Papa’s Tepe

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 21, 21 May 1913, Page 8

Papa’s Tepe

(By

Percival Gibbon

in the “Daily News”).

E ATE in the afternoon, after a day of wind and thin rain and heavy cannonading, the infantry came slowly in long lines across the bare and sodden slopes, and gathered in a dip of land behind the final hrow that overlooked Adrianople. From a fire-control station on the right flank, I had been watching the target of the battle. Below the heights upon which the 7th Division of Bulgarians were established, there was a wedge of flat land at the intersection of the rivers, and on it there rose a little three humped hill, whose contour bore a fanciful resemblance to a biretta. ITenee its name—Papa's Tepe, Priest's Hill. Across its shoulder faint through the screen of the rain, glimmered like a vision the walls and minarets of the city, while on it and over it there sprang into view' blots and smudges of fireshot smoke, as the guns combed it to make ready for the assault. The little elderly officer on the fire-control station swung his arms like a cabman to warm them, and from time to time murmured a comment on the shooting. "A hundred metres shorter: two degrees to the left” —and in a boarded pit at his feet an orderly telephoned his words to the battery, a mile away in the rear. Thirty seconds later came the ring and roar of a gun the high diminishing whoop of the shell, and a spout of flame and smoke as it burst on the scarred forehead of Papa's Tepe. Eater in the day a Turkish gun which had been groping along the right of the position, contrived to burst a shrapnel just above the gun position, and the little elderly officer was the only man it killed. Facing Fire. The business of the infantry, when its time came, was to go down the hill ami across the level, and take Papa's Tepe with the bayonet. Meanwhile they waited in their hollow, with the rain driving across them, three batallions of silent men, of whom only the officers were in uniform. The rest wore the coarse brown clothes and red sashes of Bulgarian peasants and artisans. Their blunt, incurious faces were lifted towards the skyline before them, above which there sprang into view plume after plume of feathery shrapnel smoke that hung a second, and then shredded in the wind. Front time to time a great fortress gun uttered its rending shout, and the air was shrill with the wail of the shell that soared over them and burst far behind. It was a foretaste of what was to come when the order moved them off and they went across the brow into the face of the fire. They seemed to watch it all with a dull, almost animal indifference, utterly different from the demeanour of troops who know the. effects ’of shell fire and discount it. In their patience and stillness was more than a suggestion of that fatalism which used to be ascribed to the Turks. It was already night in the east when their orders arrived and the first halfbattalion went forward towards the brow', with their rifles and long, oldfashioned bayonets carried at the trail. They- went slowly, plodding up the slope with the heavy, deliberate gait of ploughmen, and,- from behind, their backs seemed bowed and laborious. For some moments they were black against the darkening sky. as they crossed the summit of the ridge, and upon that sign the Turkish fire quickened. Where before it had drummed, now it grew to a tattoo amt there joined with the cannon music the more urgent noise of rille fire. The Bulgarian trenches on the left answered: the mitrailleuses began their stammering roar: of a sudden the leisurely long range battle had intensified to a heart-seizing uproar. At the core of it, out of sight, tho first half battalion moved as though a flying web of bullets. A galloping orderly brought the summons for the second to follow .it. Tire Toll of the Day. A little to the right of their line of march, there wa« a patch of broken ground just over tho brow, whence 1 Could see down to the level and across

it to Papa's Tepe—could hear, too, like wind in a keyhole, the whine of lead on the wing. There was no abatement of the noise of fire: rather, as each trench that could bear on the fight filled with men. it increased, and, to emphasise its vehemence, one could now see against the darkness the flash of the guns. It seemed impossible that anything could live down below between the two fires; but as I watched, the second half-battal-ion went by- and passed down the slope at its sober gait. There—was a grey glimmer of sheepskin-clad backs; the receding line loomed for a space of —seconds, and then merged into the darkness; but already the ground over which it passed was dotted with the still shapes of men, anil the third half-battal-ion was coming up to do its share. It was incredible. Surely patriotism is an emotion as well as a quality. But in these men patriotism—if it was patriotism that governed them—sat so deep that they went forward into that whistling hell of bullets with the demeanour and at the pace of labourers -going to their toil. They neither cheered nor hung back: theirs was a steadiness and docility beyond all discipline. It was as though they were hypnotised." In them the Orientalism which has failed the Turk was potent and victorious, like the captured guns they turned on the forts. The tales with which the Censors regaled us of their spiritedness, their loud ferocity and eagerness, were feeble by comparison with the truth. Half a battalion at a time, the three regiments went into action, passing out of sight to press on towards the trenches where the Turks waited for them, where those who came alive through the fire would charge with the bayonet. It was ten o'clock at night before the Turkish fire slackened, and we knew that of those half-battalions one had driven through to the foot of the hill. Down on the level ground the dead and dying were everywhere, and when at last the firing ceased, the lanterns of the stretcher-bearers, searching for wounded men. flickered to and fro. The

rain had passed over and stars were coming out. Oyer the side of Papa’s Tepe, whore the dead lay stiffening in the trenches, I saw in Adrianople the lights of windows, bright and steadfast.