RETREAT FROM LULEBURGAS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 264, 7 November 1912, Page 5

RETREAT FROM LULEBURGAS.

AN EXTRA OB DIN ARY SIGHT.

<Received Nov. 6, 10.50 p.m.) LONDON, Nov. 6

The Telegraph's correspondent, describing the retreat after Liijiebxirgas, says the strongest speedily Slot to the front, the weak, sick, and abounded struggling painfully behind. Thousands of the wounded made pathetic efforts to keep up with their comrades. Many fell on the roadside and crawled off the track and died.

For three days all were foodless. Every stream was turned into a mud puddle in the soldiers^ fearful struggle to quench their thirst. The Turks at the commencement of the campaign were 2000 officers short. The loss of officers in the battle was enormous,' hence the impossibility of maintaining any semblance of order. The retreat, looking back,from the rising ground at Chorlu, was an extraordinary sight. Fifty thousand stragglers dotted the plain, men, horses, and guns on waggons all iconverging fay two roads leading to Chorlu i bent on reaching that place hefore nightfall. If the routed army fails at Chataldja, it will fall back on Constantinople. The starving hordes are bound to begin looting, and the city's forces are incapable of preserving order. The military authorities at Constantinople throughout the campaign deliberately, deceived the outside world, hoping that the bravery of the Turks would pull them through atthe eleventh hour. The army was defeated "by sheer starvation rather than any other factor. The Turkish army had no general staff capable of running the country. The greatest battle of modern times was fought -without the smallest preparation, and the succor of the wounded was left to a few surgeons, who lacked every necessary. The artillery had btit a few hours' supply of _ ammunition, and whole battalions and brigades were as ignorant as the Anatolian peasants, thousands of whom had never handled a rifle.

The correspondent did not see a Turkish machine-gun in action. The Bulgarians' artillery was matchless, and their ammunition supply a masterpiece of organisation.. . Their machine-gun fire was deadly.