Describe Horrors Of Turks' Flight.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 5, 1912:
M. H. Donohoe Paints a Fearful Picture of the Retreat After Lule-Burgas.
TRACK IS PAVED WITH DEAD
Soldiers Without Food, and Just as It Arrived After a Bitter Night a Further Flight Was Ordered.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Tuesday, Nov. 5— In the course of a dispatch cabled from Constanze, M. H. Donohoe, The Daily Chronicle's correspondent with the Turkish main army, says:
    "The track of the beaten Ottoman Army is paved with dead and dying, and, as an aerial rear guard, great flocks of black crows, which caw a hideous requiem, ever hover near, marking down some weary soldier staggering to his end. Pariah dogs of vulpine breed, scenting carrion, have gathered from afar, their dismal howling resounding throughout the night. They and the crows are the only gravediggers for the dead on the way from Tchorlu."
    Abdullah Pasha's retreat from Tchorlu, where he passed Thursday night, after his defeat at Lule-Burgas, was begun, Mr. Donohoe states, on the news of a Bulgarian enveloping movement. Once the railway line at Tcherkesskeui was cut by the Bulgars, nothing could save Abdullah's army.
    The beaten forces had bivouacked indiscriminately on the plateau commanding Tchorlu, in the railway station, and in the sheltered valleys which adjoin it. The night was extremely cold, this adding to the sufferings of the already severely tried fugitives.
    Only small quantities of flour and barley were found in the town, and these were commandeered immediately, but they did not serve to feed a tithe of the starving men, the bulk of whom therefore passed the bitter night without food, drink, or cover. Of rice, which is the staple diet of the Ottoman soldiers, not a grain was available.
    By noon on Friday efforts had been made to obtain supplies of food from Constantinople, but before many trainloads had come through the Bulgarian guns intervened, and actually threatened the town.
    Tchorlu was strategically weak, and on Friday morning an immediate general retreat was ordered, and the remnants of Abdullah's army directed their steps toward the entrenched lines of Tchatalja, where it was hoped that a final stand might be made.
    "These defenses, from which so much is expected," Mr. Donohoe adds, "may very likely, when subjected to the strain and stress of war, prove but a snare and a delusion.
    "The morale of the retreating troops has been severely shaken, if not in some cases entirely destroyed, by the ordeal through which they passed last week. They are in a thoroughly jumpy condition, suffering from what military men call 'maseritis.' Those who still had rifles and cartridges left in the darkness of Thursday night saw imaginary enemies on every side and fired off their rifles indiscriminately. As often as not they shot a comrade.
    "The state of the army in the last stage of the retreat was pitiable in the extreme. Hundreds of men with the soles torn off their boots walked with bleeding feet, which must have caused excruciating agony at every step they took."
    Mr. Donohoe pays a high tribute of respect and admiration to Turkish stoicism, saying:
    "Such fortitude in such circumstances may well excite the envy of European soldiers of all nations. The Ottoman soldier as I have seen him during those awful five days of torture, suffering, starvation, and defeat faced everything cheerfully and uncomplainingly.
    "He went days without food, and no murmur of reproach crossed his lips. When his weary, benumbed legs refused longer to support his emaciated body he lay down and died complacently, as if death from starvation were part of his every-day duty. No fear of his approaching end could be seen in his pain-racked features.
    "In the firing-line he stood, seldom caring to take cover, with folded arms, his cartridge-pouch empty, his rifle useless, and took the fearful punishment meted out to him without wincing, meeting death with calm composure.
    "The Allies may have beaten the Turkish Army, but they have not conquered the Turkish soldier."