I doubt if history can show a more brilliant or dramatic campaign than
that which the Greeks commenced on the first of July and ended on the
last day of the same month; certainly no country has ever been drenched
with so much blood in so short a space of time as was Macedonia, and
never in the history of the human race have such enormities been
committed upon the helpless civilian inhabitants of a war-stricken
land.
Bulgaria felt herself amply strong enough to crush the Servian and
Greek armies single-handed, provided peace with Turkey could be
assured, and the Bulgarian troops at Tchataldja set free. Thus, while
Bulgaria talked loudly about the conference at St. Petersburg, she was
making feverish haste to persuade the Allies to join with her in
concluding peace with Turkey. But the Allies were quite alive to the
dangers they ran. As peace with Turkey became daily more assured, the
Bulgarian army at Tchataldja was gradually withdrawn and transported to
face the Greek and Servian armies in Macedonia.
But meanwhile Bulgaria had got one more preparation to make. Her plan
was to attack the Allies suddenly, but to do it in such a way that the
Czar and Europe might believe that the attack was mutual and
unpremeditated. She therefore set herself to accustom the world to
frontier incidents between the rival armies. On no fewer than four
occasions various Bulgarian generals acting under secret instructions
attacked the Greek or Servian troops in their vicinity. The last of
these incidents, which was by far the most serious, took place on the
24th of May in the Pangheion region, when the sudden attack at sunset
of 25,000 Bulgarians drove the Greek defenders back some six miles upon
their supports. On each occasion the Bulgarian Government disclaimed
all responsibility, and attributed the bloodshed to the personal
initiative of individual soldiers acting under (imaginary) provocation.
The incident of the 24th of May cost the Bulgarians some 1,500
casualties, while the Greeks lost about 800 men, sixteen of whom were
prisoners; two of these subsequently died from ill-treatment. In
connection with this last "incident" a circumstance arose which
demonstrates more vividly than mere adjectives the underhand methods
employed by the Sofia authorities. It was announced that the Bulgarians
had captured six Greek guns, and these were duly displayed at Sofia and
inspected by King Ferdinand. I myself was at Salonica at the time, and,
knowing that this was not true, I protested through the _Daily
Telegraph_ against the misleading rumor. A controversy arose, but it
was subsequently proved by two artillery experts who inspected the guns
in question that they were really Bulgarian guns painted gray, with
their telltale breech-blocks removed.
On the morning of the 29th of June we at Salonica received the news
that during the night Bulgarian troops in force had attacked the Greek
outposts in the Pangheion region and driven them in. All through the
day came in fresh news of further attacks all along the line. At
Guevgheli, where the Greek and Servian armies met, the Bulgarians had
attacked fiercely, occupied the town, and cut the railway line. The two
armies were separated from each other by an interposing Bulgarian
force. On the morning of the 30th of June it was learned that all along
the line the Bulgarians had crossed the neutral line and were
advancing, while at Nigrita they had driven back a Greek detachment and
pressed some fifteen miles southward, thus threatening entirely to cut
off the Greek troops remaining in the Pangheion district. The situation
was critical and demanded prompt attention. King Constantine was away
at Athens, but he sent his instructions by wireless and hastened
hotfoot back to Salonica to place himself at the head of the army.
At noon General Hessaptchieff (brother-in-law of M. Daneff), the
Bulgarian plenipotentiary accredited to Greek Army Headquarters, drove
to the station and with his staff left by the last train for Bulgarian
Headquarters at Serres. Orders were immediately given for all Bulgarian
troops to be confined to barracks, and the Cretan gendarmerie duly
arrested any found about the streets. Gradually as the afternoon wore
on, the civilian element retired behind closed doors and shuttered
windows; all shops were shut, and pickets of Greek soldiery were alone
to be seen in the deserted streets. At 4.30 P.M. the Bulgarian
battalion commander was invited to surrender the arms of his men, when
they would be conveyed in two special trains to Serres or anywhere else
they liked. He was given an hour to decide. Owing to the intervention
of the French Consul the time limit was extended, but the offer was
refused, and at 6.50 P.M. on the 30th of June the Greeks applied force.
Around every house occupied by Bulgarian soldiery Greek troops had been
introduced into neighboring houses, machine guns had been installed on
rooftops, companies of infantry were picketed at street corners.
Suddenly throughout the town all this hell was let loose. The streets
gave back the echo a thousandfold. The crackle of musketry and din of
machine guns was positively infernal. As evening came and darkened into
night, one after another of the Bulgarian forts Chabrol surrendered,
sometimes persuaded thereto by the deadly effect of a field-gun at
thirty yards' range, but the sun had risen ere the chief stronghold
containing five hundred Bulgarians gave up the hopeless struggle. By
nine o'clock the Bulgarian garrison of Salonica, deprived of its arms,
was safely stowed in the holds of Greek ships bound for Crete. The
casualty list was as follows: Bulgarians--prisoners: 11 officers, 1,241
men; 11 men wounded; 51 men killed; comitadjis, 4 wounded, 11 killed.
Greeks: 11 soldiers killed; 4 Cretan gendarmes killed; 4 officers
wounded; 6 soldiers wounded; while 6 Bulgarian officers who had
deserted their men and escaped in women's clothing were not captured
until later in the day.
All the morning of the 1st of July the Greek troops were busy rounding
up Bulgarian comitadjis and collecting hidden explosives, but at 4 P.M.
the Second Division marched out of the town. King Constantine, who had
arrived in the small hours of the morning, had given the order for a
general advance of his army. Greek patience was expended, and no
wonder.
Meanwhile, let us consider the Bulgarian intentions as revealed by the
captured dispatch-box of the General commanding the 3d Bulgarian
Division, which contained documents likely to become historic. On the
28th of June the Bulgarian Divisional Commanders received orders from
the Commander-in-Chief to undertake a general attack upon the Allies on
the 2d of July. Unfortunately for the Bulgarians, General Ivanoff,
Commanding-in-Chief against the Greeks, could not restrain his
impatience, and instead of waiting for a sudden and general attack on
the 2d of July his troops attacked piecemeal during the nights of the
29th and 30th of June as described; thus the Greek general forward
movement on the 1st and 2d of July found the bulk of his troops
unprepared, while the 14th Bulgarian Division, scheduled to arrive at
Kilkis on the 2d of July from Tchataldja, was not available during that
day to oppose the Greek initiative, though they saved the situation on
the 3d of July by detraining partly at Kilkis and partly at Doiran.
The two weak points of the Allies were at Guevgheli and in the
Pangheion region, and it was precisely at these points that the
Bulgarians struck. As regards numbers, on the 2d of July the respective
forces numbered: Bulgarians, 80,000; Greeks, 60,000; on the 3d of July
(not deducting losses)--Bulgarians, 115,000; Greeks, 80,000; in both
cases the troops on lines of communication are not reckoned with; these
probably amounted to--Bulgarians, 25,000; Greeks, 12,000.
Almost immediately and at all points the opposing armies came into
contact. The Bulgarian gunners had very carefully taken all ranges on
the ground over which the Greeks had to advance, and at first their
shrapnel fire was extremely damaging. The Greeks, however, did not wait
to fight the battle out according to the usual rules of warfare--by
endeavoring to silence the enemy's artillery before launching their
infantry forward. Phenomenal rapidity characterized the Greek tactics
from the moment their troops first came under fire. Their artillery
immediately swept into action and plied the Bulgarian batteries with
shell and shrapnel, the while Greek infantry deployed into lines of
attack and pushed forward. At Kilkis so rapid was the advance of the
Greek infantry that the Bulgarian gunners could hardly alter their
ranges sufficiently fast, and every time that the Greek infantry had
made good five hundred yards the Greek artillery would gallop forward
and come into action on a new alinement. It was a running fight. By
leaps and bounds the incredible _élan_ of the Greek troops drove the
Bulgarians back toward Kilkis itself, which position had been heavily
entrenched. By 4 P.M. on the 2d of July, the Greek main army was within
three miles of the town, while the 10th Division, helped by two
battalions of Servian infantry, gradually fought its way up the Vardar
toward Guevgheli. At 4.30 P.M. (at Kilkis) the Bulgarians delivered a
furious counter-attack in which some 20,000 bayonets took part, but it
was repulsed with heavy slaughter, and the weary Greek soldiers, who
had fought their way over twenty miles of disputed country, rolled over
on their sides and slept. Toward Guevgheli the Evzone battalions had
for two hours to advance through waist-deep marshes under a heavy
artillery fire, but they struggled along through muddy waters singing
their own melancholy songs and without paying the least attention to
the heavy losses they were sustaining. On the 3d of July the Greeks
reoccupied Guevgheli, and toward evening the Bulgarian trenches at
Kilkis were taken at the bayonet's point, the town being entirely
destroyed, partly by Greek shell fire (for the Bulgarian batteries had
been located in the streets) and partly by the Bulgarians, who fired
the town as they retired. On the 3d and 4th the Bulgarians retired
sullenly northward toward Doiran, contesting every yard and putting in
the units of the 14th Division as quickly as they could be detrained;
but the Greeks never flagged for one moment in the pursuit. The 10th
and 3d Divisions, marching at tremendous speed, came up on the left,
menacing the line of retreat on Strumnitza. It was in the pass ten
miles south of this town that remnants of the Bulgarian 3d and 14th
Divisions made their last stand upon the 8th of July. Throughout the
week they had been fighting and retreating incessantly, had lost at
least 10,000 in killed and wounded, some 4,500 prisoners, and about
forty guns, while the Greeks lost about 4,500 and 5,000 men in front of
Kilkis and another 3,000 between Doiran and Strumnitza.
Meanwhile at Lakhanas an equally sanguinary two days' conflict had been
in progress. The Greeks attacked and finally captured the Bulgarian
entrenched positions. Time after time their charges failed to reach,
but eventually their persistent courage and inimitable _élan_ won home,
and the Bulgarians fled in utter rout and panic, leaving everything,
even many of their uniforms, behind them.
King Constantine, speaking in Germany recently, attributed the success
of the Greek armies to the courage of his men, the excellence of the
artillery, and to the soundness of the strategy, but I think he
overlooked the chief factor that made for victory--the unspeakable
horror, loathing, and rage aroused by the atrocities committed upon the
Greek wounded whenever a temporary local reverse left a few of the
gallant fellows at the mercy of the Bulgarians. I have seen an officer
and a dozen men who had had their eyes put out, and their ears,
tongues, and noses cut off, upon the field of battle during the lull
between two Greek charges. And there were other worse, but nameless,
barbarities both upon the wounded and the dead who for a brief moment
fell into Bulgarian hands.
This was during the very first days of the war; later, when the news of
the wholesale massacres of Greek peaceable inhabitants at Nigrita,
Serres, Drama, Doxat, etc., became known to the army, it raised a
spirit which no pen can describe. The men "saw red," they were drunk
with lust for honorable revenge, from which nothing but death could
stop them. Wounds, mortal wounds, were unheeded so long as the man
still had strength to stagger on; I have seen a sergeant with a great
fragment of common shell through his lungs run forward for several
hundred yards vomiting blood, but still encouraging his men, who, truth
to tell, were as eager as he. It is impossible to describe or even
conceive the purposeful and aching desire to get to close quarters
regardless of all losses and of all consequences. The Bulgarians, in
committing those obscene atrocities, not only damned themselves forever
in the eyes of humanity, but they doubled, nay, quadrupled, the
strength of the Greek army. Nothing short of extermination could have
prevented the Greek army from victory; there was not a man who would
not have a million times rather died than have hesitated for a moment
to go forward.
The days of those first battles were steaming hot with a pitiless
Macedonian sun. The Greek troops were in far too high a state of
spiritual excitation to require food, even if food had been able to
keep pace with their lightning advance. All that the men wanted, all
they ever asked for, was water and ammunition; and here the greatest
self-sacrifice of all to the cause was frequently seen; for a wounded
man, unable to struggle forward another yard, would, as he fell to the
ground, hastily unbuckle water-bottle and cartridge-cases and hand them
to an advancing comrade with a cheery word, "Go on and good luck, my
lad," and then as often as not he would lay him down to die with
parched lips and cleaving tongue.
I was myself, at the pressing and personal invitation of King
Constantine, the first to visit Nigrita, where the Bulgarian General,
before leaving, had the inhabitants locked into their houses, and then
with guncotton and petroleum burned the place to the ground. Here 470
victims were burned alive, mostly old folk, women, and children.
Serres, Drama, Kilkis, and Demir Hissar (all important towns) have
similar tales to tell, only the death-roll is longer. Small wonder that
these stories of ferocity are not given credence, for they are
incredible, and it is only when one studies the Bulgarian character
that one can understand how such orgies of carnage were possible.
The scope of this article does not permit me to describe in detail the
minor battles and operations between the 6th of July and the 25th of
July; suffice it to say that the rapidity of the Greek advance upon
Strumnitza and up the valley of the Struma forced the Bulgarians to
beat in full retreat toward their frontier, leaving behind them all
that impeded their flight. Military stores, guns, carts, and even
uniforms strewed the line of their march, and they were only saved from
annihilation because the mountains which guarded their flanks were
impassable for the Greek artillery. By blowing up the bridges over the
Struma the impetuosity of the Greek pursuit was delayed, and it was in
the Kresna Pass that the Bulgarian rear-guard first turned at bay. The
pass is a twenty-mile gorge cut through mountains 7,000 feet high, but
the Greeks turned the Bulgarian positions by marching across the
mountains, and it was near Semitli, five miles north of the pass, that
the Bulgarians offered their last serious resistance. It was a
wonderful battle. The Greeks, at the urgent request of the Servian
General Staff, had detailed two divisions to help the Servians. On the
west bank of the Struma they pushed the 2d and 4th Divisions gently
northward, while in the narrow Struma valley (it is little better than
a gorge in most places) they had the 1st Division on the main road with
the 5th behind it in reserve; on the right, perched on the summit of
well-nigh inaccessible mountains, was the Greek 6th Division, with the
7th Division on its right, somewhat drawn back.
It came to the knowledge of Greek headquarters that the Bulgarians
contemplated an attack upon Mehomia, a village six miles on the extreme
right and rear of the 7th Division, only held by a small detachment of
that Division; reenforcements were immediately dispatched to relieve
the pressure, and the 6th Division was called upon to reenforce the
positions of the 7th during the absence of the relief column, with the
result that on the 25th of July the 6th Division only had some 6,000
men available.
Meanwhile, the Bulgarians had secretly transferred the 40,000 men of
their 1st Division from facing the Servians at Kustendil to Djumaia;
20,000 of these were sent in a column to strike at the junction of the
Greek and Servian armies, where they were held by the 3d and 10th Greek
divisions after a bloody battle which lasted three days; 5,000 marched
on Mehomia and were annihilated by the Greek 7th Division; the
remaining 15,000 reenforced the troops facing the Greek 6th Division.
It was a most dramatic fight. On the 25th of July the Greeks,
unconscious of the Bulgarian reenforcements, pushed northward, and all
day long their 1st, 5th, and 6th Divisions gradually drove the enemy in
front of them. The fighting was of the most desperate nature, and at
one moment, the ammunition on both sides having given out, the troops
pelted each other with fragments of rock. At last, toward 5 P.M., the
Greek 6th Division found the enemy in front of them retiring; they
pushed onward fighting for every yard. The men were dead-weary; they
had slept for days upon bleak and waterless mountain summits--frozen at
night, they were grilled at noon, but they pushed ever onward. At last,
when victory seemed within their grasp, when their foe was seen to run,
a general advance was ordered. The men sprang forward with a last
effort of physical endurance--the Bulgars were running! They gave
chase. Suddenly, in one solid wall, 15,000 entirely new Bulgarian
troops of the 1st Division rose, as if from the ground, and delivered a
counter-attack. It was a crucial moment: some 4,000 Greeks chasing a
similar number of Bulgarians suddenly had to face 15,000 new troops.
The impact was terrible. The Greek line broke up into fragments, around
which the Bulgarians clustered and pecked like vultures at a feast. For
ten minutes it was anybody's battle. The remnants of each Greek company
formed itself into a ring and defended itself as best it could. These
rings gradually grew smaller as bullet and bayonet claimed their
victims; many of them were wiped out altogether, and when the battle
was over it was possible to find the places where these companies had
made their last stands, for there was not a single survivor--the
wounded were killed by the victors.
But the victory was short-lived. True, the right of the 6th Division
had crumpled up, but a regiment of the 1st Division came up at the
critical moment and stiffened up the left and center, and again the
tide of battle swayed irresolute; then, ten minutes later perhaps, a
regiment from the 5th Division came up at the double on the right rear
of the Bulgarians, taking them in reverse and enfilade. The Bulgarian
right and center crumpled like a rotten egg, while their left fell
hastily back. The Bulgars had thrown their last hazard and had lost.
The carnage was appalling on both sides. The Greek 6th Division had
commenced the day with about 6,000 men; at sunset barely 2,000
remained. Opposite the Greek positions nearly 10,000 Bulgarians were
buried next day, which speaks well for the fighting power of the Greek
when he is making his last stand.
The holocaust of wounded beggars description, but that eminent French
painter, George Scott, told me an incident which came to his own
notice. He was riding up to the front the day after Semitli, and was
just emerging from the awesome Kresna Pass, when he and his companion
came upon a Greek dressing station. The narrow space between cliff and
river was entirely occupied by some hundreds of Greek wounded, some of
them already dead, many dying, and others fainting. They were lying
about awaiting their turn for the surgeon's knife. In the center stood
the surgeon, with the sleeves of his operating-coat turned up, his arms
red to the elbow in blood, all about him blood-stained bandages and
wads of cotton-wool. They reined in their horses and surveyed the
scene; as one patient was being removed from the packing-case that
served as operating-table, the surgeon raised his weary eyes and saw
them, the only unwounded men in all that vast and silent gathering.
"You are newspaper correspondents?" he asked. "Well, tell me, tell me
when this butchery will cease! For seventy-two hours I have been plying
my knife, and look at those who have yet to come"--he swept the circle
of wounded with an outstretched bloody hand. "O God! If you know how to
write, write to your papers and tell Europe she must stop this gruesome
war." Then, tired out and enervated, he swooned into the arms of the
medical orderly. As he came to to be apologized. "That," he said, "is
the third time I have fainted; I suppose I must waste precious time in
eating something to sustain me!"
The battle of Semitli was fought almost contemporaneously with that of
the 3d and 10th Greek Divisions on the extreme Greek left flank, which
latter action resulted in a Bulgarian repulse after a temporary
success, and these were the last great battles of the shortest and
bloodiest campaign on record. On the 29th and 30th of July there were
some skirmishes three miles south of Djumaia. On the 31st of July the
armistice was conceded. During the month of July the Greek army had
practically wiped out the 1st, 3d, 4th, and 14th Bulgarian Divisions,
some 160,000 strong; they had marched 200 miles over terrible
mountains; they had taken 12,000 prisoners, 120 guns; and had
cheerfully sustained 27,000 casualties out of a total number of 120,000
troops engaged.
It is difficult to do justice to such an exploit within the scope of a
single article. The privations suffered by the troops, their
uncomplaining endurance, the fight with cholera, the appalling
atrocities perpetrated by the Bulgarians upon those who fell within
their power, furnish matter for a monumental volume.