"Before and beneath us lay the abandoned line of Austrian trenches, separated from ours by a small stream, where since daylight the heroic engineers were laboring under heavy shell fire to construct a bridge to enable our cavalry and guns to pass in pursuit.
"Leaving the general we proceeded. Our troops had forced the line here at 3 a. m., wading under machine-gun and rifle fire in water and marsh above their waists, often to their armpits. The Austrian end of the bridge was a horrible place, as it was congested with dead, dying and horribly wounded men, who, as the ambulances were on the other side of the river, could not be removed. A sweating officer was urging forward the completion of the bridge, which was then barely wide enough to permit the waiting cavalry squadrons to pass in single file. On the opposite bank waited the ambulance to get across after the troops had passed. A number of German ambulance men were working furiously over their own and the Austrian wounded, many of whom, I think, must have been wounded by their own guns in an attempt to prevent the bridging of the stream. A more bloody scene I have not witnessed, though within a few hours the entire place was probably cleared up.
"Passing on I, for the first time, witnessed the actual taking of prisoners, and watched their long blue files as they passed out from their own trenches and were formed in groups allotted to Russian soldiers, who served as guides rather than guards, and sent to the rear.
"Near here I encountered about fifty captured Germans and talked with about a dozen of them. Certainly none of them showed the smallest lack of morale or any depression.
"By noon sufficient details of the fighting were available to indicate that this corps alone had taken between three and five thousand prisoners and twenty guns, of which four are said to be howitzers. When one is near the front the perspective of operations is nearly always faulty, and it was, therefore, impossible to estimate the effect of the movement as a whole, but I understand that all the other corps engaged had great success and everywhere advanced."[Back to Contents]
PART IV—THE BALKANS
CHAPTER XXIX
HOLDING FAST IN SALONIKI
The six months ending with March, 1916, had been not only an eventful period in the Balkans, but a most unfortunate one for the Allies. In no theater of the war had they sustained such a series of smashing disasters in diplomacy as well as on the field of battle. First of all, early in the fall, the Austrians had begun their fourth invasion of Serbia, this time heavily reenforced by the Germans and in such numbers that it was obvious before the first attack was begun that Serbia by herself would not be able to hold back the invaders. And then, hardly had the real fighting begun, when Bulgaria definitely cast her lot in with the Teutons and Hungarians and attacked the Serbians from the rear.
While it was true that King Ferdinand and his governing clique had made this decision months before, it is nevertheless a fact that it was probably the blundering diplomacy of the Allies which was responsible for this action on the part of the Bulgarians. Under all circumstances King Ferdinand would probably have favored the Teutons, since by birth and early training he is an Austrian and, moreover, as he once expressed himself publicly, he was firmly convinced that the Teutons would ultimately win. But the Bulgarian people are sentimentally inclined toward the Russians and dislike the Germans. Had not the diplomatic policy of the Allies played into the hands of the king, they would naturally have turned toward the Allies.