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fact remains that after Adrianople had been attacked in a very halfhearted
way, and after the main Bulgarian army had pushed on to
the lines of Chatalja, the Bulgarians called in the aid of a Servian
division to help them against Adrianople. I am sure they would not
have done that if it had not been their wish to subdue Adrianople.
The position of the Bulgarian army on the lines of Chatalja with
Adrianople in the hands of the enemy was this, that it took practically
their whole transport facilities to keep the army supplied with food,
and there was no possibility of keeping the army properly supplied
with ammunition. So if the Bulgarian generals had really designed
to carry the lines of Chatalja without first attacking Adrianople, they
miscalculated seriously. But I do not think they did. It was probably
a plan forced upon them by political authority, feeling that the war
must be pushed to a conclusion somehow. Why the Bulgarians
did not take Adrianople quickly in the first place is, I think, to be
explained simply by the fact that they could not. But if their train of
sappers had been of the same kind of stuff as their field artillery, they
could have taken Adrianople in the first week of the war.
The Bulgarians had no effective siege-train. A press photographer
at Mustapha Pasha was very much annoyed because photographs
he had taken of guns passing through the towns were not allowed
to be sent through to his paper. He sent a humorous message to
his editor, that he could not send photographs of guns, “it being a
military secret that the Bulgarians had any guns.” But the reason the
Bulgarians did not want photographs taken was that these guns were
practically useless for the purpose for which they were intended.
The main excellence of the Bulgarian army was its infantry, which
was very steady under punishment, admirably disciplined, perfect
in courage, and which had, I think, that supreme merit in infantry,
that it always wanted to get to work with the bayonet. The Bulgarian
soldiers had a joke among themselves. The order for “Bayonets
forward!” was, as near as I could get it, “Nepret nanochi.” Arguing by
similarity of sound, the Bulgarian soldier affected to believe it meant
“Spit five men on your bayonet.” It was the common camp saying
that it was the duty of the infantryman to impale five Turks on his
bayonet, to show that he had conducted himself well. The Bulgarian
infantrymen had devised a little “jim” in regard to bayonet work,
which I had not heard of being used in war before. When they were
in the trenches, and the order was expected to fix bayonets, they had
a habit of fixing them, or rather pretending to, with a tremendous
rattle, on which signal the Turks would often leave their trenches and
run, expecting the bayonet charge; but the Bulgarians still stuck to
their trenches, and got in another volley.
The artillery work of the Bulgarians was very good indeed; they
had an excellent field-piece, practically the same field-piece as the
French army. Their work was very fine with regard to aim and to the
bursting of shrapnel, and their firing from concealed positions was
also good. But I never saw enterprising work on their part; I never
saw them go into the open, except during a brief time at Chatalja.
They seemed to dig themselves in behind the crest of a hill, where
they could fire, unobserved by the enemy.
Now, with regard to the conduct of the troops. Much has been
said about outrages in this war. I believe that in Macedonia, where
irregular troops were at work, outrages were frequent on both sides;
but in my observation of the main army there was a singular lack of
any excess. The war, as I saw it, was carried out by the Bulgarians
under the most humane possible conditions. At Chundra Bridge I
was walking across country, and I had separated myself from my
cart. I arrived at the bridge at eight o’clock at night, and found a
vedette on guard. They took me for a Turk. I had on English civilian
green puttees, and green was the colour of the Turks. It was a cold
night, and I wished to take refuge at the camp fire, waiting for my
cart to come. Though they thought I was a Turk, they allowed me
to stay at their camp fire for two hours. Then an officer who could
speak French appeared, and I was safe; the men attempted in no way
to molest me during those two hours. They made signs as of cutting
throats, and so on, but they were doing it humorously, and they
showed no intention to cut mine. Yet I was there irregularly, and I
could not explain to them how I came to be there.
The extraordinary simplicity of the commissariat helped the
Bulgarian generals a great deal. The men had bread and cheese,
sometimes even bread alone; and that was accounted a satisfactory
ration. When meat and other things could be obtained, they were
obtained; but there were long periods when the Bulgarian soldier
had nothing but bread and water. (The water, unfortunately, he took
wherever he could get it, by the side of his route at any stream he
could find. There was no attempt to ensure a pure water supply for
the army.) I do not think that without the simplicity of commissariat
it would have been possible for the Bulgarian forces to have got as
far as they did. There was an entire absence of tinned foods. If you
travelled in the trail of the Bulgarian army, you found it impossible
to imagine that an army had passed that way; because there was