AFTER LULE BURGAS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 112, 7 November 1912, Page 7

AFTER LULE BURGAS

TURKISH EETREAT DESCRIBED. NO WATEB OR FOOD. : LONDON, 6th November. The Daily Telegraph's correspondent, describing the Turkisli retreat after the battle of Lule Burgas, says the strongest speedily got to tho front, and the weak, sick, aud wounded struggled painfully behind. Thousands of the wounded made pathetic efforts to keep up with their comrades, and many fell by the roadside, or crawled off the track and died. For three days all were foodless. Every stream Was turned into a mud puddle in the fenrful struggle of men to quench their thirst. The Turks at fche commencement of the campaign were two thousand officers short, and the lost* of officers in battle was enormous; hence the impossibility of maintaining a semblance of order during the retreat. Looking back from the rising ground at Chorlu, an extraordinary sight was to be witnessed. Fifty thousand stragglers dotted the plain, men, horses, guns, and ox wagons, all converging into the two roadri leading to Chorlu, and bent on reaching that place before nightfall. If the routed army fails to hold Chataldeja and falls back on Constantinople, starving hordes are bound to begin looting, and the city's forces are incapable of preserving order. The military authorities in Constantinople throughout the campaign have deliberately deceived the outside world, hoping that the bravery of the Turks would pull them through at the eleventh hour. The army was defeated through sheer starvation rai<her than through any other factor. Tho Turkish army has no general staff capable even of running a country circus, and the greatest battle of modern times was fought without the smallest preparation for the succour of the wounded; the few surgeons present lacked every necessity for carrying out their work. The artillery had only a few hours' supply of ammunition, and whole battalions and brigades were composed of ignorant Anatolian peasants, thousands of whom had never handled a rifle before. The correspondent did not see the Turkish machine guns in action, but he describes the Bulgarians' artillery as matchless; their ammunition supply as a masterpiece of organisation ; and their machine gun fire as deadly.