Vivid Picture Of The War On The Way To The Front.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 17, 1912:
Frederick Palmer, the New York Times War Correspondent, Writes of the Difficulties in Reaching the Scene of Action and of the Reception of the Wounded at Belgrade.By Frederick Palmer.
Special Correspondent of The New York Times in the Balkan War.
    SOFIA, Bulgaria, Oct. 28. If war is what Gen. Sherman called it without any waste of adjectival clauses, so is getting to the front for a correspondent these days. There being no shorter and uglier word than the General used it will also describe the character of the train service at present between Belgrade and Sofia that is, if hell is supposed to be slow. But to begin at the beginning of this story of going to war. On one of the floors of a New York storage warehouse, scattered about, was the equipment used in another campaign. As I viewed the tent which could be carried under one arm and the sleeping bag which could be carried under another and all the other objects of a familiar memory, the wish for elimination was balked by the fact that it is cold in the Winter in the Balkans. The saddle, with its accoutrements, that could make you independent of shelter or commissariat for three or four days, must go, heavy as it was. So, too, must that compact little cooking set which fits into a pail about the size of that which Gretchen takes to a corner saloon on a hot night when father is thirsty.
    Considering the availability of each article by the cost per ounce for baggage on the Orient Express across Europe, the scales of balance were held by two questions: Would there be any war at all? If there were would there be any use for the kit? Otherwise, would the correspondents get to the front? In the Greco-Turkish war of '97 the correspondents were allowed, such liberty that we sometimes found ourselves between the Greek and Turkish armies when we were unable to keep up with the Greek Marathon. With the Japanese we were held back at first, but eventually we had good opportunities for observation. I should not ask to see more than I saw at Liao-yang in the ten days that the battle lasted; and then if I had not had that omnibus of a saddle I should have been a hungry Nebuchadnezzar after the pasturage season was over, sleeping on the frosty ground without a blanket. The first question was answered before I sailed. The second is not answered yet.
    People in New York who had any ideas at all about the Balkans thought that the Turks would make short work of the allies. Any one who had been in the Balkans of late years, however, and seen the sturdy Bulgars at drill or marching along a road had an idea that they would not turn into vegetables when war was declared. Europeans on board a transatlantic liner had the same high opinion of the invincibility of the Turk. They said it would be the Greco-Turkish war over again. I would be too late unless for the last stand at Sofia. When the news of the allies' successes sizzled into the wireless house from day to day. I was told that the Turkish Army would be out of commission before I arrived. Certainly, if-you are on your way to see a war which is already under way, it is wise to hurry.

From Paris to Constantinople.
    The Orient Express leaves Paris for Constantinople on Thursday evenings at 7:30. Following its regular schedule it could have dropped me on the battlefield around Adrianople two and a half days from Paris. I hoped that it might go as far as Sofia; but, needless to say, it was too careful and luxurious a train to take the risk of getting anywhere in the neighborhood of the war. The steamer was due at Havre on Thursday morning. It did not arrive any too early for one who had a lot of things to do in Paris.
    Happily there is a correspondent of The New York Times in Parts who can assist one in accomplishing so much in three hours that one hour's work with him ought to count for a whole day's for the average active man.
    All this hustle did not fall in the line of duty, but he made it a joy. In answer to my telegram from Havre he was waiting at the station ready to lead me in a charge in a taxicab. My view of
    Paris was confined to leaps to the pavement and a dash on the errand in hand and then another leap back into the taxi. After 'phoning half a dozen dentists, he had found one who could give me a late appointment for the half hour of misery which was needful to prevent prolonged misery.
    We found that the Orient Express went as far as Budapest. As to transit facilities beyond that point nothing was known. It was not a case of paying excess baggage charges on the kit; for on the Orient Express you are allowed nothing free. The cost was almost equal to the cost of my ticket. Added to the sum which was once paid for bringing that kit from Manchuria to New York the kit becomes far too precious a souvenir ever to be parted with.

An Encounter with a Count.
    There was one berth left in all that sleeping car train. This was in the compartment which must have been an afterthought by the architect of wagon-lit cars. It is at the end where the corridor turns to the door and about half the size of the usual compartment for two. Inside were three enormous pieces of luggage. Each one had large initials, and over the initials was a coronet. After my own bags, also three in number, were in the compartment the bedspread of the lower berth was visible in spots.
    Examining my conscience and comparing the bulk of my impedimenta with the Count's I saw that he had the better of me by about two or three cubic feet. On the end of a battered old Gladstone bag remained the numeral of a Japanese label, Ichi Ban, or No. 1, which was my only claim to rank to offset the Count's. He came to the door just as I was hanging up my coat, and I saw that he was the kind of Count who appears in the comic supplements and fortunately not often in real life. He stood still as if he were frozen in his tracks, and if the Turks had given the Bulgars the look that he gave me Kirk-Kilisseh might not have fallen.
    "Won't you also hang up your coat?" I said as politely as possible.
    But he did not answer. At dinner he sat across the aisle from me, and after coffee drank two cognacs, while he stared at me without convincing me that it was my duty to sit up all night in the observation car. I trust that his relief in the morning to find himself unmurdered and his watch safe may have softened his rage.
    In times of peace one may cross Europe on a railroad train without finding out much about what Europe is thinking. For there is a great deal of Europe, and it ordinarily does a diverse amount of thinking; while relatively few of its millions travel on the Orient Express on any single day. The first big war in Europe in thirty years was the one subject of talk; the one subject greedily read in the newspapers. The speed of the allies' advance seemed to keep up with that of the train. At about every stop we bought a paper with an account of a fresh victory. No success succeeds so suddenly as military success. There is no gamble like the gamble of war. It changes public views with the abruptness of the turn of a card. Within a week it may make all the world adapt itself to an entirely new set of conditions.
    One day Europe was saying that Austria would never permit the extension of Servian territory, thus threatening the route to Salonika which is her dream; whatever victories the Balkan States won they would never be allowed to add to their territorial domain; the powers would maintain the status quo. But within the time that it takes to cross Europe both Kirk-Kilisseh and Kumanovo had fallen. Then the Austrian newspapers themselves were saying that there was no gainsaying the fact that the Turk was out of Europe. Back of all the talk and all the comment of the newspapers was the desire to prevent any two of the big powers being drawn into the conflict. It took this crisis to prove how aghast the average man from Ireland to the Volga and Berlin to Naples is at the thought of a great European war.
    All blessings on the Paris correspondent of The New York Times in Paris are extended impartially to the American Vice Consul at Budapest. In answer to a telegram he met me at the station with a letter to the Hungarian and Servian officials at the frontier. There was a local train departing for Simony, on the Hungarian border, at 7 in the morning, which allowed me four hours' sleep at a hotel before going aboard. When it reached its destination at 2 it stopped at the Hungarian end of the railroad bridge across the Danube. The Servians did not propose to have Hungarian locals running into Belgrade in war time. Control of visiting strangers would be easier by the ferry. The Servian police officer who stood at the ferry gate examined the passports of three foreigners who wanted to enter Servia — two correspondents and a Swiss condensed milk drummer — and found them satisfactory. It was evident, however, that any gentleman in a fez who said that he was a secret agent of the Sultan would not have been allowed aboard.
    "They always let the correspondents, the Red Cross and the condensed milk men by," said the drummer. "Besides I am a Swiss. We Swiss never mix up in international politics."

Belgrade Quiet and Peaceful.
    As the ferry steamer swung into the stream the splendid location of Belgrade at the Junction of the Save and the Danube, a cloud of whitish buildings on the hills, was revealed. A closer view of the town was not so picturesque or attractive. But the customs officials gave the correspondent a true "Welcome to Our City" by not opening his baggage at all. I rejoiced exceedingly; for if the Servian tariff schedule had occupied itself with that kit there would have been much less gold in my purse.
    Lurching through the mudholes of the side street in a seagoing hack baggage and passenger finally reached the main street where the new pavement of which the capital is enormously proud was all but finished when the war brought the work to a standstill. There was. nothing visible in this ride to the hotel to indicate that the country was at war unless it was three or four flags displayed from as many stores. I had heard that all the able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty-five were at the front, but noticed many who were in the twenties and thirties on the sidewalks. These, it was explained, were foreigners. Most of the traders and storekeepers are Hungarian and Austrian. The Servian himself is not a business man. He is either a peasant or an officer or otherwise in Government employ. At the same time the Servians fairly hate the Hungarians, with the Hungarians privately, when in Servia, and publicly when in Hungary, returning the compliment. Austria and Hungary did not want the Allies to win. Their prayers were all with the Turk. These active Hungarian business men who handle Servia's trade for her are ambitious to have their flag follow them afield if the Turk is to lose any more territory in Europe. Soon you observed that there was no representative of one type who was of military age to be seen. The occasional bronzed, lean, grave shepherd or peasant, in his woolskin cap, his woolskin or homespun coat, homespun trousers, and home-made sandals bound by rawhide thongs, whether driving ox carts or strolling slowly about, was always past middle age. His sons and brothers form the soldiery which has startled Europe. He seems stoical, Oriental, without emotion, mannerless; and yet in him burns the fire of a fierce race hatred, whose object is the head under a fez. In front of many of the public buildings many such were doing guard duty, thus taking the place of younger soldiers who were at the front, clumsy and unmilitary in appearance, yet holding their rifles in a fashion which indicated that they very well knew how to use them.

Maps in Store Windows.
    On the wall of the cafe of the hotel — which was partly European and partly Oriental, with Russian tea and Turkish coffee and German beer —was an enormous staff map of the territory in which the Bulgarian and Servian armies were operating. Every time that a man entered the cafe he went up to the map to see if a Bulgarian or Servian flag had been pricked in in place of the crescent flag in another town. If not, he was rather disappointed, so accustomed had he become in a week's time to the rapidity of the allies' advance. However, there must be a stop directly, or the crescent flag will be driven into the Red Sea.
    In dozens of store windows were smaller maps also spattered with flags. Flag marking at the expense of the old Turk had become a Servian pastime. That grizzled shepherd and peasant studied the flags with about as much expression as he would regard the Balkan snows in his period of Winter idleness. If another peasant came up he did not turn around and slap him on the shoulder and chuck him in the ribs and yell and do a dance on the sidewalk. His sang froid was not always due to the fact that he could not read; for if anybody on earth knows the difference between a Servian and a Turkish flag stuck in a map it is he. He walked on with his sturdy stoop and slow step and looked at the map in the next window perhaps to make sure that the news was really true — really true after 500 years of waiting.
    It was he and his kind who were doing the work and paying the price as cannon food. Though he appeared to be only a yokel staring into shop windows on a visit to the capital, if you turned a Corner and went down a cross street to a parallel street leading from the railroad station to the hospitals you saw what the price of the work was. Here were gathered knots of people waiting for the train with the wounded to arrive. Among them were a few peasants and many townspeople.

Reception of the Wounded.
    And the wounded soon began to come, and they were coming for hours. They were in sight of a cot and rest after having fought in the cold rain and being jounced in freight cars over an uncertain roadbed.
    Those who had "got it" in the arm or the hand, or maybe only known the infinitesimal eighth of an inch of destiny in their favor, which meant a scalp wound instead of instant sleep, rode in the sea going hacks, supported by friends or volunteer attendants. They were gleeful; they had the promise of a scar which was better than any medal as proof that they had seen some real war. Their exultation was in contrast with the stories which some of the litters told. Upon many of them lay perfectly still forms and perfectly still faces. Often there was an instinctively searching look from the observer to make sure that the form was that of life or death. Some had died on the way from the front on the train; others were dying on the way to the hospital.
    And always the wounded of any army are the same. The simply primitive human feelings are in the ascendant. You cease to think of race, religion, or nation. Here are men who are hurt and suffering; who have fought courageously in obedience to orders or for a cause.
    Every litter had a little bouquet of flowers — Autumn flowers, asters — which had been bestowed by fond hands which had picked them from the gardens of Belgrade. No second searching look, however was necessary in order to ascertain the truth borne by litters on which candles were already burning. Escorting one dead man was a family party marching along miserably in aching, dry-eyed grief. Another family party had hope to buoy them up. The still form on the litter continued to breathe. He might live. Two young girls, evidently sisters, would run short distances ahead of the litter and then pause with pitiful gasps and gestures as they urged the bearers to hurry; but the bearers only kept their place in the procession.
    If actresses could put the true simulation of the feelings of these two girls on to the stage! But they can't. For that reason there is no such thing as true stage realism in human distress. There is nothing that can raise the same kind of sticky and jumpy lump in your throat as the realism of reality. To the two girls every second meant a second gained in reaching the magic of the surgeon's attendance which they prayed would yet bring recognition of them into the glassy eyes of the unconscious man on the litter.
    Many litters with dead and mortally wounded had no company. Their relatives did not live in town. It would be weeks before many fathers and mothers and wives far away among the Balkan valleys would ever know whether or not the one in whom they had the most interest was on the casualty list at Kumanova. At the hospitals and in the Military Academy, which had been turned into a hospital, were many young civilian surgeons assisting the regular army surgeons.
    When I asked if there were many wounds from shell fire, my object being information rather than to see an example, I was taken into one of the rooms where a young soldier bandaged in many places was breathing in that slow way when there is no longer the strength or conscious effort left to moan from pain. A regular surgeon came in and felt of the man's pulse. He held up his hand in the telling gesture which said that the poor fellow's end was near. As we passed out into the hospital corridor we met another wounded man of about the same age as the one who was dying; and he was strolling about rather airily and proudly. His only bandage was that which covered a hole in his hand. If the war lasted a few months he would recover in time to return to the front and have a chance to be cut up as elaborately by shrapnel as the one who was dying.
    Everywhere was the talk of the utter lack of provision for care of the wounded. All the Servians had thought of in their poverty when arms are so expensive was the means of beating the Turk. The misery after the victory would take care of itself. There was a lack of surgeons, of litters, cots, bandages, pillows, sheets, and blankets; but the Red Cross was happily on its way from every important capital in Europe.

The Good Cheer of Victory.
    Returning to the main street I found the national colors breaking out in all directions. The victory which meant the most of all in popular estimation had been won. On every one of the maps in the windows and on the big map in the hotel cafe the Servian flag had taken the place of the Turkish at Uskub. Kumanova was the strong position before Uskub; but the town itself was the symbol of success to the Servians. It was the ancient Servian capital, Servian again after five hundred years of Turkish dominion. Even the Hungarians joined in the jubilation. They could not withhold their admiration. Crowds of Servian old men and boys bearing the flags of the four allies paraded from one Legation to another, and with the lustiness of their cheers made up for the absence of those between 20 and 43. If the early news of the war was too good to be true, this was not. Even the peasants were beginning to realize that there was no trick back of the successes. The "Terrible Turk" was at last engaged in the Marathon which the Servian had been praying for for five centuries.
    "And now to get Adrianople," said the happy flagmakers. Some of them thought that it ought to fall at least by the next morning. A correspondent who had to travel all the way from America after such a Vanderbilt Cup race of a war had started began to feel in good earnest that he was bound to be late. He only wished that the Servian trains were as fast as the Servian Army. When he left on the 7 A.M. local, with due gratitude to the American Consul, Mr. Summers, it was with the assurance that he ought to reach Sofia in twenty-four hours, or double the time ordinarily required.

Villages En Route.
    At every village we stopped, and all the population not at the war was there in the sober home-made garments of the men and the picturesque homemade garments of the women. Some of the women were spinning the while. We had a show for them in four German Red Cross nurses in their uniforms. The nurses were most obliging. They appeared regularly in the car windows at the stations, drawing all attention away from the German civilian surgeons, who were nevertheless in uniform. As for Count Jean de Castellane, who was along with four French doctors who had nothing but Red Cross badges around the arms of their sack coats, they were scarcely observed at all. But they had many boxes of supplies. In fact, except for cots and bedding, they were prepared to equip a good-sized hospital and set to work at once. The next morning after our arrival at Sofia they were off to Philippopolis along the line of railroad to the Bulgarian front. They had brought exactly what the Bulgarians needed.
    Except for the wounded whom we passed and occasional groups of reservists guarding communications as we approached the Servian frontier it was hard to believe that the country was at war. There were no trains crowded with infantrymen; no long trains of supplies on the sidings. All the soldiers and all the supplies were at the front when the war began. In the matter of actual preparation the allies were really at war two months before they crossed the frontier. They had definitely determined on the blow they were to strike. Calmly, even leisurely, they made ready as soon as the staple crops were in; and the wonder is what the Turks were doing all this time.
    In passing through the streets of Sofia this morning to the hotel it was hard to realize that it was the same town that I had visited in 1903 at the time of the Macedonian insurrection, when the powers stepped in with their alleged reforms and balked Bulgarian ambitions. Sofia is a boom town. Its population has more than doubled in the last ten years. Streets which were sloughs then have been well paved; many new public and private buildings of a solid architecture have risen.
    At the foot of the news bulletin in the hotel was an item which was of personal interest to me after traveling 4,000 miles. It was that no more correspondents would be received by the staff. An unarmed civilian I enter the lists of persuasion with the head of a well-equipped and well-armed army.