True Stories of the Great War, Volume 2 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
History
True Stories of the Great War, Volume 2 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Teodorow, the Bulgarian General, is a great believer in the German
method of attack. He reckons no loss in men is too great if the
objective be gained. The objective in this case was the decimation
of the Tenth Division, and under his orders the Bulgars charged and
charged until the snowdrifts over which the battle was fought were
black with the recumbent forms of his men.
III--"WE OUTLIVED THE HORRORS OF SULVA"
We fought as at Mons. The arrowhead of the division consisting of two
or three regiments, the Dublins, the Munsters and the Connaughts,
took the shock of the enemy attacks, while the sides made good their
retirement, then the arrowhead rapidly fell back and joined us with the
main body, while other regiments received the shock in turn.
In the two days we drew four miles nearer to the Greek frontier. If we
could continue to maintain this deliberate rate of retirement with our
formations still intact we could hope for salvation, for we knew that
re-enforcements were due.
The night of the 7th the Bulgars made a final attempt to smash our
resistance. They redoubled the force of their bombardment; they
increased still more the momentum of their infantry attacks. They
came very near to achieving their purpose, and there were hours when
one would have asked prayers for the Tenth Division, but British
bulldog courage and obstinacy withstood all the fury of the enemy's
onset, and our mountain artillery always found an easy target. By
the 8th the force of the Bulgar attacks had spent itself.... In the
two days' battle the Tenth Division inflicted on the enemy at least
four times their own number of casualties and, what is possibly of
equal importance, they taught him the temper and morale of British
infantry....
The Tenth Division outlived the horrors of Sulva; it outlived the
days and nights of biting cold on the Serbian frontier ranges, and it
finished the miracle, to quote the official phrase, by "sustaining
violent attacks delivered by the enemy in overwhelming numbers." The
slow, punishing, rearguard action it fought allowed the Allies to
withdraw all their accumulated stores and munitions and to fall back
without congestion into Greek territory again.
The Tenth Division saved the situation by a display of courage and
dogged heroism that cannot be too highly praised. One of these days we
shall be told what the general said to the thinned units when he met
them again at Salonica....
You ask the most talkative of them to give you a picture of the
oncoming Bulgar masses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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