Dewey County advocate. [volume] (Timber Lake, S.D.) 1910-1913, 1913-03-28


very center of the Bulgarian
field of campaign. This jour-
ney we had the good fortune to be
permitted to make during the arms
tice. Now that fighting has been re-
sumed, it is again impossible. The
entire distance is something like 275
miles. We completed it by train in
about five days, exclusive of voluntary
stopovers, but this unusual speed was
due only to the fact that we were able
to make good connections, writes Paul
S. Mowrer in the Chicago Daily News
Despite it's interest as revealing the
setting of a great modern war, the
trip was hardly pleasure excursion.
Most of it was not even picturesque.
Suppose that from the hills out
around Aurora, Ill.,, every house and
barn and fence and road and tree, and
even every sign Of cultivation. were
removed; suppose in addition that
the grass were afflicted with some
thing resembling the mango; that is
how this country looks. It could be
garden; it is nearer a desert. The
villages-low clusters of stone huts
rooted with brown tile-are far apart
and invariably distant from the rail-
road. Many have been burned. To
see any human beings except groups
OF ragged Bulgar troopers is a rare
thing-a thing worthy of comment.
BuIgars Seen Everywhere.
The Bulgars, however, are every
where; for practically every able-bod-
led male of that nation has been or
dered into Turkey in one capacity or
another. Their tentless camps, their
wagon transports, their worn and
grizzled persons are almost the only
variation Of the monotony. An armed
Bulgar peasant in homespun guards
the track at every 200 yards. You see
some standing before the huts they
have built of brush or before the
holes they have followed in a bank.
You see others sitting alone by mud
puddles. patiently picking off their
vermin. At the railroad station there
are usually few sober, efficient-look-
ing officers. and hundred or so reg,-
lars in long. mud-colored coats, their
feet and ankles wrapped in rags.
These common soldiers have not been
able to wash or shave properly. or to
take off their clothes. since the war
began. They sleep unsheltered on the
ground, without even blankets to
cover them; and they live exclusively
on bread and cheese. except at a few
favored spots where there are SOUP
and an occasional stew.
But if the military diet is scant. that
Of the traveller is even scantier. Two
great armies have passed here. To
speak in an expressive Irish idiom.
there was nothing to begin with; the
Turkish army took all there was. and
the Bu'gars took the rest. The Bull
gar officers, of course, eat and live
fairly well: but the men have onlv
inst enough to keep them going Ex.
cept when we were guests of hospit-
able officers we had to breakfast.
lunch and dine on sausage. cheese.
bread and sweet chocolate from our
bag. It was impossible to
buy so much as an egg or a potato.
The water was nowhere fit to drink:
Its general flavor, to be frankly ex.
plicit. was Of offal, and after it had
been boiled as a precaution against
cholera. its only virtue was that it
was wet.
The railroad is a single track line,
adequate enough for such travel and
commerce as there used to be here,
but utterly inadequate for the supply
trains of an army of 100000 men. For
this reason the way was everywhere
blocked by lines Of cars. The few
sidings were continually full to run
ming over The wonder is that the |
Bulgars have been able to feed their |
horses at all. There were. of course.
no passenger coaches. We rode in
freight cars, changing trains every
little while. For every two miles we
went forward we went one mile back:
for every hour we were on the move
We were at standstill five, and as
nobody ever knew just where the
train was going. when it would start,