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 battle-field 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 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 wagon 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.
Kirk Kilisse, December 1.—It seems certain now that peace must be declared, and that the dream of driving the Turk right out of Europe must be abandoned. These peasant peoples of the Balkans have done wonderful things, but they have stumbled on one point—the want of knowledge of sanitary science. I have seen only one attempt at a clean camp since I have been in the field, and that was a Serbian camp, north of Adrianople.
With the Bulgarian army there was not, at any stage of the campaign up to the Battle of Chatalja—that is, until after the outbreak of cholera—any precaution, to my knowledge, taken to secure a clean water supply, or clean camping-grounds, or to take the most elementary precautions against the outbreak of disease in the army. The medical service was almost as bad. I have seen much of the hospital work at Kirk Kilisse after the armistice; and it has been deplorable to see the fine fellows whose lives were sacrificed, or whose limbs were sacrificed, through neglect of medical knowledge. I am sure the Bulgarians would have saved many hundreds of lives if there had been anything like a proper medical service at the front.
At Chatalja the chief reason given for the stoppage of operations was the ravages of disease in the Bulgarian lines. The illness was of a choleraic type; it had, as usual, a profound moral as well as physical effect. The courage of the men broke down before this visitation. The victims howled with pain and terror, though the same men would withstand serious wounds without a complaint or a wincing.
The Turks are blamed for the outbreak in the Bulgarian lines. It is more than probable that their villages, inexpressibly filthy; the prisoners taken from their ranks; the infection of the soil abandoned by them, were contributing causes.
A BAGPIPER
But it must be stated frankly that the almost complete absence of any sanitary discipline or precaution in the Bulgarian lines at this place earned for them all the diseases that afflict mankind. So far as I can ascertain after careful investigation, there were no sanitary police; no attempts to secure and safeguard a pure water supply; no latrine regulations. I have seen the Bulgarian soldiers drinking from streams running through battle-fields, though a few feet away were swollen carcases. I have seen no attempt in the field at a proper latrine service. Some hundreds of thousands of peasant soldiers, accustomed to the simplest life on their own farms, were collected together and left practically without sanitary discipline. The details can be filled in without my setting them forth in print. There is one fact, however, to be recorded of a pleasant character. In all investigations of the hospital services I never found a case of any malady arising from vice. There was also a complete absence of drunkenness. This might be ascribed to the want of means to obtain alcohol. But in Turkey there was an abundance of wines and spirits, and some beer in the captured villages and towns; it led, however, to no orgies.