|
FRENCH
GUNS PROVED BETTER THAN GERMAN Officier of Kaiser’s Army, Present at Fighting,
Is Alarmed for His Country. THE FIRE WAS ANNIHILATING No Army Could Stand Against It. He
Declares – Turkish General Staff Joined in the Panic. Special
Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. “Think
you I dare tell truth?” Thus
spoke a German artillery officer – who had stood with a Turkish battery
during the battle of Lule-Burgas and afterward has
ridden past the rabble of defeated troops and past the Tchatalja
lines to Hadikeni – as he ended a most dramatic and
most annihilating account of the Bulgarian campaign which had been no
campaign, but a butchery. The account took four
hours in the telling, and when it was ended in the small hours of the morning
only myself and one English officer heard the last
broken-hearted admission that the war was won not by rifles but by the overwhelming
superiority of the French guns employed by the Bulgarians. “Their
batteries,” said the German officer, “pitched shell after shell with amazing
rapidity within five feet of each other with precision, automatic in the
nicety of the fire and annihilating in its effect. I do not believe any
troops in the world could have stood before that cruel fire.” “As
for the Turks, they did not run, for if a man runs he still has some go in
him. They crawled away and their officiers led the
rout for many miles. Only after we had left the firing line far behind us did
we begin to come upon detachments with officiers
and, even oftener, officiers without detachments. “Yet,
when all is said that can be said of the hopeless disorganization, ignorance
and stupidity of the Turks and the great daring of the Bulgarians, it must be
admitted that material, not men, won Kirk Kilisseh
and Lule-Burgas. My honest impression now is that
as a result of this war “I
don’t want to be unjust and am aware that the Turkish artillery was badly
served, and, indeed, I myself saw Turkish guns that came out of action with
their covers still on and just as clean as when they went in. But the Krupp guns can fire neither so fast nor with anything
resembling the accuracy of these deadly Creusots. “Of
our ride across the country through the Tchatalja
lines it is difficult to give an idea. We broke away from the correspondents’
camp when we saw how they were being led about like sheep. More than once we
were threatened with shooting and throughout one whole night we lay under low
bushes in pools of water while a party of Turkish soldiers looked for us with
bayonets.” Pitiful General Staff. “Once
we came across the General Staff. Now, I am accustomed to the work of the
General Staff, and I naturally expected to find busy men sitting at a table
with maps and plans, and orderlies coming and going with messages. What we
found a group of shiftless individuals sitting about munching crusts of dry
bread. “That
was the Ottoman General Staff – no orderlies, no messages, no
maps. They no more knew where their own regiments were than we did. “Later
we rode through the famous Tchatalja lines. At the
time we passed them one German brigade with a few guns could have swept
through them. Doubtless an army of some sort will collect behind those defences,
and the probable that the Bulgarians can get their heavy guns up inside a
week. But will the defence of Tchatalja be any
better organized, and any more effective than the defence of Lule-Burgas?
Short of a miracle, I do not see what can stop the Bulgarians from reaching “The
only Ottoman Army we have seen was a disorderly mob. It is the worst débacle in the history of the world, and I only fear that
much of the discredit of it will fall upon us.” Published by The New York Times on 9
November 1912. |