The Texhoma Times (Texhoma, Okla.), Vol. 10, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, January 3, 1913 Page: 2 of 8
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IKS' LAST STAND
FREDERICK PALMER TELLS HOW
THEY 8TOPPEDTHE ADVANCE
OF THE BULGARS.
PROVED MATCH FOR ALLIES
Fighting on the Defensive From the
Start, Their Brave Resistance at
Adrianople Saved the Ottoman
Capital From Capture.
By FREDERICK PALMER,
8taff Correspondent of the Chicago
Record-Herald in the Balkan War.
M'jstapha Pasha—The minarets ol
Sultan Sellm!
Needle-like, 1 have seen them rise
over the Indistinct mass of Adriano-
ple from the distant hills, then as sub1
stantlal columns from the nearby
hills, and again so close from the
shellproof of an advanced infantry po^
sltion that 1 could make out the til-
ings on the dome of44#fe"great mosque
" Itself. ...
The simple grace of the minarets
dominated town; and landscape, and
■lege. Weary drivers of the weary
oxen of the transport and still wearier
artillerymen, bringing up" additional
guns through seas of mutt saw'cli'Stft
for the first time as a token of de-
fiance, of work unfinished, of battles
yet to be fought, and of lives yet to
be lost.
Infantrymen In the advanced
trenches saw them as the goal against
a foe which had fallen back without
any adequate rear guard section, but
which had begun to flght desperately
under their shadows.
That Turkfsh garrison, as It with-
drew Into the shelter of its forts,
seemed to find something of the spirit
of old Sultan Sellm the Magnificent,
for whom the .mosque was named, but
with this difference: Sultan Sellm
was not glten to falling back on
forts and minarets, He stormed forts;
he went ahead to plant new minarets
in the soil of Christendom.
Rouses Old Turks' Spirit.
Prom the first In this war the Turk
took the defensive; from the first he
accepted It as his part and portion of
the campaign.
In Rulgarla, where many Turks
still live under Christian rule, we had
seen the Terrible Turk, the great
fighting man of the past, whose soul
was supposed to be above lowly toll,
as a hewer of wood and a carrier of
water He did odd jobs In the ab-
sence of the Bulgarian at the front
The lion of the past had been trained
to dog harness.
All the early victories of the flul-
garian army completed an Impression
of a one-time lord!v race demoralized
and enervated, who retained only the
fatalism of ,>K1smet," In Its lexicon.
The warrior's r>rv, "For Allah!" was
lost forever Rut at Adrianople "For
Allah' For the Minarets! For the
Padishah!" rose again to the dignity
which abandoned bravery always com-
mands
The sheer, impetuous fearlessness
of the Bulgarian well .drilled and cool
' manipulated' was the first great
revelation of the campaign, and the
second was how in the hour ot hope-
lessness his desperation aroused the
nld nnalltles of tho Turk.
Every situation ' every development
Jh the war reverted to Adrianople Tt
was the nut to crack In the first plan
of strategy of the campaign It hov-
ered over the first armv before Tehn
talja as a nightmare. It stood in the
way of the prompt supplies of bread
and bullets for the first armv; it de-
laved the signing of the armistice for
ten dnys; It has been the main sub-
ject of contention before the London
peace conference; it was responsible
for the treatment of the military at-
taches, who saw nothing of the war,
and of the correspondents-who saw
little
War Hlnqes on Adrianople.
Fven our phlegmatic little FVcllsh-
speaklne censor assistant at Musta
pha would lose his temper at the verv
sureestion of anv peace terms with
Adrianople still In. Turkish possession.
"We shall have a revolution if we
don't get Adrianople." I have heard
manv officers say.
"We shnll not go home without
Adrianople." the wounded soldiers re
furring-from the front kept repeating
Such were the Instructions which
Dr Dancff the Mihu Root of the Bal-
kans took with him to London Ad
rianople was graven on the minds of
his countrymen.
Glance at a map and you will see
that the whole success of the allies
depended on bottling up the Turk on
the peninsula, so that all the other
Turkish forces from Scutari to Adrl
anoplo. from Kumanova to Elassona.
should be cut off from communication
The Greeks, Serbs, and Montenegrins
were the backs The Bulgarians up
dertook to buck the line.
Bulgaria did not have to consider a
reserve army European public opin-
ion and the jealousies of the powers
KJted as efflclant substitutes, for the
Bulgarian military statesmanship un-
derstood that if Bulgaria were beaten
the powers would never permit Tur-
key to take an inch of Bulgarian soil
it was a case of "Heads I win, tails
I don't lose."
Turks Awake to Crisis.
The Turks knew this, too. it was
an old situation to them. Successful
war meant no aggrandizement only
that no more territory would be taken
from them. This Is enough, after
some generations, to breed the defen-
sive instinct In any soldier.
The Turk must have his back
against the wall in order to flght well.
His attitude Is that of the mad bull
against the toreador; and a very mad
bull, we know, sometimes gets a horn
Into the toreador's anatomy and toss-
es him over the palings. This hap-
pened to the Greeks at Jania. It al-
so happened in a way at Adrianople.
"Victory Is to the heaviest battal-
ions," Bonaparte said this, but after
Caesar said it, and Caesar said it aft-
-er tome generala of Egypt, Babylon
pr Nineveh.
The allies knew that their success
depended on speed in a fall Campaign
—speed and the shock of masses pour-
ing over the frontier. Theirs was a
hundred-) ard-daBh chance.
The Serbs at Kumanova, their crit-
ical battle, had odds of a* least four
to one.
The Greeks never had less favorable
odds, usually much higher.
Aa for the Montenegrins,. who had
a srnuU show, what they did in one
way or another did not matter. They
had work to keep them fully occu-
pied. as It developed <in the siege of
Scutari,
The only one of the allies who dis-
dained modern organization, their fail-
ure to make any headway again em-
phasizes the wide difference between
a body of njen vy^h,, rifles and an ac-
tual army.
Bufgars Bear War's Brunt.
So the Bulgarians took the great
and telling work of the war on their
shoulders. You have only to know
the Bulgarians to understand that this
was inevitable.
There is stubborn and aggressive
character enough in Bulgaria to spare
for all southwestern Europe.
Bulgaria made a hundred-yard dash
with ox cart transportation, and made
it around an obstacle—Adrianople.
The main railroad line and the great
Constantinople highway ran by Adri-
anople. It was on the direct line of
communication Trom the center of the
Bulgarian base to the center of its ob-
jective.
in the center of Thrace, it was the<
only real fortress on the way to Con-
stantinople Klrk-Kllisseh, or Losen-
grade, as the Bulgarians call it, de-
spite their willingness to allow an im-
pression of its formidabiilty to be
spread abroad, was not In any sense
well fortified.
Now, the first thing was to surround
Adrianople; that is, to strike at it
from all sides, as the key to the po-
sition. A branch of the main Sofia-
Constantinople railroad line runs to
Yatnboli. With this is it base. Deme-
trieff's, or the First, army swung
around Kirk-Kilisseh, which was-tak-
en in the first splendid ardor of the
campaign. With its fall anyone can
see from a staff map that any battle
line of defense with Adrianople as a
part of it was impossible for a force
of the numbers of the Turkish main
army.
Two or three nundred thousand
men who were homogeneous might
haje held on, but not half that num-
ber when badly organized. Therefore,
Nazlm Pasha had to fall back to a
new line and leave Adrianople to care
for itself.
heveals Bulgar Courage.
The next Btep was the decisive bat-
tle on the line from Lule Burgas to
Bunnarlilssar.
There, again, superiority of num-
bers, as well as organization, count-
ed; that superiority, which makes "a
heavy turning movement possible
while the enemy's front is engaged.
In short, the Bulgarians had the
Turks going. They gp0" the Turks
no rest, and they had a sufficient nu-
merical preponderance, in addition to
the dependable courage of their in-
fantry, to guarantee success.
So there was nothing fronderf\il
about the . strategy' of the campaigh,
nothing new, nothing startling The
old principle of the swift turning
movement had been applied to the
situation In hand.
By the flank the Japanese kept put-
ting tho Russians back from the Ynlu
to Mukden By the flank Grant put
Lee back to Richmond.
There was just one, and only one,
startling feature in this war—Bulga-
rian courage. That enabled Demetrieff
to gain at Klrk-Klllsseh and Lule Bur-
gas In a hurry what with most armies
would have required much more time.
Demetrieff had willing flesh for a
necessary sacrifice. He threw his in-
fantry against frontal positions in a
cloud, into shrapnel and automatic
gun fire, without waiting to silence
tho enemy's batteries.
Expectcd to Take Adrianople.
And after Lule Burgas the next step
would have Becmed the storming of
Adrianople. When peace negotiations
should begin, it was a vital point la
their favor lu the negotiations to have
Adrianople In their possession.
The Bulgarian treatment of the cor-
respondents Is one of the many indi-
cations that the Bulgarian staff did
expect at one time to take Adrianople
by storm.
It was argued by serious corre-
spondents who did not feel that they
ought to waste their time or the
money of their papers in idleness, that
the Bulgarian government ought not
to have received any correspondents
a* all. But this was not logic to the
government The press represented
public opinion. It could serve a
purpose, and all the college professors
In the land who Bpoke any foreign
language found their work in the com-
mon cause, no less than grandfather
found his In driving an ox cart and
the women In making bread.
The plan was well thought out, and
the regulations, which would fill a col-
umn, left nothing that occurred to
officers or college professors out of
consideration. No mention was to be
made of the wounded, nor even of the
weather, if it were bad, for bad weath-
er might tell the enemy that the roads
were bad.
While many an imaginary account,
because It had the similitude of narra-
tive which characterizes all convinc-
ing fiction, was hailed as real war
correspondence, the Bulgarian staff,
when it came to actual reports (ex-
clusive of massacres), was scrupulous-
ly exact and exasperatlngly late and
brief.
All praise by the press kept the
ball of the prestige of victory rolling.
It helped to convince the powers and
the Turk that the Bulgarian army was
irresistible. The stage climax of the
whole campaign would be the fall of
Adrianople. Therefore were the cor-
respondents moved to Mustapha
Pasha, just Lule Burgas was being
won; and Constantinople, being then
supposedly defended only" by a de-
moralized army, which could not make
a stand, every report from Mustapha
Pasha which showed that Adrianople
was on the point of capitulation added
to the stage effect of Bulgarian tri-
umph.
Turks Defy th Bulgars.
As the first Bulgarian army drew
near the Tchatalja lines, the mise en
scene was complete; but Nazim Pasha,
making use of the elapsed time to for-
tify the Tchatalja llneB, rather than
submit to the humiliating terms of-
fered, bade the Bulgarian hosts
"come on."
Success had turned the heads even
of the Bulgarian staff. They had
begun to think that the old fighting
quality was out of the Turk, and bo
willing was the Bulgarian infantry to
undergo slaughter that it was only a
case of recording another charge of
flesh against shrapnel and automatic
gun fire, and the day was won.
Alas, an old principle of war, deal-
ing with an impossibility of the same
order as squaring the circle In mathe-
matics, was now to bring generalship
back from the clouds to solid earth.
You can take strong positions In
front only with time by sapping and
mining and all the weary operations
of a siege, as the indomitable Grant
learned by the failure of his first rqah
attack at VlckBburg and the indom-
itable Nogl learned by the failure of
the first rush attack at Port Ar-
thur.
In a week any army that has spades
and a few of the resources of mate-
rial which should be part of the store-
house at its base should make such a
position as that of the series of rising
h|lls back of Tchatalja fully tenable
against any but siege attack, unless
there was room for a flank attack.
Turks Turn the Tables.
And the breadth of the position
open to Infantry approach in any at-
tempt at storming was only 16 miles,
while from either sea side of the nar-
row peninsula the Turkish navy could
bring nto play more powerful guns
than auy Demetrieff had at his dis-
posal.
At the same time there is to be kept
In view the generally accepted tenet
that you must not send infantry
against any well entrenched position
unfll its batteries are silenced or it
1b known that they can be kept under
control during the infantry attack
by a well concentrated fire of your
own batteries.
Demetrieff used Ills guna.-f«r. a day
in trying to develop the strength and
location of the enemy's batteries. But
the Turks would not be drawn. At
last the tables were turned.
Meanwhile Adrianople also was tell-
ing. You may discuss as much as you
please whether the original plan of
the Bulgarian Btaff was to mask this
fortress or to take It by storm," the
fact remains that the only result was
to mask' it. and the lesson was that
any garrison in the rear of an advan-
cing army, though it is held securely
in Investment, remains a mighty force
In being for the enemy's purpose.
Nature meant Adrianople to be a
fortress. Past It on the south flows
the MarUza river, taking Its origin
In the Balkans and plowing its way
across the alluvial lowlandB of Thrace
to the sea A strong bridge crosses it
on the line of the Constantinople high-
way at Mustapha Pasha, some twenty-
five miles from Adrianople.
This bridge, wttch U hot far from
the Bulgarian frontier, the Turks left
Intact a characteristic piece of care-
lessness in the earlier part of the war
In keeping with all other signs of Tur-
kish demoralization and wrongheaded-
neBS, which might easily lead tfie Bul-
garians to think that Adrianople would
not resist a brilliant onslaught.
Mustapha Pasha became the head-
quarters of the second Bulgarian army,
under General Ivanoff, who was to
have the thankless ta6k of the opera-
tions around Adrianople, while easy
glory was to be the fortune of Deme-
trieff, who commanded the first army
—until the first army had to take po-
sitions in front without any opportu-
nity for flanking, which was the na-
ture of Ivanoff's task from the start.
Ivanoff Wakes Up.
It was Papastepe and Kartaltepe
which awakened Ivanhoff from his
dream of a final brilliant stroke in
keeping with the earlier ones of the :
war, just as Tchatalja brought Deme-
trieff down from the clouds of over- j
confidence Papastepe Is one of many I
hills In the narrowing rib of the 203
Meter Hill of the siege. With guns in |
position there, Adrianople would be |
under bombardment. The Bulgarians i
took .it by sendipg in the usual cloud j
of Infantry and losing about a thous-
and men. But the Turks took it back
again Four times, I am told, it chang-
ed hands In the course of those night i
actions which we observed only by the i
brilliant flashes In the sky above the i
hills.
Far up the valley in the mist was j
Kartaltepe, that other Important hill
which commanded the river bottom :
of the Arda. We took Kartaltepe In j
November and a month afterward. In
one of their splendid sorties, the i
Turks, so far as I could learn, had
taken It back; but It was as untenable |
for them as Papastepe was for the j
Bulgarians. Possibly because It was >
again ours and very evidently ours
permanently, the Bulgarian censors I
had found It worth while to confound j
skepticism and persistent unfriendly
rumors by allowing the correspondents i
to enter the promised land of their
dreams, where for weeks, between the
batteries on the hills and the infantry
In the muddy river bottom of the Arda,
hell had raged In the winter rains.
We did not know then, as we were
to know a few days later, that beyond
Kartaltepe In the direction of Dele-
gatch was another force Isolated from
the Adrianople garrison and the main
Turkish army, that of Taver Pasha
with 10,000 men, caught in the literal
flood of that 100-yard dash of the
ready, informed, prepared aggressor
against the unready enemy taken un-
aware and hastening re-enforcements
to the scattered garrisons and trying
to adjust itself for the blow to fall
with the crash of a pile driver releas-
ed from its clutch.
Discloses W^r Secret.
But Taver Pasha's 10,000 were still
a force In being, with guns and full
equipment—a force In a box; a torce
In desperation.
Do you see the Adrianople garrison
(which was In touch by wireless with
the Turkish main army) striking out
to connect up with Taver Pasha? Do
you see Taver Pasha trying out lines
of least resistance In a savage efTort
to reach Adrianople or the main Tur-
kish army?
Something to stir the blood, this, in
the way of a war drama, while not a
single foreign correspondent or at-
tache knew even of the existence of
Taver Pasha's command until Its sur-
render.
The news of this was conveyed with
the official assurance that-now r.o oth-
er Turkish force except that of Adri-
anople remained in Thrace, when we
had been under the impresBjOn for
over a month that it was the only one!
The censors did not smile as they
posted the bulletin, but some of the
correspondents smiled—at themselves.
No, after the first rainbow hope of
a successful general attack was over,
Ivanhoff was fully occupied in holding
Adrianople safely in siege. That bat-
tery of old Krupps, which fired over
the advanced Servian infantry posi-
tion, while a battery of Creusots in
turn fired over it, added their items
of evidence to the same end.
These Krupps were taken by the
Russians at Plevna In the war of 1877-
78 and given to the little army of the
new nation of Bulgaria. Bulgarians re-
cruits had dragged them through the
muddy raods and over the pastures
and beautifully emplaced them, and
were working them against the enemy
with boyish pride. But the world was
thinking only of the modern Creusots
and their brilliant showing.
The Bulgarians almost pfoved that
you can make bricks without straw.
They won the war by the "bravery of
their self-confidence as well as by
their courage.
Adrianople. which was about to
starve If it did not fall, had, I am con-
vinced. two months' supplies when the
armistice was signed. With the 19
and 20-year-old conscripts already on
the way to the front, with a casualty
list that le easily one-fifth of the whole
army, there was no sign of weakening.
The square chin of the stoical Bul-
garian was an firmly set as ever. I
wonder what would happen In Europe
if it include^ In Its borders a nation of
100.000.000 Bu'-^arlauu!
broom corn
Growers Shipping Broom Corn
As the growers of broom corn are great-
ly dissatisfied with the price offered at
home for their broom com, many of them
are now shipping direct to Coyne Broth-
era, Chicago, who are large handlers of
broom corn on commission. This firm re-
port their receipts so far this season
about 150 cars, most of which have been
sold and returned for. Their financial
responsibility exceeds ($100,000) one hun-
dred thousand dollars. They are a safe
and reliable firm. They offer as refer-
ence Farmers' State Bank, Texhoma,
Okla and Central Exchange Bank,
Woodward, Okla. Other reference fur-
nished on application. Coyne fros 160
W. South Water St., Chicago, 111. Adv.
DIFFERENT MEAT.
Willie—We had the preacher for
dinner yesterday.
Tommy—We had roast beet
Rather Hot Shot for Doctor.
This incident is related of a Scotch
doctor, new to the gun, who adven-
tured upon a day's rabbit-shooting.
Chased by the ferrets, bunny was a
rather quick-moving target, and the
medico was not meeting with the suc-
cess he anticipated.
"Hang it all, man!" he exclaimed,
impatiently, to the keeper who accom-
panied him, "these beasts aro *oo
quick for me."
"Aye, doctor," the pawky keeper re-
plied; "but ye surely didna expect
them tae lie still like yer patients till
ye kill them."
Wanted Slaves for Missouri.
On January 27, 1778, Don Bernardo
de Galvez, governor of the Spanish
province of Louisiana, which included
Missouri, petitioned the king of Spain
for aid for the settlers along the Mis-
souri river and Mississippi river in
Missouri. "The said inhabitants," he
wrote, "in order to promote the cul-
ture of these plants (flax and hemp),
would desire that the compassion of
the king should deign to provide them
with negro slaves on credit, for whom
they may pay with the crops afore-
said."
The flirt is always practicing
game she never intends to play.
ALFALFA $6. Timothy and Clover mixed,
$4.60. Farms for sale and rent on crop pay-
ments. J. MULHALL. Sioux City, la. Adv.
Turn about is fair play—except
when applied to a hand organ.
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neatly equipped, and owned by the association.
Terms reasonable. Write for catalogue, or
fihone Market 4314. Office, School and Sanitar-
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The Texhoma Times (Texhoma, Okla.), Vol. 10, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, January 3, 1913, newspaper, January 3, 1913; Texhoma, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metapth351241/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.