Bulgaria has a newspaper Press that, on ordinary matters, for delightful irresponsibility, might be matched in London. Yet not a single whisper of what the nation was designing and planning leaked abroad. Because the whole nation was a soldier, and the whole nation was under a soldier's honour, absolute secrecy could be kept. No one abroad knew anything, either from the babbling of "Pro-Turks," or from the newspapers, that this great campaign was being designed by Bulgaria.
The Secret Service of Bulgaria before the war had evidently been excellent. They seemed to know all that was necessary to know about the country in which they were going to fight; and I think this very complete knowledge of theirs was in part responsible for the arrangements which were made between the Balkan Allies for carrying on the war. The Bulgarian people had made up their minds to do the lion's share of the work and to have the lion's share of the spoils, for the Bulgarian people knew the state of corruption and rottenness to which the Turkish nation had come. When I reached Sofia, the Bulgarians told me they were going to be in Constantinople three weeks after the declaration of war. That was the view that they took of the possibilities of the campaign. And they kept their programme as far as Chatalja fairly closely.
Having declared war, the Bulgarians invaded Turkey along two main lines, by the railway which passed through Adrianople to Constantinople and by the wild mountain passes of the north between Yamboli and Kirk Kilisse. There was great enterprise shown in this second line of advance and it was responsible for all the great victories won. Taking Kirk Kilisse by surprise the Bulgarian forces kept the Turkish vanguard on the run until Lule Burgas, where the Turkish main army made a stand and the decisive battle of the campaign was fought. The Turks were utterly routed and fled in confusion towards Constantinople by Tchorlu. Had an enterprising pursuit on the part of the Bulgarians been possible, the Bulgarian army undoubtedly would have then entered Constantinople and the Christmas Mass would have been said at St. Sophia. But the strength of the Bulgarian attack was exhausted by the tremendous exertions of marching and fighting which they had already made and a long pause to recuperate was necessary. That pause enabled the Turks to re-marshal their forces and to make a stand at the fortified lines of Chatalja some twenty miles as the crow flies from Constantinople. Against those lines a Bulgarian attack was finally launched, but too late. The entrenched Turks were strong enough to withstand the attack of the Bulgarian forces. My diary of these three critical days of the campaign reads:
Ermenikioi
(Headquarters of the Third Bulgarian Army),
November 17 (Sunday).
The battle of Chatalja has been opened. To-day, General Demetrieff rode out with his staff to the battlefield whilst the bells of a Christian church in this little village rang. The day was spent in artillery reconnaissance, the Bulgarian guns searching the Turkish entrenchments to discover their real strength. Only once during the day was the infantry employed; and then it was rather to take the place of artillery than to complete the work begun by artillery. It seems to me that the Bulgarian forces have not enough big gun ammunition at the front. They are ten days from their base and shells must come up by ox-waggon the greater part of the way.
Ermenikioi, November 18.
This was a wild day on the Chatalja hills. Driving rain and mist swept over from the Black Sea, and at times obscured all the valley across which the battle raged. With but slight support from the artillery the Bulgarian infantry was sent again and again up to the Turkish entrenchments. Once a fort was taken but had to be abandoned again. The result of the day's fighting is indecisive. The Bulgarian forces have driven in the Turkish right flank a little, but have effected nothing against the central positions which bar the road to Constantinople. It is clear that the artillery is not well enough supplied with ammunition. There is a sprinkle of shells when there should be a flood. Gallant as is the infantry it cannot win much ground faced by conditions such as the Light Brigade met at Balaclava.
Ermenikioi, November 19.
Operations have been suspended. Yesterday's cold and bitter weather has fanned to an epidemic the choleraic dysentery which had been creeping through the trenches. The casualties in the fighting had been heavy. "But for every wounded man who comes to the Hospitals," Colonel Jostoff, the chief of the staff, tells me, "there are ten who say 'I am ill.'" The Bulgarians recognise bitterly that in their otherwise fine organisation there has been one flaw, the medical service. Among this nation of peasant proprietors—sturdy, abstemious, moral, living in the main on whole-meal bread and water—illness was so rare that the medical service was but little regarded. Up to Chatalja confidence in the rude health of the peasants was justified. They passed through cold, hunger, fatigue and kept healthy. But ignorant of sanitary discipline, camped among the filthy Turkish villages, the choleraic dysentery passed from the Turkish trenches to theirs. There are 30,000 cases of illness and the healthy for the first time feel fear as they see the torments of the sick. The Bulgarians recognise that there must be a pause in the fighting whilst the hospital and sanitary service is reorganised.
There was this check, mainly because, in an otherwise perfect system of training, sanitation had been overlooked. From a military point of view, of course, it was almost impossible in any case that the Bulgarian army should have forced the Chatalja lines without a railway line to bring up ammunition from their base. It was, however, an army which had been accustomed to do the impossible. But for the cholera I believe it might have got through to the walls of Constantinople.