THE TURKISH RETREAT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXIII, Issue 8411, 13 November 1912, Page 5

THE TURKISH RETREAT.

CKORLU AND LULE BURGAS. 1 GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS. The correspondent of "The' Times " with the.: Turks at Chorlu wrote:— " Trains .are-arriving here packed with hordes' of panic-stricken humanity. Every car, every engine footplate, and even the cow-catchers are thronged -with soldiers/ who prefer such perilous havens ;to'the rumoured terrors of the enemy"s advance." . . Anothefemessage says:—"Their continued and ■: brilliant successes have raised jthe high" morale of the 1 Bulgarians; Battalions of reservists, stout, hearty fellows, are marching, singing as they, go, and with chrysanthemums in their, caps and sprigs of myrtle tied to their rifles." . .. . . , One of the correspondents of- "The Times," who witnessed the flight of the Turks, sends a graphic description of the retreat. He says:—"ln all my long experience of the miserable scenes of war, I have seen nothing finer than the "retirement of the Turkish infantry. There was no mass, formation in the evolution. It seemed as if suddenly the whole land as far as the eye could see was peopled by men in their hundreds and thousands" shaken out to a wonderful extension. They. did not seem to care when the rain of metal swept, down upon them. Nor, except for the gunners, could I see that that fearful holocaust of shrapnel did any great execution among these men, whose steps it could not even hasten. Slowly, deliberately, with indomitable dignity, the Turkish foot soldiers retired. Rarely have I been so moved. As my horse, wounded and painfully toiling; took its way to the railroad over a distance of .30 miles, I overtook the victims. Their agonies were visible in their lack-lustre eyes. Hundreds were dragging their weary feet along. They seemed to have no food, and as there was no habitation on the road for more than 20 miles of its length, they could only hope for cover to obtain the relief that they sought. The relief and supply columns of the Turkish transport carried no nourishment." The" following is a description of another part of the retreat:—After the battle dense swarms of fugitives were caught in a narrow mountain valley. They offered a perfect target to the expert Bulgarian artillerymen, and the hail of lead and iron mowed them into heaps of dead and agonising wounded until the road was choked with mangled men and horses. One shell burst just above the centre of a column, overturning a gun and blocking the road' The Turks made desjperate attempts to save their guns, and a battery was. driven at a furious pace over the pyramids of dead and wounded, the hoofs of the galloping horses and the wheels of the gun-carriages trampling and crushing the wounded to death. The ground was churned into slush with the blood of the dead. Another column of Turks was retreating by a road along the side of a precipice. The rear files became terrified at the approach, of the pursuers, and crowded upon their comrades, and many were forced over the side of the precipice and hurled into the. torrent below. . .. . A special correspondent with the :at the .battle of , Lute, Burgas. states that the Bulgarian artillery, consisting of six batteries, searched the Turkish position with shrapnel on Monday and settled down to a methodical fire' on Tuesday. .The Bulgarians pushed up large masses of reinforcements towards the firing line in order to <rain weight for an attack. The Turkish guards fell back on the mam position. The main battle started on Wednesday, at dawn. The air was clear and frosty, and from the heights the battle could be seen raging for a 'distance of 20 miles. The flashing of the gun-fire seemed like a gigantic fireworks display. Towards noon the Bulgarian artillery concentrated its fire on the centre of the Turkish position, as a prelude to an assault which was per-

fectly timed. The" infantr^ suffei-ec terribly in the attack, but closed witl the Turks and put them to flight aftei a hand-to-hand struggle.