at his wits' end. He said that
he could manage the Frenchmen and the
Germans, and even the Russians, but the
Englishmen were beyond his power. He
washed his hands of them.
The news from the various seats of war was
astounding. The military reputation of the
228 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Ottoman Army had come tumbling down like
a pack of cards. The Greeks were on the
point of taking Salonika. The despised
Servians had defeated Ali Riza Pasha and
were not only in occupation of Uskub, but
were marching triumphantly through Albania
to the sea. The only bright spots upon the
Turkish horizon were the garrisons of Adrian-
ople, Scutari and Yanina. Beleaguered for-
tresses, however, even if they do make a gal-
lant resistance, are, at the best, but a sorry
consolation for loss of territory and reputa-
tion. In three weeks Turkey had lost by right
of hostile conquest her European provinces,
almost in their entirety. The thing was too
stupendous to be readily believed.
It is not difficult to find the reasons for this
unprecedented debacle. They may be con-
veniently divided under two heads. These
are inefficient administration and inadequately
trained material.
On both these vital questions, this trouble in
the Near East presents to military students an
STILL SHIRKING 229
object lesson of far greater importance than
any campaign that has happened since the
Franco-German war. There was much to be
learned from the Manchurian campaign, but
the elements there engaged were more or less
equal, from the point of view of armies organ-
ised on the basis of national service.
Taking the first head, the lessons of the
Russo-Japanese war demonstrated a triumph
in staff direction, backed by a technically-
trained and splendidly-led professional army.
It has already been shown in the present nar-
rative how the administrative incapacity par-
alysed the entire system of the Ottoman resist-
ance. As far as the English nation may hope
to profit by the lessons of this truly remarkable
Balkan war there is not much that we need
take to heart in the matter of army adminis-
tration. The competent military authorities
of the British Empire have long ago realised,
and as far as national acquiescence in their
views has permitted, have strained every nerve
to bring up to date the administrative depart-
2 3 o WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
merits of the army. That the scope allowed
to them is small, is no reflection upon the Im-
perial General Staff. As an observer of some
experience, the Centurion is of the opinion,
that for its size, the British Army is as well
administered as any in the world. Taking
the South African war as an example, the ad-
ministrative faculty of the nation was admir-
ably demonstrated. This, it must be remem-
bered, was at a period before the modern
requirements in warfare had been truly esti-
mated. In spite of the fact that the adminis-
trative machinery was only designed to cater
for an army of 50,000 men and had to be ex-
panded to deal with a situation utilising five
times this number, the British army in South
Africa was without doubt the best rationed,
clothed, and administered army of any size
that has ever taken the field in the history of
war. This view being accepted, and the Gen-
eral Staff having profited by the stupendous
experiences of the J3oer war, there is no reason
to doubt that, given national support and ade-
STILL SHIRKING 231
quate material, the capabilities of the British
army on an administrative basis should be un-
rivalled.
It is not necessary, therefore, to deduce les-
ions on this head from the experiences in the
Near East, further than to remark that they
have endorsed to the full every instructional
theory that has been put forward by the Brit-
ish General Staff in its unsupported struggle
towards efficiency during recent years.
When, however, we come to the other head,
we are upon the fringe of an enormous, and
it may be said, a vital question for the British
Empire. The Turks in the consummate con-
ceit bred of their congenital stupidity believed
that because they had been able to overthrow
their own reigning dynasty by force of arms,
they were competent to handle any military
contingency that might arise. With Tartar
obstinacy they were content to stake their all
upon their hereditary traditions as a fighting
race, garnished with the modern appliances
that could be purchased in the best arsenals
232 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
of the world. In the immediate circum-
stances of the menace of the Balkan Allies,
they had been actuated by a sublime contempt
for the virile neighbours that had at one time
been their vassals. They plumed themselves
in the stupid belief that as a fighting race
they possessed some occult superiority before
which their Balkan enemies were bound to
crumble. In this belief they were encour-
aged, how sincerely it is not known, by some
of the best military thought in Europe.
In this spirit of confidence they fell into the
error which is so common in nations where
self-confidence is a malady: that given a small
steel-point of efficiently trained troops, it is
possible to fill up numbers with the partially
trained ; that after the first clash of arms, given
a martial race, there is time and opportunity
to fashion the pig iron behind the first line
into serviceable steel.
Never was there a greater fallacy. Never
in the history of war has the danger of em-
ploying inefficiently trained and indifferently
STILL SHIRKING 233
officered troops been more poignantly demon-
strated. Take, for instance, the pathetic pic-
ture of the defeat of the left wing of the
Turkish armies in Thrace. Here you had the
First Army Corps and the Fourth Army
Corps with the initial nucleus of their battal-
ions formed by the inclusion of all their first-
class Redifs. These were the only soldiers of
any quality in the Empire. This ban of Red-
ifs had practically been absorbed into the first
line owing to the many difficulties in which
the Ottoman Empire had been embroiled,
since the Young Turks had entered on their
fatal endeavour to run the Constitutional
steam-roller over the Empire's many dissent-
ing nationalities.
These skeleton battalions had to be brought
up to strength, not only by enrolment of second
class reservists with but a shadow of training,
but also with men who had been taught the
manual exercise and the goose step for the
first time within a fortnight of their marching
to meet the enemy. What was the result?
234 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
At the first demonstration of faulty tactical
leading with its attendant punishment, these
undisciplined soldiers forgot the hereditary
qualities of their fathers, forgot their vaunted
courage as a righting race, and casting away
their arms, fled like a herd of harried sheep
from the exaggerated terrors of the enemy
they had led themselves to believe that they
despised.
What was the effect of this panic? These
wild-eyed fugitives came herding into the bat-
talions of another army corps, a corps that
had not yet been put to the test of fighting,
but was already suffering the rigours of cam-
paigning and the privations consequent upon
mal-administration. The sequel was humili-
ating. They communicated the panic to the
ranks of this army corps. They vitiated con-
trol and carried with them in their flight the
inexperienced and untrained soldiers who, like
themselves, were lacking in that co-ordination
that can only be acquired by a systematic and
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STILL SHIRKING 235
rigorous discipline. The reader has only to
turn back to the heartfelt complaint of the
commander of the Fourth Corps, to realise
how impossible it is to think of making war
against disciplined armies with immature ma-
terial, be it ever so courageous and its tradi-
tions what they may.
Why was it that the body of foreign observ-
ers who joined in the retreat of the Ottoman
army to Tchataldja, returned to Constanti-
nople in the belief that they had participated
in a rout? It was not because the Nizam mi-
nority had stood firm and had adequately cov-
ered the retirement of this rabble. It was
because the Ottoman army, composed so
largely of untrained troops and so inade-
quately officered, became disintegrated.
There is a trenchant lesson in this pathetic
history to all self-confident nations, who like
the British people and the citizens of the
United States of America think, in modern
conditions, that it is possible hurriedly to de-
236 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
velop the raw fighting material of the nation
behind a small highly trained professional
army. Let the writer force upon those opti-
mistic theorists who persist in the advocacy
of this fallacy, that there is nothing more dan-
gerous in the world than the belief that a small
leaven of men experienced in the arts of war
can, upon an emergency, immediately create
from the masses of the people, armies that are
competent to cross bayonets with an instructed
foe. The machinery of modern war will
plough through the armies thus improvised
with the same irresistible ease as the share of
the steam plough turns its furrows. There is
no short cut to military efficiency. The na-
tion which, like the Turk, believes that it can
improvise at the eleventh hour, will as surely
suffer its battles of Yenidje and Lule Burgas.
It will be fortunate, if like the Turks, it has
in front of it an enemy as devoid of national
resources and competency for sustaining war
as were the Balkan Allies. These are not the
thoughts of a visionary who has just partici-
STILL SHIRKING 237
pated in a first campaign. They are the con-
victions of one, who, not devoid of military
training, has for twenty years had an unex-
ampled opportunity of studying modern ar-
mies in the field.
CHAPTER XII
A COUPLE AND A HALF
THE last day in Rodosto was without in-
terest to the three adventurers. It was
quite hopeless to attempt to get the cars away.
Everyone dealing with the question of ship-
ping was absolutely paralysed. Further-
more, there was no boat. Towards midday
the consular corps received news from certain
villagers that the Bulgarians were really at
the gates. This was confirmed at noon when,
without warning, the battleships in the road-
stead opened a sustained shell fire in the direc-
tion of the Muradli road. Adjectives fail to
describe the scene that ensued. There was a
desperate rush of terrified women, white-
jawed men and screaming children to the vari-
ous consulates. This pathetic crowd invaded
all the consular buildings and were herded
into cellars. It was futile for the Centurion
238
A COUPLE AND A HALF 239
and his companions to assure the consuls and
their subjects that this gun fire was innocuous;
that the shells were directed at a target at least
five or six miles distant from the town. The
deafening crack of the big weapons, the rever-
berating boom of bursting projectiles and the
vibration, were quite sufficient to the lay mind
to give the lie to any assurance that the ad-
venturers might make.
In the early afternoon it was evident
that the Bulgars proposed serious operations
against the town. There are vineyards and
mulberry groves on the slopes that lead up to
the heights that command Rodosto. Rifle
fire in the suburbs of the town showed that
hostile infantry was working through these
plantations. It was also quite evident that the
Turks had no intention of holding the town
against any systematic attack by other means
than the guns of the battleships in the road-
stead. To all intents and purposes the resi-
due of the military stores had been removed.
The only military force remaining to question
240 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
the Bulgarian advance was a single weak bat-
talion and the gendarmerie. These had or-
ders to withdraw as soon as it was dark on to
a waiting transport. The Bulgarians, how-
ever, never pressed any attack. Apparently
they were only feeling to ascertain the nature
of resistance they might expect if they were to
advance seriously.
Towards evening a small French steamer
that was bound for Constantinople that night
arrived in the roadstead. The adventurers
agreed that it was time to desert Rodosto even
at the price of jettisoning the motor cars.
These were, therefore, left in the care of
the British Vice Consul. The adventurers
packed up such small kits as they had and
started to embark. This was no easy matter
as the naval commandant had issued orders
that nobody was to approach the jetty. The
streets leading to the landing stage were pick-
eted and the adventurers were brought up
standing at every exit by the muzzles of vici-
ous-looking rifles. There were, fortunately,
A COUPLE AND A HALF 241
other ways of reaching the landing stage. By
passing through back doors and courtyards
and climbing walls and penetrating the pre-
cincts of the customs house, the three English-
men at last reached the landing stage. Here
there was an officer with whom they could
discuss their intentions. It was dark by the
time that they could induce this officer to let
them embark or to permit a hired boat to come
alongside the military shed. Then by good
chance there arrived an officer who had been
intimate with Jew's Harp Senior at Abdul-
lah's headquarters during the battle of Lule
Burgas. It is wonderful how far a little sym-
pathetic intercourse will go with the Turkish
gentleman. This new arrival, as far as could
be gathered, had nothing to do with the regu-
lations that ruled the port. Nevertheless he
rose superior to all objections and immediately
summoned a boat. He, personally, superin-
tended the departure of the three Englishmen,
their servants and the still very sick Jamal.
The packet was lying rather far out and it was
242 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
quite dark by the time the adventurers' shal-
lop reached the steamer. Here they found
themselves entangled in another extraordinary
scene of panic. It appears that all the would-
be fugitives from the town that could pay the
exorbitant charges of the boatmen had found
a means vi evading the order of the captain
of the man-of-war by embarking at a point
lower down the coast just on the fringe of the
town.
Shoals of boats were battling around the
steamer. They were loaded to the gunwale
with freights of terrified men and women
striving for an opportunity to reach the gang-
way. Clustered round the gangway were a
score of boats grinding their thwarts against
each other. These were filled with a scream-
ing, gesticulating mass of humanity. Men,
women and children were clambering over
each other like a swarm of bees in their fran-
tic efforts to climb on board. The more agile
had clambered up the ship's side and were
hauling up their women folk and children by
'â– *f
C3
(Ll
O
CO
1
A COUPLE AND A HALF 243
their arms, whilst others, absolutely reckless
of those beneath them, were jumping on to the
shoulders of other hapless passengers who
had already reached the gangway. The ship
seemed to be packed to her utmost capacity.
Her decks were thronged. It looked as if the
adventurers would be crushed out.
The measures the three adventurers adopted
may not have been gallant. They may not
even have been quite manly, but the adven-
turers were of no value to their employers if
they were captured by the Bulgarians in Ro-
dosto. The Dumpling on these occasions was
a man of instant resource. He whipped out
his automatic pistol, knowing full well that it
was on the safety catch, and made the boat-
men give way. He then swung his portly
frame on to the grating of the gangway and,
pistol in hand, terrorised the crowd of fugi-
tives until his own boat was alongside and
cleared of all its contents. The adventurers
were only just in time. The skipper of the
packet, fearing disaster from overcrowding,
244 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
hauled up his anchor and steamed away with-
out waiting for his papers. Of the discom-
forts of that night voyage to Constantinople,
it is not necessary to furnish detail. Such
nights are only minor incidents in the lives
of latter-day adventurers.
When the adventurers arrived in Constan-
tinople, they found a remarkable state of af-
fairs existing in the capital. There has been
much in the present story that has shown how
prone the Levantine mind is to an exagger-
ated anxiety for the safety of the Christian
communities. It must be supposed that there
is some terror wound up in the traditions of
this class that the ordinary European cannot
readily appreciate and understand.
The adventurers arrived at Galata to find
the whole of Pera picketed with sailors drawn
from an international Naval Brigade landed
from a squadron of foreign men-of-war ly-
ing in the Bosporus. It seemed that the
Bulgarian General Staff, and the rather
excited foreign correspondents who had
A COUPLE AND A HALF 245
marched down to Tchataldja with the Turks,
were responsible for the feeling of insecurity
which had taken hold of Pera.
The Bulgarian General Staff, as has already
been shown, employed a press agent falsely to
instruct Europe, by way of Vienna, as to the
course of the operations; while the more in-
experienced amongst the war correspondents
added weight to the Bulgarian falsehoods by
describing the Turkish retirement as an indis-
criminate rout. The foreign ambassadors in
the Capital put their heads together and deter-
mined that the moment was opportune to
place this final indignity of naval occupation
upon the Turkish nation. It would have
been more decent, and certainly more in keep-
ing with the traditions of the European races,
if this landing had been postponed until the
Allies had forced the Turkish armies from
Tchataldja. To those of the adventurers who
like the Centurion and his two colleagues had
been with the Turkish army, unarmed and
unprotected, during the trying stresses of its
246 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
defeat, this attitude on the part of the diplo-
matic corps suggested a want of information
and timidity altogether humiliating; humili-
ating alike to the ambassadors who acquiesced
in the miserable supineness of the Constanti-
nople Levantines, and to the Turkish nation,
who had hitherto shown no incapacity in the
maintenance of law and order in their capi-
tal. The Centurion did not profess to know
anything about the paths of diplomacy, but it
appeared to him that this action by the repre-
sentatives of the powers was tantamount to in-
viting trouble by suggestion.
The returned adventurers found the major-
ity of their colleagues comfortably installed
in the Pera Palace Hotel. The narrative of
their adventures since they left Tchorlu was
interesting. It appears that the Bosniak
Shepherd had seduced from Tchorlu all those
who believed in him by the statement that, as
there was a chance of interesting fighting in
the direction of Viza-Sarai, it would be best
for them to entrain part of the way to Tcher-
A COUPLE AND A HALF 247
keskuey and from thence proceed to the front
by road. The majority of the foreigners and
a few Englishmen followed these instructions
and were immediately spirited away to Con-
stantinople. Here they were dumped on the
platform and told by the Bosniak Shepherd
that for the future he washed his hands of his
charge.
Others, including the Diplomat, Jew's
Harp Junior, the Popinjay and the cinemat-
ograph mongers, elected to make their own
way down with the retreating forces. They
appeared to have had a desperate time. Not
only did the retreating Turkish army with the
remorseless avidity of a swarm of locusts eat
the country clean, but the epidemic of chol-
era that later almost decimated the army
reached a high stage of virulence during the
march down. These adventurers with the
retreating army had believed that they were
only taking the road as far as Tcherkeskuey.
At Tcherkeskuey they found that the bulk of
the troops were retiring still further to the
248 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
rear. They were then told that Karahan-
skuey was to be the new army headquarters.
Here, however, there was no rest for them.
Tchataldja was named as the next stage. At
Tchataldja, the headquarters staff was found.
As is well to be imagined, the headquarters
staff of an army constituted as the Turkish
army then was, was not over solicitous
concerning a troop of foreign adventurers.
They were given short shrift and told that
their destination was Constantinople. Two
or three of their number had been wise enough
to give the General Staff a wide berth.
These selected Siliviri as their point d'appui
and some of them succeeded in rejoining the
army. Two at least, including the General,
fell into the hands of the enemy.
The individual story of the Innocent is
worthy of being placed on record. He won
his spurs in a truly heroic manner. During
the first retirement from Lule Burgas, he be-
came separated from the Bosniak Shepherd.
At nightfall he found himself a lone Euro-
A COUPLE AND A HALF 249
pean upon the open veldt amid the bivouacs
of the retreating army. Being unversed in
the matter of horses, but realising that it was
necessary to do something in the way of pick-
eting, he tied his reins to a wax candle and
affixed the latter lightly in the ground. In
the morning he was horseless. In delightful
naivete, he defended his action to his friends
by intimating that he believed his old horse
to have been sufficiently sagacious to have
known the novel picketing peg was only a
wax candle. Later in the retreat the Innocent
marched into a Turkish bivouac and, not un-
naturally, was taken for a Bulgarian agent.
He suffered many indignities at the hands of
the soldiers who captured him before an offi-
cer was found to release him from a really
awkward predicament. Ultimately when he
arrived at Tcherkeskuey, by an almost super-
natural coincidence a station clerk was hawk-
ing a telegram up and down the platform.
This telegram was for the Innocent. It was
a pathetic whip from his office. Its contents
250 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
so played upon the feelings of the recipient
that he set his teeth and plunged into the vor-
tex of the re-organised Turkish advance guard.
Undaunted by the dangers of his position he
was determined to stick to that advance guard
until it was pushed in by the advancing Bul-
garians. He then hid himself in a village
right in the centre of the lines of Tchataldja.
Here his efforts were rewarded, for when the
Bulgarians made their attack against the Lines
on November 17th, the Innocent was able to
be actually in the very thick of the engage-
ment. None of his colleagues grudged him
his success since of the whole of the corps of
British adventurers he was the most deserving.
It is no small thing for a man without experi-
ence in the field, to find himself suddenly asso-
ciated with a retreating army.
After the Bosniak Shepherd had washed his
hands of the entire bunch of adventurers, the
General Staff issued an order that owing to
the re-organisation of the Turkish forces be-
hind the Tchataldja lines, no correspondents
A COUPLE AND A HALF 251
would be allowed to proceed to the front.
This meant that all conditions of service and
all regulations were suspended and it was
useless for any of the adventurers to apply for
facilities. The members of the corps, there-
fore, ceased to be privileged adventurers.
Those who determined to persevere, could
only hope to do so as buccaneers and at their
own risk.
It is a sufficient commentary upon the vari-
ous statements which have been published
concerning the Bulgarian successes at the bat-
tles of Lule Burgas and Viza and during the
retirement down to Tchataldja, to note the
wonderful rapidity with which this retreat-
ing army was re-organised behind the Tcha-
taldja lines. It was not until November the
13th, that is 14 days after the last shots
were fired in the vicinity of Lule Burgas, that
the Bulgarian pursuing advance guard came
in touch with the Turkish outposts in the
neighbourhood of Tchataldja village. Na-
zim Pasha, the Minister of War, had now
252 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
taken supreme command and had established
his headquarters at Hademkuey, a village on
the railway, just south of the lines.
The Turkish generalissimo now disposed of
about 80,000 men in his field army. This
field army was re-organised into five corps.
The old First and Second Corps were amalga-
mated and held the left section of the Lines;
the Fourth Corps held the centre; while the
Third Corps was on the right in the direction
of Lake Derkos. In addition, two reserve
corps had been organised and reinforcements
were daily arriving from the Erzerum and the
Syrian Inspections. Even the dull Turks had
learned their lesson from the employment of
partially trained troops. These new troops
that were being brought from Asia Minor
were composed entirely of Nizam and first
class Redifs. They were not made up in any
way by the inclusion of the material which
had brought about ruin so rapidly in the
earlier phases of the war. In fact stringent
measures of elimination had been taken with
international vni l
The laic Nazim Pasha, Turkish Minister of War and < lommander-
in Chief of the Turkish Army
A COUPLE AND A HALF 253
the troops of the original four corps of the
field army. The untrained material was sent
to the rear and formed into units to carry out
the scheme of field fortifications that now be-
came necessary. All the men that had broken
ranks and deserted were prevented from en-
tering Constantinople. They were collected
and returned to duty to carry out the manual
labour of creating second and third line posi-
tions between Tchataldja and the capital.
The field army had lost in its retreat the
major portion of its field artillery and muni-
tions. These losses were difficult to replace.
There was, nevertheless, a means open to the
Turkish War Office. It was possible to make
a further demand in the matter of quick-fir-
ing field artillery upon the Asiatic Inspections.
The House of Krupp, also, through the slack
observation of neutrality on the part of Ger-
many and Roumania, was able to deliver a
large number of batteries which were con-
veyed to the Turkish armies via the Black
Sea. By similar methods several thousand
254 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
serviceable horses were secured. The Turks
thoroughly believed that, as the Bulgarians
had failed to profit by their rapid retirement,
a new complexion had been introduced into
the main theatre of the campaign. As the
Turkish Government was at this period en-
deavouring to open up negotiations with the
Allies, it may be as well to bring briefly into
perspective the whole picture of the cam-
paign.
From the foregoing narrative the reader
knows what has happened in Thrace. Adri-
anople was still holding out; Shukri Pasha,
the commandant of the fortress, continued to
make an active defence. The inability of the
Allies to reduce this fortress, either by direct
assault or by other means, continued to detain
at least 100,000 of their men. Another Bul-
garian force known as the Rhodope Army had
operated successfully during October in the
Struma and Mesta valleys. The column that
invaded the Struma engaged in a neck and
neck race with the Greeks for the occupation
A COUPLE AND A HALF 255
of Salonika. This port was entered on the
9th November, the Bulgars having been
beaten by a short head by the Hellenes.
The Bulgarian column in the Mesta Val-
ley occupied Drama on October 26th and De-
deagarch on November 22nd. At the out-
break of hostilities a Turkish Division had
been mobilised at Kirjali in the Rhodope
mountains. This force fell back before the in-
vaders and remained on the right bank of the
Maritza. Here it was a considerable source
of anxiety to the Bulgarian General Staff. It
was feared that it had a role to play in con-
nection with Adrianople. So anxious was
General Savoff to have this Kirjali force kept
in hand that he detached his independent cav-
alry division to follow it down the right bank
of the Maritza. It was his intention that the
mounted men should co-operate with the
Mesta Valley force. It is for this reason, so
the Bulgarians say, that they were without
cavalry when the Turkish main army be-
gan its precipitate retreat. The Bulgarians
256 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
hemmed in this Kirjali corps and pressed it
back upon the Maritza with such success that
it ignominiously surrendered on November the
26th. About this time the Bulgarians em-
barked a brigade of their troops from Salon-
ika in Greek transports and put them ashore
at Dedeagarch. It is to be presumed that this
movement was intended to enable them to con-
centrate a further force against Tchataldja.
The Servian army operating in Albania had
occupied Uskub on October 26th and de-
feated the Turkish Western Army, consisting
of the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Corps at the
battle of Kumanovo. On November 6th the
Servian Army again defeated the Turkish
Western Army at Perlepe. They also had
another success against the residue of this
Turkish Army in the neighbourhood of Mon-
astic
The Greeks at the beginning of November
had already defeated the Turks at Yanitza and
Plati Bridge. They entered Salonika on No-
vember the 8th and received the surrender of
teflr*
^"».
bp
B
pq
A COUPLE AND A HALF 257
Hassan Pasha and 29,000 Turkish troops.
The Greek Army, however, operating in
Southern Albania, had failed to reduce the
defended town of Yanina. Djavid Pasha,
who commanded the Sixth Turkish Army
Corps, succeeded in working his way into
Yanina with what was left of the Turkish
Western Army that had been defeated near
Monastir.
The operations of the Montenegrin Army
were more or less confined to their abortive
attempt to reduce Scutari. The Montene-
grins at their best are only untrained soldiers
and consequently unreliable material. They
had begun the campaign with a great flourish
of trumpets. A few heavy losses soon damped
their ardour, and their want of administration
and training placed them in a very poor posi-
tion when they had to undertake slow and dif-
ficult approach operations in the depth of
winter.
It will be seen from the foregoing outline,
that Turkey had to all intents and purposes
258 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
lost the whole of her possessions in Europe ex-
cepting the point of the Thracian Peninsula
that lies behind the Tchataldja lines, the
tongue of Galipoli, and her three beleaguered
fortresses. It has been demonstrated that the
Turk as a mobile enemy is of small account,
but as long as he was fed, he maintained the
traditions of his race for lion hearted courage
behind entrenchments. It is hardly necessary
to make any mention of the naval operations.
None of the Turkish ships had left the cover
of the Dardanelles. The Turks had carried
out some weak demonstrations against Varna
and the ships were now being employed as
floating batteries to supplement the defences
of Tchataldja. The command of the iEgean
Sea had been left entirely to the Greeks, and
the latter had picked up at will such islands
as they required that were not already in the
occupation of the Italians.
T
CHAPTER XIII
TO A NEW COUNTRY
HE adventurers who had returned from
Rodosto were not given much time in
Constantinople to kick their heels. Once the
Bulgarians had collected transport and re-
plenished their supplies, they were able to
move quickly enough down to where the
Turkish Army had now established its line of
resistance. There was nothing to impede
them as Salih Pasha's independent cavalry di-
vision, with the exception of a few composite
units, had been sent down to the Sweet Waters
to refit.
Early on the moning of November the 13th
there was very considerable movement in front
of the Pera Palace Hotel. Country wagons
were being loaded up with tents and camp
equipment; dragomans were flitting about in
service kit; the German adventurers, having
259
260 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
hoisted their medal ribbons, were swinging in
and out of the hotel in martial gait, while the
many creditors whom the dragomans had es-
sayed to evade, were pestering the hall porter
to know if such and such a gentleman was still
in the hotel.
The Centurion, enjoying the luxury of hotel
life after his wear-and-tear existence at the
Turkish front, still remained immobile and
watched with equanimity the preparations for
the departure of his confreres. He had al-
ready made his mental calculations as to when
it would be expeditious to move for the scene
of active operations. He was also anxious
that the ruck of the correspondents should take
themselves off. He had discovered that this
herding business was detrimental to efficient
service. Once he knew in which direction the
mass of his colleagues had gone he proposed
making his way to a totally different portion of
the Lines.
The Dumpling, who never could watch
movement by other correspondents without
TO A NEW COUNTRY 261
believing that it was necessary for him to be-
stir himself, elected to continue his associa-
tion with Jew's Harp Senior. This group
hired a powerful motor car and late in the
morning took the road for Kuch Chekmedji.
There was an absolute exodus from the Hotel
and that night the Centurion was the only ad-
venturer left behind. His plans, however,
were matured. The faithful John, moving
amongst the dragomans belonging to his
rivals, had ascertained the destination of the
baggage of each group. This enabled the
Centurion to pick out on the map a secluded
village which was sufficiently far removed
from the billets selected by his colleagues, and
yet close enough to the actual lines to be with-
in easy reach, without its being actually a por-
tion of the area where the reserves would be
likely to be stationed. The faithful John had
the caravan all prepared and in readiness
for instant movement. The Centurion alone
knew what was to be its ultimate destination.
It had been the intention of the Diplomat to
262 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
join forces with the Centurion for this last
phase of the fighting. The Diplomat, how-
ever, since the request had gone from the Porte
to Sofia that there should be an armistice to
permit of negotiations, felt that his diplomatic
duties were more pressing than anything to be
gained out of chance military operations.
He, in common with the European opinion
prevailing in Constantinople, thought that the
Bulgarians had just to appear in force before
the Lines, to reproduce the retreat of Lule
Burgas.
As the Centurion sat over his lonely dinner,
he was joined by the Popinjay, who made a
journey that morning to Kuch Chekmedji in a
car and had just returned. The Popinjay was
the least jealous of all the adventurers. He
was one of those clean-bred young English-
men whose chief anxiety during the campaign
was to be in touch with the actual fighting.
He had undertaken the role of special corre-
spondent because it gave him opportunities to
satiate this lust for manly excitement. The
TO A NEW COUNTRY 263
information which the Popinjay brought back
from the front decided the Centurion to make
his move on the following morning. Orders
were, therefore, issued to John to be ready to
start with the caravan early when the destina-
tion would be disclosed to him in confidence.
Later in the evening the Popinjay and the
Centurion decided to join forces for the par-
ticular adventure. It was thought to be pru-
dent that unauthorised Europeans should at
least be in pairs when they established them-
selves close up to the front.
On the following morning the Popinjay and
the Centurion paddled out to the front in a
second rate motor car that had been hired at
an almost prohibitive price. Their ultimate
objective was a little Greek village about six
miles due south of Hademkuey, Nazim Pa-
sha's headquarters. To reach this, it was pro-
posed to take the metalled road to Kuch
Chekmedji and from thence work by country
roads up to the selected village. Arrived at
Kuch Chekmedji they found a large posse of
264 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
their confreres in possession of the village.
From these they gathered that orders had been
issued to commanders at the front to permit
no correspondents to reach the actual scene
of the operations. Several of the adventurers
had been to Byuk Chekmedji, twelve miles
forward, but had been politely though firmly
conducted back and set upon the Constanti-
nople road. All the adventurers who had
been unsuccessful in establishing themselves
on the southern extremity of the Tchataldja
lines had now decided to go back to a village
where there was a monastery. The Popin-
jay and the Centurion wished them Godspeed
and said they would persevere in an endeav-
our to remain in the village of Byuk Chek-
medji. The others assured them of the fu-
tility of this attempt and pointed out that they
w r ere only wasting their time since there was
nothing to be seen except the flashes of the
guns of the warships in the Bight as they bom-
barded theoretical Bulgarian positions some-
where in the direction of Tchataldja.
TO A NEW COUNTRY 265
The two adventurers, however, continued
on their way. When they met a suitable coun-
try road they turned off for their real objec-
tive. The country road, cut up as it was by
the passage of artillery and army transport,
very nearly defeated their car. Just before
nightfall they reached their village. The ac-
tual situation of the village proved a triumph
to the correspondent's powers of map-read-
ing. For the immediate purposes of the ad-
venturers its surroundings were ideal. It was
just one of those little clusters of Turkish
houses that are hidden away in nooks and cor-
ners of the downs all over this part of the
Thracian peninsula. It had the advantage of
being removed and practically hidden from
the highways leading to Tchataldja. It lay
in the cleft between two spurs that ran down
into the valley utilised for the railway. West
of the village you had but to climb a hum-
mock and you commanded an absolute pan-
orama of at least six roads leading up to the
reverse of the southern half of the Tchataldja
266 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
positions. Yet the village was so hidden that
you might well pass up and down any one of
these roads a dozen times without discovering
its existence.
The village itself was not of sufficient im-
portance to support a han. The chief farm-
er, in a primitive way, however, fulfilled the
duties of hanji. Over the gateway of his
main enclosure he had a guest house which he
let to such travellers as chanced his way. The
adventurers had lit upon this village at an op-
portune moment. It was being utilised by
the army as a hospital for suspect cases of
cholera. The principal medical officer of the
First Division and his staff of doctors were
in occupation of the guest room. They had
just received instructions to change their head-
quarters to another village nearer the Lines.
As the two Englishmen arrived they had
packed up their equipment and were settling
with the hanji preparatory to leaving for their
new destination. The Englishmen naturally
moved into their apartment, which, without
TO A NEW COUNTRY 267
exaggeration, was the only habitable room
within an area of ten square miles. The Pop-
injay had brought his dragoman Joe with him
in the car. Joe in the matter of domesticities
was masterful. He immediately took charge,
and, in an incredibly short time, had a meal
prepared and scouts out scouring the main
roads in order to direct the caravan as soon as
it arrived. John and the caravan put in an
appearance some time after dark.
For the purpose of description the Centu-
rion called the village "The Larches." This
was due to the fact that it was shut in by a
mass of these graceful trees. The Popinjay,
who was something of a wag, however, insisted
that the name should be changed to Alibi-
Kuey. This subsequently proved to be a very
clever quip. Although the Popinjay meant
an alibi in its English sense, yet it so happened
that about six miles away from the spot there
was a Turkish village of the name of Alibi-
kuey.
During their stay at the front both the ad-
268 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
venturers were questioned by Turkish officers
as to where they had their headquarters. All
that was said was Alibikuey. It so fell out
that the real Alibikuey was drawn for them
by the gendarmes sent from headquarters sev-
eral times while the fictitious Alibi-Kuey was
never discovered as their bolt-hole.
On the following day the Centurion and the
Popinjay made a long mounted reconnoissance
of the southern half of the Tchataldja Lines.
It may be stated here that a great deal of non-
sense had been written about the state of this
Line of semi-permanent fortifications. The
fugitive correspondents hurrying down to
Constantinople from the army in retreat, made
the not Uncommon mistake of confusing the
village of Tchataldja and the Tchataldja
mountain with the actual trace of the line of
fortifications. In reality, the Tchataldja
mountain and the village of Tchataldja have
nothing to do with the Lines. The village it-
self is on the opposite side of the Karasu Val-
ley and is at least six or seven miles west of
TO A NEW COUNTRY 269
the most western of Turkish fortifications.
Naturally enough the correspondents found
no signs of fortifications atTchataldja village.
The majority of them, however, pressed on
down the Constantinople road in the dark.
It was quite possible to pass down this road
in daylight and see very little of the real line
of fortifications. These untrained observers
were believed when they stated in Constanti-
nople that Tchataldja was not even fortified
and that they had seen nothing of trenches or
of field works as they passed.
The Tchataldja position consists of a chain
of down-crests stretching right across the
Thracian Peninsula. The trace of the forti-
fications follows one of these almost intermi-
nable series of uplands of which mention was
made in the description of the positions be-
tween Lule Burgas and Viza. In this case this
continuous ridge is more definitely marked,
owing to the presence of the Karasu Valley
which divides the southern half of the Tcha-
taldja Lines from the Tchataldja mountain.
270 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
This valley is marshy and difficult. It is a
continuation of the Byuk Chekmedji Lake,
which, with the Derkos Lake on the north, is
another feature in the strength of these lines.
The entire length of the position from sea
to sea is about thirty miles. Of this front,
however, not more than fifteen or sixteen miles
are held, since natural objects protect the re-
mainder. The railway and the main Adri-
anople road cut through the lines at about their
centre in the vicinity of Hademkuey. The
defences of this naturally strong position con-
sist of a chain of old redoubts which includes
all the more prominent features. It may be
said that this chain of works has been built up
on the advice of half the fortification experts
in Europe. German, English and French
experts have all tried their hands at Tcha-
taldja. The result has been artificial strength-
ening of a position which really never re-
quired very much to be done to it except an
efficient application of the spade. The Bul-
garians were kind enough to give the Turks
TO A NEW COUNTRY 271
this latter opportunity and, for once, they were
not slow to avail themselves of it. For the
first time in their history, the Turkish soldiery
seemed imbued with an adequate military
energy.
The old redoubts designed by Bluhm Pasha,
the works constructed under the advice of
British officers and the three modern forts
with concrete bomb-proofs which were added
on the advice of Brialmont, were all linked up
with double or treble tiers of infantry trenches
at convenient distances between the permanent
works. Positions were prepared for field bat-
teries and field howitzers to be used as posi-
tion artillery, as far as the Centurion could
gather all the additional positions for field
batteries that were designed after the army re-
treated behind the Lines. There were about
one hundred and forty works in all constructed
as platforms for artillery. It is true that
much of the position artillery in the works was
of old pattern, some even firing black powder,
but it was all serviceable and there was a great
272 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
deal more artillery in position on the 15th of
November than the Bulgarians had calculated
upon. The southern half of the Tchataldja
position is extremely strong owing to the fact
that the glacis to all the works is a gentle slope
leading down into the marshy valley of
Karasu. The Derkos region, however, pre-
sents a foreground that is more easy of ap-
proach. The country here is less downlike;
it is broken, and to a very large degree, cov-
ered with scrub. Another strength in these
historic Lines is the frequency of flanking po-
sitions. There is hardly one advance work in
the whole line that it would be safe to carry
and hold, unless the attack were prepared to
push its success immediately to the succeeding
works. It is understood that the theoretical
estimate of the force necessary to hold this po-
sition was put at 80,000 rifles, 250 position
guns and about thirty batteries of field artil-
lery. Although no theoretical estimate of re-
quirements in war can be accepted as final,
yet when the Bulgarian advance guards first
TO A NEW COUNTRY 273
came into touch with the Lines, the Ottoman
army had very nearly the exact numbers in
position at Tchataldja to dispute the road to
Constantinople as had been laid down by the
theorists. In coming to this estimate, the
guns of the Turkish fleet, distributed on both
flanks of the position, may be reckoned as sup-
plying an important moiety of the fortress
artillery.
During their morning reconnoissance the
Popinjay and the Centurion had their first real
insight into the extent to which cholera was
ravaging the ranks of the Turkish Army.
They pushed their reconnoissance as far as
Hademkuey. They did not enter this village
as they did not think it expedient to present
themselves at headquarters. Following a
road which lies just behind the Lines, and
parallel to the defences, they met the head of
a sick convoy that was evidently being di-
rected upon Hademkuey railway station.
The convoy consisted of nearly a hundred
springless bullock wagons. These carts were
274 WITH THE ^ONQUERED TURK
carrying an awful freight. In each were
heaped the cholera cases which had been
brought during the night to the field hospitals
of the amalgamated First and Second Corps.
The majority seemed to be in a state of col-
lapse. There were six to eight cases in each
wagon. Where the patients were sitting up
their heads were usually hanging over the
sides of the carts to give them relief as each
paroxysm of the disease racked their frames.
From time to time the carts were turned to the
roadside and a medical officer then indicated
to the attendants such cases as he, from a safe
distance, believed to be past medical aid.
These were pulled out of the cart and dragged
unceremoniously to the roadside to be col-
lected by the burial carts which might or
might not pass that way.
In his whole experience of warfare the Cen-
turion is unable to remember a more heart-
rending spectacle than this journey along that
road of death. Here and there this debris of
human life lay in heaps. These were gener-
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TO A NEW COUNTRY 275
ally corpses. Their cramped attitude and
ghastly features bore pathetic testimony to the
nature of the disease. In some places the rap-
idly fading quick were mingled with the dead
and the Centurion will never forget, as they
passed one pile, how, from a mass of corpses,
a seemingly dead man raised his pallid face
and with lustreless eyes fixed them with a
vacant hopeless stare. The memory of that
face will haunt him till his dying day.
And thus the Popinjay and the Centurion
passed down into the village of Mukakuey.
The epidemic seemed to have made a clean
sweep of this pretty little rural hamlet.
Mukakuey lay in the bottom of a valley, and,
like Alibi-Kuey, was prettily shaded by
groups of graceful larches. A few tattered
tents showed that it had been used as a field
hospital. Save for a few ghoul-like peasants,
who, under the lash of a gendarme, were en-
gaged in burying corpses on the outskirts, it
was a village of the dead. Actually in the
village there was nothing living except the
276 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
dogs that were quarrelling over the corpses
that lay scattered amongst the tents and in the
gardens. The hamlet literally smelt of the
dread disease and with a shudder the two
Englishmen put spurs to their horses and can-
tered away from these distressing scenes.
The booming of heavy guns towards the
south told the adventurers that the Turkish
warships lying off Byuk Chekmedji were
again searching for the Bulgarian positions.
The Popinjay and the Centurion rode up the
downs to a rise above Karagarch, from whence
they secured an admirable panorama of the
whole of the southern front which the Turks
were holding. On the top of this hill they
found two Turkish staff officers from the
Fourth Corps taking stock of the enemy's po-
sitions. Both these officers were known to the
Centurion and they greeted him with unaf-
fected surprise. They had last met in
Tchorlu. On this occasion they were very
useful as they had already marked down sev-
eral of the Bulgarian positions. With the aid
TO A NEW COUNTRY 277
of the Centurion's powerful glass, it was possi-
ble to see the trenches above Papas Burgas at
which the Bulgarians had been working
through the night. Discussing the situation
generally the Turkish officers intimated that
the Staff was of opinion that, if the Bulga-
rians intended to attack the Lines, their main
efforts would be made in the direction of
Derkos and Nakaskuey. These the Turks
considered to be the two most vulnerable sali-
ents. These two officers spoke with enthusi-
asm of the new troops that were arriving from
Asia Minor. It was quite evident that their
optimism concerning the strength of the Lines,
and the possibilities of defending them against
direct attack, was sincere.
As the desultory firing from the harbour
was purely an affair of "long bowls," the two
Englishmen returned to their cubby-hole.
The Centurion was of opinion that now pour-
parlers between the belligerents had been
opened, there would not be any severe fight-
ing at Tchataldja. He argued that the Allies
278 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
were in much the same case as the Japanese
had been in 1904. The Japanese had attained
all that was necessary to bring the Russians to
terms at the battle of Mukden. Any further
advance to Harbin, while demanding a far
greater national effort would not produce any
greater results, while it might embody risks
which would jeopardise the existing ascend-
ency. In similar case the Balkan Allies had
accomplished the ends for which they had un-
sheathed their weapons. The position at
Tchataldja was much more difficult than they
had been led to believe. If they took it by a
coup-de-main, not only would the price in life
be more severe than the Bulgarians could af-
ford, but their success would bring them
immediately upon Constantinople, and into
conflict with the interests of the Great Powers
of Europe. Also like the Japanese, they took
the risk of discounting their initial success by
suffering a reverse. As the guiding heads in
Sofia had hitherto shown such clever states-
manship, the Centurion believed that they
During the operations on the extreme Turkish left near the Tchataldja Lines;
a Turkish battalion at midnight on November 17, with the aid of
the searchlight, advancing and occupying the village oi
Papas Burgas, on the heels of the Bulgarian
who evacuated it precipitately before them
TO A NEW COUNTRY 279
would be content, and would prefer to settle
on the merits of their present successes, rather
than push the issues of war into unfathomable
depths.
Sharing this view the Popinjay determined
to ride back to Constantinople to put in order
some arrangements that were troubling him
at the base. That night, therefore, the Cen-
turion was alone at Alibi-Kuey. Just before
he turned in, he received a visit from Colonel
Atim Bey, the principal medical officer who
had been in charge of the village when the ad-
venturers had arrived. The kindly officer,
who was an Armenian and one of the leading
operating surgeons in Constantinople, in-
formed the Centurion that it was proposed to
turn Alibi-Kuey into a cholera camp for the
First Division. He had returned to arrange
all the details and he gave the Centurion the
information more or less as a warning of what
was to be expected. He was somewhat sur-
prised when the Centurion showed no concern
at the information. In fact he was inclined
2 8o WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
to welcome it. He realised that once the vil-
lage was established as a real cholera camp
there would be less chance of staff officers and
gendarmes searching it as a likely hiding-
place for unauthorised foreigners at the front.
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CHAPTER XIV
THE RUN OF THE SEASON
DURING the two days at Alibi-Kuey
there had been intermittent firing con-
fined almost entirely to the insistence of the
Turkish war vessels lying off Byuk Chek-
medji. In the early morning of the day after
the Popinjay had left, the Centurion woke
from his sleep in a start and sat up on his camp
bed with every nerve tense. His experienced
ear told him that something big had suddenly
developed. The w r elkin rang with the rever-
beration of heavy artillery fire. This was no
desultory practice on the part of the Turkish
warships. It was the rhythmic and system-
atic bursting of shells fired in salvos. The
Centurion listened for the space of two min-
utes. There could be no doubt about it.
Calling for John, he jumped out of bed and
began to dress. John, who did not wake
2S1
282 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
easily, was aroused. In co-operation with Joe
the necessary dish of cocoa was prepared and
in twenty minutes the Centurion was on his
pony and galloping over the veldt to the sound
of the guns.
It was a still winter's morning. A heavy
haze hung over all the depressions in the
downs. The light was bad and as the Cen-
turion galloped in the direction of Hadem-
kuey he could not understand why the Bul-
garians had chosen this particular morning to
make their first serious demonstration against
the Lines. Secretly he was a little annoyed
with them since, from the sound of firing, it
seemed that they had upset all his calculations.
There was no doubt about the intensity of the
artillery fire. At the first estimate it looked
as if the intention was to drive an attack home
and the morning had been selected for this
purpose, owing to the visual cover that the
winter's mists would give to advancing in-
fantry.
About half way between Alibi-Kuey and
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 283
Hademkuey, there is a ridge that commands
an excellent panorama of the southern half of
the Karasu Valley. This was the Centurion's
first objective. As he reached this ridge he
found that it was already occupied by a large
number of Turkish officers and men from the
reserve units stationed in the village of
Omarli. The artillery fire had now become
general as the Turks were able to find without
effort the whole of the Bulgarian batteries in
action against them. The ease with which
these targets became unmasked was due to the
dullness of the morning. Tchataldja Moun-
tain and the downs that rise away to the west
of the Karasu Valley were just black ridges in
the half light. Against this background every
flash from the Bulgarian batteries was visible.
The target was so clear that it was a simple
matter to count the flashes and thus determine
the strength of the batteries in action.
As far as the Centurion could judge the
Bulgarian artillery fire was mainly concen-
trated upon the twin Hamidieh forts. These
284 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
works are outworks to the centre of the main
line of Turkish defences. But while concen-
trating much of their fire upon these two per-
manent works, the Bulgarian gunners had
batteries to spare for the more important tar-
gets behind them. The big works of Ahmed
Pasha and Bahceis Tabja sparkled in the dim
morning light with canopies of bursting shrap-
nel, while heavier projectiles from time to
time threw up great dark patches of smoke
and mud as they gouged their way along their
crests.
The Turkish reserves were bivouacked in
the valleys or on the reverse slopes of the posi-
tions. They were now all moving up into
cover in selected depressions behind the Lines.
The trenches in which the infantry holding
these positions were disposed, are all dug on
the approach slopes of the positions. Many
of them are low down and there is no regular-
ity in the alignment. As all the loose earth
has been distributed and the parapets turfed
with sods, it is difficult to pick them out at any
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 285
distance from the grassy slopes in which they
are traced.
As the Centurion stood watching the in-
ferno of shell-bursts the sound of musketry
and machine-gun fire broke out all along the
left of the position. This could mean only
one thing. Somewhere infantry was advan-
cing. His present position was no place from
which to see the infantry attack. The Cen-
turion, therefore, remounted his pony and
trotted down into the Mukakuey Valley,
where he and the Popinjay had seen the hos-
pital convoy on the preceding day. Leaving
that village of death on the left, he cantered
down the valley in the direction of the saddle
through which the railway passes over the
position. West of the village he found the
Tchataldja road which here again meets the
railway. There was very little on the road.
He passed one or two ammunition carts being
urged up to the front, four wagons loaded
with bread making for the Lines, and he met
two or three groups of men conducting or
286 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
carrying a wounded comrade to the rear. As
he trotted along he was overtaken by a young
Turkish officer. The latter, surprised at the
suddenness of the attack, was cantering out
from Hademkuey to join his unit. The Cen-
turion and the Turkish officer at once frater-
nised and it was lucky for the former that they
did so, as, a little further on, they met an ex-
amining post which the officer said had had
orders to fire on all civilians who came up the
road unaccompanied by a soldier in uniform.
As soon as they were round the corner be-
hind which the examining post was placed, it
was necessary to go fast as they had reached
the zone of the enemy's fire. Shells were
bursting all along so as to search the foot-
slopes of Bahceis Tabja. The under features
here sink gently into the Karasu Valley. This
Nek is the one low gateway in the whole of
the Tchataldja position. In it the Turks have
erected a chain of earthworks. Portions of
this chain are of more or less permanent con-
struction and are provided with splinter proofs
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 287
and magazines. At intervals along this line
there are redoubts in which were emplaced
large calibre Krupps and several batteries of
quick firing field artillery. The intermediate
trenches were occupied by infantry and ma-
chine-gun sections.
As the Centurion and his new-found friend
cantered up to the nearest work some friendly
soldiers in a splinter proof shouted to them to
bring their horses under cover. It was well
they did so. The animals were scarcely below
the beams of the splinter proof when a salvo
of shrapnel burst overhead and the strike
swept up the dust and stones along the path
they had just crossed. An officer in the
splinter proof told the Centurion's companion
that his company was in one of the old works
on the left front of this particular splinter
proof. He here proposed to wish the Cen-
turion good-bye and showed much surprise
when the latter volunteered to accompany him
to his command. The semi-permanent work
was only about two hundred yards away. It
288 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
was not even necessary to run to reach it.
There happened at that period to be one of
those curious lulls which recur periodically
during an artillery fight.
On reaching the work the Centurion found
everybody there very comfortably installed.
The garrison had not been much troubled by
the enemy's shrapnel as the enemy had con-
fined most of their energy to the artillery
works further along the line. The work cov-
ered a grand field of fire. Its approaches
sloped very gently down to the Karasu stream.
The bed of the stream is masked with a cer-
tain amount of scrub-growth before the valley
slopes up again towards the village of Papas
Burgas and the Tchataldja Mountain. The
officer commanding the company holding this
work knew his business. All his men were
sitting down in the trenches well under cover
waiting until the sentries observing the front
should discover a target. Up to the time of
the arrival of the Centurion the company had
suffered no casualty even though one or two
"A salvo of shrapnel burst overhead" Set p<i:
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 289
common shell had topped the parapet and
smothered everyone with dirt and dust. The
severe outburst of musketry-fire that had at-
tracted the Centurion had broken out further
to the left on the front of the First Corps.
A few minutes after the Centurion's arrival
an officer who was watching the river bed re-
ported infantry to be in the scrub. Accord-
ing to the captain of the company this infantry
must have come down in the night or made its
way from some other point within the shelv-
ing bed. Since daylight nothing had crossed
down the upward slope from Papas Burgas.
The captain went up to reconnoitre and the
Centurion, who had very powerful glasses,
went up with him. After a little time it was
easy to make out the flat caps of the Bulga-
rians in the river bed. The men were imme-
diately ordered to man the parapet. The tar-
get was then pointed out to them. The Centu-
rion was surprised at the workmanlike manner
in which this captain went about his business.
He was not one of the educated young men
290 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
from Constantinople but was one of the old
type of Turkish officer. He had probably
risen from the ranks. He evinced as he ex-
ercised command in the field every instinct of
a careful and even scientific soldier.
The river bed was about 1500 metres from
the work. The soldiers only received instruc-
tions to watch the target. They had not long
to wait. Presently half a dozen groups of
Bulgarian infantry popped up out of the scrub.
They walked upright and gallantly into the
open. Now was the time for the Turks.
The captain ordered the section commanders
to open fire. There was no concealment of
the movement of the Bulgarian infantry. A
withering Mauser fire crashed out along the
entire Turkish front. At the same time the
Turkish field gunners picked up the target.
The advancing infantry disappeared as if they
had been swept away by magic. The men
had dropped in their tracks. The fire was too
heavy for them to face. This, however, did
not deter further groups from moving out to
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 291
support their comrades. These in their turn
were received with the same crash of rifles.
They too disappeared. Presently the pros-
trate men rose and rushed forward. This
time they ran in their efforts to gain ground.
It seemed that the Turkish gunners had found
their range accurately. With che aid of
glasses it was possible to see the strike of the
shrapnel amongst the prostrate infantrymen.
This continued for about an hour. In this
period, as far as the Centurion could calcu-
late, about a battalion of Bulgarian infantry-
men had come out over the lip of the river
bed. The Bulgarians had not been able to
advance more than three or four hundred
yards. As an infantry attack, as far as the
Centurion could diagnose it, it was the most
futile and wasteful thing he had ever seen in
his life. The senior officer who ordered it
could have made no reconnoissance of the po-
sition he proposed to attack, or, if he had, then
he must have had a contempt for the Turkish
resistance that was totally unjustified.
292 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Towards midday the senior Bulgarian offi-
cer evidently came to much the same conclu-
sion, as the infantry began to retire to the cover
of the river bed. They were whipped in their
retirement by shrapnel and rifle fire, and as
could be seen with the glasses, there were
many forms left lying in the vacated positions.
As long as the Centurion remained in the
trenches there was no further infantry move-
ment that he could discern along that front.
After nightfall, however, he understands, a
rifle battalion from the Second Turkish Corps
went down and cleaned the Bulgarians out of
the river bed.
All this time there was no intermission in
the fearful hurly-burly of the cannon combat
all along the lines. The Turkish fleet had
joined in the noisy revelry and its great pro-
jectiles could be seen bursting among the Bul-
garian trenches along the foot of the Tcha-
taldja Mountain. The Centurion felt that it
was time to betake himself to another part of
the field. When he retired to the splinter
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 293
proof to find his pony it was necessary to run
as there was a horrid noise of shrapnel in the
air. The supports in the splinter proof were
delighted to see him back. The Turkish
Tommy really is a lovable, simple fellow.
Like all Mohammedans, when you are upon
his right side, he is a perfect gentleman. The
Centurion offered the men who had held his
horse a few piastres. They refused the prof-
fered gift with dignity, saying, "We are all
bound for Heaven. What would we do with
piastres in Heaven!"
The officer commanding these supports sent
a sergeant with the Centurion to get him past
the examining post, and, after mutual greet-
ings, the Centurion moved to another portion
of the field. This time he made for the slopes
of Ahmed Pasha as it seemed to him that there
was a continuous roll of musketry fire from the
trenches there and in front of the Hamidieh
works. As he passed down the reverse of
Bahceis Tabja he came upon a field-dressing
station. A slightly wounded artillery officer
294 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
with whom he opened a conversation said that
most of the shrapnel wounds were slight and
pointed out with considerable satisfaction that
the Bulgarian gunners were bursting their
shrapnel far too high for it to be effective.
He added that very many of the men had been
hit by shrapnel bullets that were spent.
It was evident that everything was going
well for the Turks along this portion of the
front. No demand, whatever, had been made
upon the reserves who were bunched up on the
reverse slopes as near the crest as was safe
without exposing them to the high angle-fire
with which the Bulgarians, from time to time,
essayed to search the reverse of the positions.
Having with the permission of their officer
left his pony with some friendly soldiers of
the reserve, the Centurion found a place on
the crest of Ahmed Pasha from which he se-
cured a bird's-eye view of the Karasu Valley,
as it rose up to the Hamidieh forts. A very
heavy shell fire was concentrated on these two
forts. With his glasses he could see that an
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 295
infantry movement had taken place from the
village of Ezetin and made its way down to-
wards the river. There was nothing very
definite or persistent in this attempt and it re-
coiled automatically under the sustained rifle
fire which met it from the Turkish trenches.
A stout little Turkish officer, who, at this
spot, shared the cover with the Centurion was
radiant as he said gleefully: "We have got
these swineherds to-day."
From time to time the Bulgarian gunners,
whose batteries on this front were on the
ridges behind Ezetin, turned their attention
upon Ahmed Pasha. The wounded artillery
officer's diagnosis had been right. It was
quite evident that the majority of the Bulga-
rian batteries which were engaging Ahmed
Pasha were ranging at quite 6,000 yards.
The bursting of shrapnel high at this range is
not a very profitable method of making an im-
pression upon a prepared position. The
howitzers, and there seemed to be one or two
batteries of these weapons, made better prac-
296 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
tice, and while the Centurion was at Ahmed
Pasha, one of these large projectiles did a
cruel burst amongst a section of Turkish sup-
ports sheltering behind a wall.
The Hamidieh forts were within more ef-
fective range of the Bulgarian fire. The
Turks there had considerable casualties and as
the Centurion lay on Ahmed Pasha he could
see the wounded being helped down the re-
verse slopes of the works to a dressing station
in the valley, and from time to time two or
three stretchers told their tale of shells that
had got home.
Shortly after midday there was a decided
lull in the firing. For a time the Bulgarian
fire completely died away. The Turks too
seemed in need of rest. The Centurion seized
this opportunity to get away from his hiding-
place at Ahmed Pasha. He was beginning to
think of the duty he owed to his employers in
London and felt that it was time to get back
to Alibi-Kuey in order that a messenger should
be despatched. Of one thing he was certain.
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 297
This was, that wisely or unwisely, the Bul-
garians had made an attack upon Tchataldja
and that the Turks had easily kept this attack
at arm's length. What worried the Centurion
was the difficulty to find a reason for this more
or less futile effort.
Was it that the army, believing that the
civilians at Sofia might be tempted to wrest
from them their crowning victory, had taken
the bit between their teeth? Was it that the
politicians thought that the sound of the Bul-
garian guns bombarding within thirty miles
of the Turkish capital would have a moral
effect in the coming negotiations? Was it
that the Bulgarian General Staff, believing all
the reports of disorganisation in the Turkish
retreat, thought they had but to show their
teeth to frighten the Turkish soldiers from
their trenches? Was it a mismanaged recon-
noissance intended merely to test the strength
of the Turkish positions, or was it a serious
effort to force the Lines of Tchataldja?
Even now the Centurion will not permit
298 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
himself to make a definitive answer to any of
these queries. Considered as a reconnoissance
in force it was cumbersome and expensive.
As a real attack, it was ill-conceived, ill-con-
ducted and altogether futile. As a diplo-
matic ballon d'essai it was a fatuous blunder.
It led the Turks to believe that they had at
last won a great victory. It caused them to
harden their hearts sevenfold, and it re-estab-
lished the influence of the military party in the
capital.
The Centurion hastened back to Alibi-Kuey.
Arrived there he hurriedly wrote his mes-
sage and despatched it to his agents in Con-
stantinople so that no time should be lost in
its reaching its destination.
After a scratch meal the Centurion mounted
a fresh horse and started again to the front.
He could not fail to regret that the Popinjay
had been so unfortunate in the selection of a
day to return to Constantinople. There was
still a heavy cannonade but the ear of the Cen-
turion noted that the fury had already de-
if- :
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THE RUN OF THE SEASON 299
parted out of the day's battling. This time he
headed towards Karagarch, the headquarters
of Omar Taver's composite army corps.
There is a slight table-land at Karagarch
from the summit of which a grand panorama
of the whole of the scene of operations is pos-
sible. The Centurion had some difficulty in
reaching this plateau. The examining posts
showed every inclination to detain him. An
officer of Nishanjis, however, recognised him
and invited him to join a group of his com-
rades who were standing on the edge of the
plateau.
It must be admitted that in this period of the
campaign the officers of the army were not
kindly disposed towards the foreign adven-
turers. Nor was this surprising. In the first
place the Turkish Army had little in the
record of the campaign upon which to con-
gratulate itself; nevertheless, the case against
the army in Thrace had been overstated by the
majority of the foreign adventurers who had
shared its hospitality. There is no criticism
3 oo WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
that is quite so painful as the truth. There
was just sufficient truth in the criticisms that
had been meted out so handsomely with regard
to the retirement from Lule Burgas to make
them the bitterest reading to those responsible
for the bearing of the army.
There is, however, little in the Turkish
character that is malignant, and although the
officers of this rifle battalion at first received
the Centurion coolly, under the influence of
his congratulations on the day's fighting, they
soon became the jolly hospitable fellows that
all true Turks are au fond. There was a gen-
eral spirit of elation in the discovery that they
really had sufficient resistance to face their
enemy. This may be a pathetic criticism upon
them. Nevertheless it is a terrible thing for
the officers of an army to have to take part in
a hurried retreat. It destroys that confidence
which is the chief factor complementary to
experience and training.
The Centurion stayed with the rifle officers
until it began to get dark. All rifle fire had
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 301
died out early in the afternoon. The Turkish
gunners, nevertheless, maintained a continuous
bombardment of the Bulgarian battery posi-
tions. The Turks with their position artillery
and the guns of the fleet had a superior range
to anything that the Bulgarians had brought
into action. Early in the day they had se-
cured admirable targets. Throughout the
afternoon the reply of the Bulgarian gunners
was only desultory. At intervals they treated
the Hamidieh works to a few minutes of sus-
tained and concentrated fire. These efforts
were spasmodic. When night fell suddenly,
as it does in the winter in Thrace, the firing
immediately died out. A period was put to it
with an abruptness that was truly remarkable.
It almost seemed as if it had been turned off
by the movement of a lever.
When the Centurion returned to Alibi-
Kuey he found that the Popinjay had just
arrived. The latter was desperately cha-
grined at having missed the battle. The
sound of the firing had been perfectly audible
302 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
in Pera. As soon as the Popinjay heard it he
had tumbled out of bed and taken to horse.
By midday he had reached a position near
Hademkuey from which he had been able to
witness some of the effects of the bombard-
ment, but he had been unable to gather any
detail.
An engagement such as this Bulgarian effort
against a position of the strength of Tcha-
taldja affords but little opportunity for those
intimate details which alone bring personal
interest into a description of fighting. The
only really close fighting had occurred in the
north, in the vicinity of Derkos. Here a very
bloody affair was perpetrated. Probably it
was the bloodiest of the whole campaign.
This was the capture and recapture of
Kizildzali Tepe, one of the advance works on
the northern section of the Tchataldja posi-
tion. It was held by a battalion of Kurdish
infantry newly arrived from Asia.
It will be remembered that the morning had
broken overcast and misty. In the lowland
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 303
about Derkos this mist hung in heavy opaque
clouds. The approaches to the Kizildzali
Tepe work lie over broken country. The field
of observation is much curtailed by scrub and
incipient forest. The Bulgarians had selected
this point as a salient. Under cover of night
a force of about a battalion had been detached
to steal up to this Turkish advanced position
and, if possible, to rush it in the small hours
of the morning. A large infantry force was
concentrated in the scrub and forest. Pre-
sumably it was proposed, if this detached
force was successful in the enterprise, to use
Kizildzali Tepe as a stepping-stone from
which to rush the Lines. The forlorn hope
made a complete success. They penetrated
right up to the rear of the work without dis-
turbing a single sentry. What followed was
a short and bloody butchery. In the bitter
cold of that misty morning the entire Turkish
garrison was silently bayoneted.
The Bulgarians had scored a big initial suc-
cess. The opaqueness of the mist, however,
3 o 4 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
was to be their undoing. In the first place it
delayed them in communicating the success to
the main attacking force. But what was more
desperate it allowed the colonel and adjutant
of the Turkish Reserves lying in the rear of
the neighbouring works to ride up to Kizild-
zali Tepe. The colonel had suspected that
something was wrong. Under cover of the
mist he rode up to the work and found the
Bulgarians in occupation. He and his adju-
tant turned their horses round and galloped
back to their own men. This colonel was a
quick-witted fellow. He roused his own bat-
talion, and in fifteen minutes his men were
doubling through the mist to re-establish the
Turkish line. They took the Bulgarians in
the rear much in the same manner in which
they themselves had taken the original garri-
son. Their methods of dealing with the Bul-
garians were also the same. A Turkish officer
who saw the work after the double tragedy
said that it was the bloodiest shambles that any
war had seen. The colonel of the reserves
THE RUN OF THE SEASON 305
wasted no time in rejoicing over his victory.
Realising that the Bulgarian effort was but the
prelude to an attack in force he disposed his
battalion in readiness. His men were just
able to man the parapet in time when the Bul-
garian main attack began to separate itself
from the mists. The Bulgarians, having now
received information that the work was theirs,
were advancing with the utmost confidence.
The reception they received so paralysed them
that the infantry made no further aggression
on this front throughout the day.
CHAPTER XV
BACK HOME
ALTHOUGH there was desultory artillery
firing and a certain amount of contact
between the outposts for three days after the
unmasking of the Bulgarian positions before
Tchataldja the limits of the Bulgarian offen-
sive had been decided on the merits of the
engagement described in the preceding chap-
ter. The Popinjay and the Centurion made
reconnoissances to various points of the Lines
and watched a considerable amount of artil-
lery practice. They could not find any evi-
dences of a serious endeavour on the part of
the enemy to persevere in a forward campaign.
The Turks, greatly elated over the affair,
talked grandiloquently of making a recon-
noissance in force preparatory to taking a defi-
nite offensive destined to drive the Allies out
of Thrace. This of course was all vapour.
306
BACK HOME 307
The Turkish rearward services were suffi-
ciently employed in maintaining the army at
Tchataldja; they were not equal to any for-
ward movement even if the Allies could have
been brought to acquiesce.
Two days after the engagement Nazim
Pasha sent out a parlementaire officer and
opened direct communications with the com-
mander-in-chief of the invading armies.
Knowing that once Oriental and semi-Oriental
races begin to negotiate there must intervene
a long period of bazaar haggling, and feeling
the strain of being cooped up in a cholera
camp, the Popinjay and the Centurion decided
to leave their country residence and return to
the capital.
With their return to Constantinople the
story of the latter-day adventurers comes to an
end. The negotiations which were opened at
Tchataldja developed, as all the world knows,
into an armistice and a general meeting of
delegates from the belligerents in London, to
arrange a basis for a permanent peace in the
308 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Balkans. It is not within the province of the
Centurion, or within the scope of this slight
narrative of the adventures of correspondents
associated with the Turkish Army in Thrace,
to enter upon any discussion on the subject
of the meeting of these delegates in London.
There is, however, the matter of the repre-
sentation of newspapers at the front with
modern armies. This subject is deserving of
attention. The Centurion does not approach
this delicate question in the spirit of proffer-
ing advice to the General Staffs of foreign
armies. On the other hand there is much in
the conduct of the Balkan war that should
interest our own General Staff. Ever since
the Russo-Japanese war the question of per-
mitting newspaper correspondents to accom-
pany the British army in the field has been un-
der consideration. Many propositions have
been discussed. One section of thought con-
sidered the time was opportune definitely to
kill the service of news by independent chan-
nel. The proposal was that the General Staff
The dining-car armistice agreement near the Tchataldja Lines: The late Nazim
Pasha, Turkish Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief of the
Turkish' Army, and General Savoff, the Bulgarian leader,
shaking hands after the decision to suspend hostilitii
BACK HOME 309
itself should be responsible for such news that
the General in command considered it advis-
able to have published. The Bulgarian Gen-
eral Staff has forever destroyed the promise
of this expedient being acceptable to the Brit-
ish nation. They have definitely shown that
a General Staff taking upon itself the service
of news for publication can never be a trust-
worthy agent. It is not suggested that any
British general in the field would permit the
deliberate and grandiloquent falsehoods that
were published in Vienna at the instance of
the Bulgarian General Staff; but their meth-
ods have demonstrated the perfectly legiti-
mate desire of a general in the field to utilise
his press communications to deceive both his
enemy and his neighbours. In the eyes of the
public the value of General Staff messages
will always be taken at a heavy discount.
The Bulgarian methods, therefore, having
wrecked the proposal that an official news
service should be instituted as an alternative to
the rigid exclusion of all newspaper corres-
310 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
pondents from an army in the field, it behoves
the military authorities to devise a compro-
mise. The Centurion would be the first to ad-
mit, that, if the British public is content to
support the General Staff in the exclusion of
newspaper correspondents, this is the right
course to pursue. Unfortunately neither gov-
ernments, nor generals in the field, have the
power to coerce public opinion in this coun-
try either into a spirit of unselfish patriotism
or into a suppression of the interest the nation
takes in the operations of its armies in the field.
The Committee of National Defence vainly
hope that by an Order in Council they will
be able to improvise legislation that will
silence the entire press of the Empire. This
is the example set by the Japanese. Even in
that highly disciplined nation the papers rose
in revolt against the measure. The leading
journals found that it paid them to publish the
news in spite of the penalty. In this country
nothing short of an absolute suppression of
the journal that breaks the law of the censor-
BACK HOME 311
ship would, in the event of any important war
news, have the desired result. Such an ex-
treme penalty is out of the question. As it has
always been in the past the circulation of
newspapers has been made or maintained by
the adequacy of the information supplied dur-
ing periods of excitement. It will be the same
in the future. Every newspaper editor knows
this, and he will not be frightened, any more
than the Japanese editors were frightened, by
a moderate press law.
On the other hand, it is perfectly obvious
that no well-organised army in the field will
be able to permit the uncontrolled free-
lancing that was the feature of the ad-
venturers' operations in Thrace. This is
not a small problem, and it is one that
should now be engaging the attention of
the General Staff. The necessity that cer-
tain information be suppressed during the
period of military activity that precedes a war,
and after the navies and the armies have en-
gaged in hosilities with the enemy, is of such
3 i2 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
vital importance, that it behoves the General
Staff to create in peace a department that
should devote itself entirely to the study of
press control.
It is probable that the Centurion will never
again take the field in the guise of an adven-
turer. He has observed, nevertheless, that
there is growing up in the modern journalistic
atmosphere a corps of keen, clever, dashing
young men who have every intention in all
future wars to render adequate service to their
papers, preferably with, or, if necessary, with-
out, the permission of the General Staff.
When it becomes a question of the wits of
these men and the wealth of their papers being
pitted against any clumsy and hurriedly im-
provised methods of repression, there is no
doubt as to whom will come the ultimate suc-
cess.
It seems to the Centurion a national calam-
ity that these young men are all shaping their
ideas in a school that believes success will de-
pend upon the measures employed to defeat
BACK HOME 313
the Censorship, rather than that they can best
serve employers and the nation by a loyal and
sympathetic co-operation with the military au-
thorities. If there existed at the War Office
a formulated procedure and a department
that devoted its every energy to the working
out of this problem, it is probable that the
younger school of war correspondents would
grow up with an entirely different view of the
character of their duties than possesses them at
present.
In approaching this subject it must be re-
membered that the so-called teaching of the
Japanese action in Manchuria is not really ap-
plicable to Europe. The Japanese had the
advantage of conducting their campaign in an
area over which they could exercise control
over all the neutral means of communication.
The entire ignorance of all Europeans of their
caligraphy was a further factor in the partial
secrecy they were able to maintain. These
advantages will not be found in Europe and
it seems to the Centurion that the General
314 WITH THE CONQUERED TURK
Staff has not sufficiently realised this fact.
Modern conditions in international com-
munications and in the service of newspaper
information have rendered obsolete all past
theories on the subject of press representation
with armies in the field.
The new school of correspondents will take
the field in the next war, be they authorised
or unauthorised, with the single maxim be-
fore them: "This thing can be done. I will
do it or go under in the attempt."
It is for the General Staff to decide now
whether the correspondent shall take the field
as a loyal and instructed associate of the army,
or as an organiser of an independent secret
service.
It only remains to the Centurion to take
leave of his companions in the field of adven-
ture. It has been necessary, for reasons which
need not be laboured, to cloak under the thin
veil of anonymity the identity of each.
The Centurion can only say that in all his ex-
perience he has never been associated with a
BACK HOME 315
more delightful coterie of companions than
the corps of latter-day adventurers with whom
he took the field in Thrace. There was never
during the whole period a discord amongst
them. Every day produced, especially
amongst the Englishmen, those little evidences
of loyalty and friendship which are the very
salt of man's existence. The deadly rivalry
embodied in their work never for a moment
entered into their daily intercourse. There
were, on the other hand, countless instances
when in adversity the hand of friendship was
ungrudgingly extended in circumstances where
it might legitimately have been denied. As
long as he lives the Centurion will carry with
him the memory of the last evening in Con-
stantinople when nearly all the English ad-
venturers who appear in his narrative met to-
gether in a final happy union before the dis-
persion of the corps.
THE END
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
DR ' onel
583 bh the conquered Turk
J3
