To All Eternity Page 22

  The following day the scouts reported enemy forces, and Petrovich himself went up to the next ridge to survey the country ahead. Berkeley and the other two colonels went with him, and they looked down on yet another valley, and here there were certainly troops; Berkeley estimated a regiment of blue-coated cavalry, with some infantry behind.

  In the distance there could just be made out the roofs and minarets of a town. “Where is that?” Petrovich asked his guide.

  “Kumanovo, your excellency.”

  “Colonel Townsend, how many men would you estimate are down there?”

  “A few hundred, sir.”

  “Well, then, I would not say we were outnumbered. Gentlemen, let us see what those fellows are made of.” He turned to his adjutant. “Captain, send a galloper to General Putnik to inform him that we are engaging a small enemy force covering the town of Kumanovo.”

  The captain saluted and hurried off and Berkeley returned to his command, where his officers were anxiously waiting.

  “Take your positions, gentlemen,” he said. “We are about to advance.”

  Various bugle calls rang out and the three regiments came into line, lances removed from rests. Brigadier-General Petrovich came back to them, and drew his sword. The other officers did likewise.

  “Sound the march, bugler,” Petrovich commanded.

  The notes rang out and the line of horsemen advanced, topping the ridge to look down on the valley. Their manoeuvre had been observed, and the Turkish horse began to withdraw. A trap, Berkeley wondered. But there was no time for further consideration as the bugler now sounded the charge, and the blue and red lines went careering down the slope.

  Now the Turkish horsemen were in full retreat, while their infantry support fired one volley before themselves hurrying back towards the safety of the town and the several cannon emplaced on its outskirts. These opened fire and the bugler sounded the halt. The lancers dragged their steaming horses to a stop as the shells began to burst. Berkeley looked over his shoulder. Several men had fallen and were being tended by the medical staff. He could not see any Turkish casualties.

  Now it was their turn to withdraw out of range of the guns. “Well, gentlemen,” Petrovich said, “at least we now know where they are. And that they prefer to fight behind fortifications. We’ll soon have them out of there.”

  The Battle of Kumanovo was fought the next day, October 24. If it could be called a battle, Berkeley thought. The main Serbian army came up overnight, and the cavalry were kept back for the anticipated pursuit. By then Berkeley had inspected his men, spoken with the wounded, and overseen the burial of the three of his command who had been killed. Everyone was still full of fight and confident in the morrow.

  As they had every right to be. The Serb artillery pounded the town – they did not seem concerned with causing civilian casualties – and then the infantry attacked. Resistance was minimal, and by afternoon the cavalry were ranging over the countryside south of the town, sweeping up survivors. As he had feared would be the case, Berkeley had a difficult job keeping his men in hand. They had seen some of their comrades killed, they had a long history of warfare against the Turks, and they were out for blood. But with the help of Lockwood and men like Captain Horovich he managed to prevent their captives from being massacred, and even the few women they found with the Turks from being raped. What would happen to them in the rear he could not say.

  General Putnik reviewed them the next day. “You have done well,” he said. “Now we must pursue. It is our business to destroy the main body.”

  It was obvious, both from the casualties and from interrogating the prisoners, that this had been no more than a covering force to allow the concentration of the full Turkish army.

  In private, the general was less sanguine.

  “It appears that we will have to do this job ourselves,” he told his officers. “The Greeks have been defeated.”

  So that’s why we have been meeting with limited resistance, Berkeley thought; the Turks have been concentrating in the south.

  “There is also trouble with the Bulgarians,” Putnik went on. “As I told you, their business was the invasion and conquest of Thrace. But Bulgarian units are also moving south-east, towards Salonika. The Greeks wish to have Salonika, but so do the Bulgars. This possibility is naturally distracting the Greek command. But we will continue our advance.”

  Two days later they were at the Vardar.

  Here the bridges had been broken, but there was still only sporadic Turkish resistance. By now the Macedonians were taking an active part in the war, on the Serbian side – there was still no sign of the Greeks – and the cavalry were shown fords which enabled them to get across and clear the south bank while the sappers reconstructed the bridges sufficiently for the infantry and artillery to follow.

  “Where is the Turkish army?” Berkeley asked one of the peasants.

  “They say they will hold the Babuna Pass,” the man said. “It is a few miles to the south.”

  “With how many men?”

  “It is the main Turkish army, your excellency. Perhaps forty thousand men.”

  Berkeley duly reported this intelligence to headquarters before resuming his advance. They reached the head of the pass the next morning, and came under heavy artillery fire. So he withdrew to await orders.

  The general surveyed the situation through his binoculars, surrounded by his staff. The pass was guarded by serrated peaks, impassable to a large army. “That is a strong position,” he remarked. “I begin to understand their strategy, now. They have allowed us virtually a free run through Macedonia. Now they will hope to hold us here for an indefinite period, both to allow the onset of winter, and to enable them to deal with the Greeks in the south. We must not permit this to happen. The Turks must be kept on the run.”

  “You will force the pass?” Petrovich was surprised, and concerned. “Casualties will be very heavy.”

  To this point they had been remarkably light.

  “One does not make an omelette without breaking eggs,” Putnik remarked. “However, there is more than one way to skin a cat. We will mount a slow frontal assault here, while you, Petrovich, and you, Magrinovich, take your people through the mountains to arrive in the rear.”

  General Magrinovich pulled his nose. He commanded one of the finest divisions in the Serbian army, but they were largely on foot. “That is very difficult country,” he pointed out. “It will take time.”

  “You have four days,” Putnik said. “Then I wish you to close on the rear of the Turkish position. I assume you will not need as long, Petrovich.”

  The brigadier-general studied the map. “My route is also difficult,” he pointed out, “but I think we can do it in three.”

  Putnik nodded. “You will be in position in plenty of time for your attack at dawn on the fourth morning. Magrinovich, you will have to assault immediately you reach your position.” He marked them on the map. “Good fortune, gentlemen.”

  Both wings of the enveloping movement left immediately. Now the weather had definitely turned wintry, and the cavalry plodded along while the rain bounced off their caps and soaked their greatcoats. They were being guided by Macedonians, who presumably knew the best mountain trails, but even so they often found it necessary to dismount and lead their horses.

  “Makes you almost yearn for the old Sudan,” Lockwood remarked. “At least we didn’t have any rain.”

  Because of the weather, their progress was slower than Petrovich would have liked, and their stops were kept down to a few hours at a time, bivouacking as best they could. The sight of a mountain village was like manna from heaven, as at least it meant they could get out of the wet for a brief spell.

  The villagers fed them hard bread and goat stew, and gathered round to stare at the soldiers, the children whispering among themselves. They were desperately poor, judging from their clothes, their houses and their food, but there could be no doubt that they hated the Turks and looked on the Serbs as their savio
urs. So much so that, having wrapped himself in his cloak and settled down to sleep as best he could for an hour, Berkeley awoke with a start to find a warm young body snuggling in with him. He sat up, looked down at the girl – she could hardly be much more than fifteen, he estimated – and looked across at the guide, who was only a few feet away.

  The guide grinned. “She would deem it an honour, famous sir.”

  Well, Berkeley thought, Caterina was a long way away, Julia even further.

  Next morning his men were in fine humour; it appeared that almost every man had been serviced by the mountain women, all of whom regarded it as a privilege. Now even the rain hardly seemed to matter. But that afternoon their advance guard was fired upon.

  Berkeley’s first thought was that it was, after all, angry and jealous villagers, but his men galloped back to tell him they had encountered a Turkish outpost. Berkeley immediately deployed his command and went forward himself, with Lockwood and Horovich, to oversee the situation.

  “We returned fire, your excellency,” said Sergeant Dragovich, who had maintained his position with half a dozen men, dismounted and crouching amid the rocks.

  “You are sure they were Turks?” Berkeley asked.

  “It sounded like Mausers, sir.”

  The Turks, Berkeley knew, were being supplied by the Germans; there was even a rumour that they were employing German officers.

  “Well, we must move them, quickly.”

  He drew both sword and revolver, waited for Horovich to bring up his dismounted squadron and moved along the trail, the guide prudently keeping to the rear. Then he led his men forward at a rush. He was actually surprised that he had not yet been wounded in this campaign. Perhaps twice was enough for fate. More probably it was because Turkish marksmanship was extremely poor, and the Serbs had not yet encountered any real resistance.

  Nor did they now. They discerned the Turkish position easily enough, from the detritus lying about, but there was no sign of any enemy.

  “Well, that’s that,” Berkeley remarked to Horovich. “Now they surely know we’re coming.”

  He sent a message to Brigadier-General Petrovich, who arrived an hour later.

  “I reckon those fellows will be scuttling to Prilep just as fast as they can go,” Berkeley said. “To warn the main body.”

  Petrovich nodded. “But that is all to our advantage, Colonel. Is there not a saying in chess that the threat is greater than the execution? So the Turks will know we are turning their position. They must either detach a sizeable force to stop us, which will weaken their position in the pass, or they must accept that they have been outmanoeuvered and withdraw.”

  The Turks abandoned the pass. Before they had reached their destination, Berkeley and his men looked down on the valley and a huge body of men moving to the south-west.

  “Talk about bloodless victories, sir,” Lockwood remarked. “It seems to me that this General Putnik is a sizeable soldier.”

  Berkeley wondered how he would do against troops who were better trained and equipped and better led than the Turks; and had higher morale. But there could be no faulting the old general’s energy, as he drove his men in pursuit. Strategically, he had already gained a great victory. Having failed to hold the Serbs at the pass, the Turks were left with either retreating on their army attempting – quite successfully to this point – to hold the Greeks, or retreating to the south-west. The latter meant cutting themselves off from the rest of the Turkish Empire in the Balkans, and any real hope of succour. Macedonia was lost.

  “However,” Putnik told his officers, “they still have an estimated forty thousand men in the field, and they have a very strong fortress here.” He prodded the map at the town of Monastir, on the south-west border with Albania. “He will take shelter there, and wait either to be evacuated by sea, or for a Turkish offensive in Thrace which may reverse the situation. We must have him, now, gentlemen.”

  The army sang as it marched along. Even if they had not yet won any great victory, they were confident of doing so when the occasion arose. And that the Turks were in headlong retreat could not be doubted, from the amount of discarded matériel they picked up as they went along. Petrovich’s cavalry was sent ranging ahead of the infantry, and they did bring in some Turkish stragglers, terrified conscripts who were intent only on keeping their lives – and their manhoods: they had apparently been fed a rumour that the Serbs would castrate every prisoner they took.

  Berkeley hoped it was only a rumour, as he sent them to the rear.

  A few days later his scouts sighted the roofs of Monastir. He sent a galloper back to Petrovich, and commanded his men to halt to await the arrival of the main body. He himself, with Horovich and Lockwood, went forward to the next high ridge to gaze at the fortified town. It was November 4, and it was amazing to consider that this war had only started a fortnight previously. In that short space of time the Serbs had overrun all of Macedonia but for this last little pocket of resistance, close to the Albanian border; and there would be little refuge there for any Turk.

  In that fortnight he had not bathed or changed his clothes, so rapid had been the advance. He had only had half a dozen hot meals, and hardly more than a couple of dozen hours of sleep. He knew that he and his men were on the edge of physical collapse, yet the morale of continuous victory, continuous advance, remained high. And surely this was the end.

  “What then, sir?” Lockwood asked.

  “Do you know, Harry, I have no idea,” Berkeley said. His first priority would be to get in touch with Gorman.

  *

  They had their usual couple of hours sleep, kept half-awake by the tramp and rumble of the infantry and artillery arriving. It was a still night, although the clouds were low – there was even a flurry of snow at dawn – and the Turks could hear the arrival of their enemies too. There were distant bugle calls, and Berkeley could imagine the defenders standing anxiously to their guns.

  Dawn revealed that the Turks had accepted they would have to fight, and were determined to make the best of it. Their army, or the main part of it, had marched out of the town and taken up a position in front of it, in a distinctly nineteenth-century fashion: horse, foot and guns all carefully arranged. Brought up in his staff college days on the encounter battles of the American Civil War or the Franco-Prussian War, and having since then studied similar battles of the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese conflict, he had to form the impression that the enemy were inviting defeat.

  General Putnik thought so too. He arrived soon after daybreak, followed by the main part of his army, and studied the Turkish dispositions through his field glasses. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “they are lambs to the slaughter. General Petrovich, your cavalry will undertake a turning movement on the right. Proceed in full view of the enemy, but keep out of range. This will distract him. You will not, however, charge, until his centre is broken.”

  Petrovich saluted and summoned his officers.

  Putnik frowned. “What is that madman doing?”

  The infantry division on the extreme left of the Serb army, led by Major-General Magrinovich, had not formed up like their comrades, but continued advancing, marching down the slope towards the town and the Turkish forces, flags flying and drums beating.

  “We must get him back,” said one of the staff officers.

  “I will have him court-martialled,” Putnik growled. “Yes, call him back.”

  A junior officer wheeled his horse and galloped down the slope. But it was too late. The Turkish general had no doubt been as surprised as anyone to find himself being attacked by a single division. Now he reacted vigorously, and detached virtually his entire right wing to assault the impetuous Serbs. These halted their advance and attempted to deploy, but they were outnumbered and quickly surrounded.

  Putnik cursed and swore as he saw his men being cut to pieces, while a ripple of alarm and apprehension ran through the entire army. To have come so far, so successfully, and then to have the cup of victory dashed from thei
r lips by the overenthusiasm of one divisional commander . . .

  Berkeley, already starting to lead his regiment away to the right, checked his horse and held up his hand. His men halted behind him, while he studied the Turkish ranks through his glasses.

  “Hold the regiment here,” he told Horovich, and galloped to where Petrovich was marshalling the rest of the cavalry. “Down there, General,” he said.

  Petrovich levelled his glasses and saw what Berkeley’s keen eye had spotted. The Serb division was fighting desperately, but was clearly about to be overwhelmed. Now it was the Turkish turn to become overenthusiastic. Men were streaming away from the centre to take part in the coming massacre.

  “By God,” Petrovich said. “Have your men ready, Colonel.” And he himself rode to Putnik.

  The general had been watching the destruction of his left wing shoulders humped, cap pulled down over his eyes. Now he turned back sharply as Petrovich indicated the situation in the Turkish centre. He waved his cap in the air, and Petrovich galloped back to the waiting cavalry, the entire brigade now formed into line, lances at the ready.

  “The brigade will advance!” Petrovich shouted.

  “Hurrah!” Berkeley yelled, and drew his sword as the bugles sounded. The Serb cavalry trotted down the hill, pennons fluttering from their lance heads. Behind them the lead divisions of the infantry also advanced, at the double, and behind them the artillery sent several salvoes crashing into the Turkish ranks.

  Too late the Turkish commander realised his mistake. Bugles rang out, staff officers were sent chasing after his disintegrating centre. But the Serb left wing, realising that they might yet be rescued, were holding their ground and dying where they stood, while the Turks were caught in a maelstrom of conflicting orders and sudden fear.

  “Cavalry will charge!” Petrovich roared, and the lances came down, while Berkeley levelled his sword. With Horovich at one shoulder and Lockwood at the other he led his men into the Turkish centre. Blue-uniformed infantry, wearing fezzes and dark moustaches, presented rifles and bayonets, and several fired, but they were too distracted by the wall of horsemen careering down on them to take aim. Then Berkeley was into their midst, sword arm held rigid and wrist turned, thumb lodged in its slot on the haft of his weapon. The man immediately in front of him attempted to step aside and jab with his bayonet, and was struck by the horse’s shoulder and sent sprawling, to be ridden over by Lockwood. A second man appeared, and held up his rifle like a quarterstaff. Berkeley’s sword point struck him in the face with a jar that travelled right up his arm and into his shoulder, but the man went down with blood splattered across his tunic and on his face.