xz 
LAND & WATER 
November 2z, 1917 
to get at the Bulgars that the>' couldn't wait for the barrage 
to get out from und^r their feet, but dashed right on thtougli 
it. Noiv if they will only hold against what is preparing ovei 
there for this morning, all will be well." 
We found the two officers in the British Observation Post 
chxicklint; over the cv^nini bulletin, which had just been 
dehvered to them. " You have to read Sarraii's Evening 
Hope between the lints if you want to get at the real facts,' 
said one of them. " It's what it fails to tell you that you 
really want to know. Now you might lie able to gather from 
this "that all of the Balkan Allies have Ix-en doing quite a bit 
of attaiking during the last^day or two at various parts of 
tlie I'Yont from Lk)iran west 'to Albania, but you have to go 
' between the lines to find that our shifty Bulgar frienci over 
there gave most of them as good or better than they gave 
him all the way. It's sad. but true that in this, our ' great 
spring oilensive,' as the papers at home have talked of it. 
the whole lot of us— French, British. Russian, Italian and 
even the Serb— have Ixjen fought to a standstill by the 
Bulgar. Far as I can see, the only gain we have to show for 
it is in the casualty lists." 
I failed to see just what there was to chuckle about in 
such an interpretation of the glowing lines of the evening 
bulletin, and said as much. 
'■ It isn't funny in the least," was the reply ; " and it would 
seem still less so if we could see at close range some of the 
things that are lying out on a hundred miles of these accursed 
mountain sides as a consequence of what has happened. But 
what did strike us as rich was the fact that, of all the Allies, 
this little piece of the Venizelos aimy, wliich we have held in 
leash all winter while we made up our minds whether it would 
be safe to slip or not, is the only one of the whole lot of us 
that has taken all the objectives set for it." 
A sporting instinct and a grim sense of humour — the readi- 
ness to admire a brave foe and the ability to extract amuse- 
ment from discomfiture — are the two things that have con- 
spirt d to make the British soldier so uniformly successful in 
treating those " twin impostors. Triumph and Disaster, just 
the same." 
There was lightning in the sky, throwing into ghostly silhou- 
■ ette the line of the motmtain ridge across the Vardar by the 
time we had pushed on along the communication trench to the 
Greek Observation Post on the extreme brow of the liill. 
Since midnight the enemy heavies had been coughing gruffly 
under the mist-blanket that overlaid the plain, dapplin.e: it 
with alternately flashing and fading blotches of light till it 
glowed fantastically like fa. lamp-shade of Carrara marble. 
Star-shells, fired with a low trajectory, popped up and dived 
out of sight again, throwing a fluttering green radiance over 
the white pall which swathed the battlefield. 
The mist-mask must have fended the daybreak from the 
plain long after it was light upon the hill from where we 
watched, for it was not until the range of serrated peaks to the 
east of Doiran was all aglow with the red and gold of sunrise 
that the higher-keyed crack of the enemy's field-guns came 
welling up to tell us that the Bulgar was getting ready to go 
over the top. The flame-spurts — paling from a hot red to 
faded lemon as the light grew stronger — splashed up again 
the mist-pall as the jet of an illuminated fountain rises and 
falls, and down where the battered first-line trenches faced 
each other the dust-geysers of the exploding shejls rolled up in 
clouds to the surface of the thinning vapours as the mud of 
the bottom boils up through the waters of an agitated pool. 
F'or the space of perhaps two or three minutes the fog-bank 
swirled and curled in swaying eddies as the shells came 
hurtling into it ; then — whether it was from a sudden awakening 
of the wind or through the licking up of its vapours by the 
first rays of the now risen sun, I never knew — almost in the 
wave of a hand, it was gone, revealing a broad expanse of 
trench-creased plain with a long belt of grey figures moving 
across it in a cloud of dust and smoke. 
" It isn't much of a barrage as barrages go on the Western 
Front," said Captain X half apologetically ; " their 
artillery won't do much harm to <is, and, I'm afraid, ours not 
much to them. But if it's but a second-class artillery show, 
I still think I can promise you — if only the Bulgar has the 
stomach for it — a lively bit of hand-to-hand fighting. Do 
you see those little winking flashes all along where the infantry 
are moving? Some of them's from bayonets, but the most 
from knives. .\ great man with a knife is the Bulgar. Dia 
you ever henr that song about him they sang at a revue which 
the British ' Tommies ' gave at Salonika ? : 
"I'm Boris the Bulgar. 
The Man with the Knife ; 
The pride of Sofia, 
Thp Taker of Life. 
Good gracious, how spacious 
And deep are the tuts. 
Of Boris the Bulgar. 
The Knifcr— ." 
" Now for it ! Look. at that ! ' I never did hear just what 
it was that Bpris was'a knifer of, for at that juncture the 
two barrages — having respectively protected and harried to 
the best of their abilities the advancing wa\'e "of infantry 
down to within a hundred yards or so of the Greek trenches^ 
" lifted " almost simultaneously on to " communications, " 
and that lifting was the signal for the opening of the' climac- 
teiic stage of the action. Witliout an instant's delay, a solid 
wave of brown— lightly fringed in front with the figures of a 
few of th:' more active or impetuous who haa out-uistancea 
their comrades in the scramble over the top — rose up out of the 
I'arth and swept foiAvard to meet the line of grey. The ,';ust 
of their first |.reat cheer rolled up to us above the t!v;u:der i.f 
the rrtillery.' 
" Now for it ! " repeated X , focussing down his tele- 
scope and steadying himself with his elbows. 
I do not attempt to account for what happened now ; I 
only record it. It may have been that the Allied artillery 
had uTought more havoc in that advancing wave of men 
than had been apparent from a distance, or it may have been 
that the enemy artillery had done less to the entrenched 
defenders than it was expected to do ; at an\" rate, the line 
of grey liegan to break at the first impact of the brown. 
The Greek Staff 
The Greek Staff shared a round bowl of a mountain valley 
a few miles back from the front lines with a clearing station. 
The equipment of the little hospital had mostly been provided 
by the British Red Cross, but the \'enizelists had made a 
brave eft'ort to furnish the staff themselves. There were two 
French-trained Greek surgeons, a Greek matron, Greek 
■ orderlies, and two Greek nurses. Since the attack began 
there had been work for a dozen of the latter, but, as it had 
been impossible for the women of most of the Venizelist 
families to get away from Old Greece, no others were avail- 
able. An English nurse, who had marched in the retreat 
of the Serbians, and a French nurse from a Salonika 
hospital had volunteered to step into the breach, and tlusi 
five women were courageously trying to make up in zeal 
what they lacked in numbers, 
Madame A had asked me to drop in at the nurses' 
mess for luncheon in case I got bacli from the trenches in 
time, and this, by dint of hard riding, I was just able to do. 
Three or four powerful military cars drawn up at the iiospital 
gate indicated new arrivals, but as to who they were I had no 
hmt until I had pushed in through the flap of the mess tent 
and found M. Venizelos seated on a soap-box. vis-a-vis 
Madame .\ at a table improvised from a couple of con- 
densed milk cases. At the regular mess table, sitting on 
reversed water-btickets, were three French Flying Oflicers 
and a civilian whom I recognised as the private secretary of 
M. Venizelos. Two nurses were just rising from unfinis'hed 
plates of soup in response to word that a crucial operation 
awaited their attendance. 
This was, I think, one of the strangest little " banquets" 
I ever sat down to. Everyone travels more or less " self- 
contained " in the Salonika area, and whenever a party is 
thrown together the joint supplies are commandeered for' the 
common good. The mess menu was a simple one of soup, 
tinned salmon, rice and cheese, but by the time M. Venizelos' 
hamper had yielded a box of fresh figs, a can of the honey 
of Hymettus, and a couple of bottles of Cretan wine, and the 
French officers had cognac, some tins of flageolet for salad and 
a tumbler of confiture, and the EngUs'h nurse had brought 
out the last of her Christmas plum-cake, and I had thrown 
in a loaf of Italian pan-forte and a tin of chocolates, the little 
crazy-legged camp-table had assumed a festal air. 
A number of toasts were proposed and drunk, but no one 
spoke of the nearer or remoter progress of the war. M. 
Venizelos adverted several times to the wonder of the spring 
flowers as he had seen them from the road, especially the great 
fields of blood-red poppies, and I overheard him telling Madame 
A some apparently amusing incidents of his eariv life in 
Crete But it was not until, the banquet over, he had settled 
himself in his car for the drive to Salonika that he alluded to 
any of the things with which his mind must have been so 
engrossed all the time. 
•; So you thought that our troops had all the best of the cnemv 
this morning ? ' he said with a grave smile as he shook my haiui. 
_ Incomparably the best of it," I answered. 
.1 f ^4^^" Pcrhaiis you will understand why I felt so confident 
Uiat the Buigais would not have come into the war if thev 
had known that Greece would stand bv Serbia. And ^(,u 
wi 1 also understand why Heel so confident that our militarv 
Help to the Allies will be a very real one, perhaps enough of a 
on- even to save Greece from herself 
Voni•l'^ '''^'' ■! '/'■'''^■'' *^''' '-'t^^^ "^^^a*^'*^'"! ^'" 'vliich M. 
\ cnuclus visited his troops atthe Front. 
m 
