Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1916 — FIGHTIN6 TENTH ADDS GLORY TO THE IRISH ARMS [ARTICLE]

FIGHTIN6 TENTH ADDS GLORY TO THE IRISH ARMS

Makes Most Remarkable Stand Against Overwhelming Force of Bulgars. DIDN'T KNOW THEY HAD LOST Allied Division Slowly Pushed Back but Exacts Awful Toil in Slaughter for Every Yard—Machine Guns’ Fire Is Murderous. London. —Although the government has repeatedly been pressed to give the country the story of the stand of the Tenth (Irish) division against . , _ A - -i—|Macedonia before the retreat of the allies to Salonlki, the United Kingdom, and Ireland In particular, is still waiting for the official account of the action, which, though it ended adversely, will rank among the finest exploits of British arms. The Weekly Dispatch publishes the story of how the Irish regiments stood their ground against wave upon wave of Bulgars, mowing them down with rifle and machine guns to the accompaniment of shouts of “Stick it, jolly boys; give 'em hell, Connaughts!” The account fills more -than a page of that newspaper, and the following are the main points of the story. .

Officers Were Warned. “On December 3, which was a Friday, the British outposts brought In six Bulgar deserters, who had much of interest to tell, They said that the Bulgars not only had suffered very heavily In their engagements with the Serbians, but were losing men rapidly owing to sickness and frostbite. “What is more to the point, they warned the officers that a big attack against our line was impending, that It trad been arranged' to take place that day, but that the severe snowstorm had caused them to put it off to another day, whiich would not be long delayed- “ These opportune tidings, which, as events proved, were thoroughly reliable, were communicated to headquarters and the necessary precautions for battle taken. The outposts were drawn In and finishing touches given to the trenches.

“Dawn had scarcely broken when the enemy made his expected attack; The conditions wholly favored him, for a fairly dense fog prevailed, and under its cover the Bulgars were able to get within 300 yards of parts of our line without being observed. The Inniskillings were the first to be attacked; about 5 a. m. their outposts were driven in and then a great mass of the enemy swooped down on the trenches, but were driven back by the fire of our Maxim guns and by the steady magazine fire that came from the trenches.

Mad Rush to Slaughter. “Scarcely had the attack on the extreme right of our line had time to develop when the main body of Bulgarians were seen running down a defile leading to the center of our front. They were perceived as a long, interminable stretch of men—a mass of shadowy figures revealed half distinctly in the mist. As they reached the end of the defile they spread out as from a bottle neck, and with wild cheers flung themselves on our line. But before they had got so far our guns smashed and battered the thick procession of men leaping out of the narrow gorge. It was impossible to miss them. British artillery had never had such a target since the first battle of Ypres, when the guns literally mowed down the half-trained German troops who attacked on the Yser. "The slaughter of the guns was magnified by the slaughter of the rapid magazine fire at short range. Wave after wave of the enemy came on, each broken as it swept out of the defile, but the Bulgars were not to be denied. Though their comrades fell thick and fast they came on, and by sheer impetus of numbers-- reached our trenches, where awful work was wrought. It was hand to hand fighting then—terrible to witness, terrible to think of. The short bayonet of the Bulgar, however, was of little use in these trench combats, and man for man the British won, but the Bulgars had the numbers and temporarily the first line of the Twelfth division was overborne. The British were driven out.'

Wonderful Bayonet Charge. “The British artillery had been doing splendid Work, but now the enemy artillery was in full blast, and they poured a devastating and withering hail of fire on our positions, which through faulty ranging put out of action more of the Bulgars than it did of us. The Monsters and the Connaughts and the Dublins quickly rallied, and with a wonderful bayonet charge drove the enemy out of their trenches again. The enemy, miassed In close formation, swarmed in once more, but against—the—deadly fire poured into them they could make no headway for some time. The brave Irish regiments were pouring lead into them as fast as they could load their rifles. They poured into the -oncoming masses as much as 175 rounds at point blank range. • “J3ut it was, ‘for all our grim resist-

ance,’ a hopeless kind of struggle. Sooner or later that unceasing stream of men issuing out of the narrow defile must sweep us back. Always the enemy returned to the charge, undeterred by heavy losses, undismayed by our deadly guns, and magazine Jlre. "“In the end we gave the enemy his dearly bought line of trenches and slowly fell back to our second line of positions, where the remainder of the division joined us and helped to beat off the sustained attacks, which lacked naught in violence. All day the Bulgars alternately bombarded ' and charged us. There semed to be thousands and thousands of them. They gave us no rest at night. Wherever we stood they rained an unceasing fusillade of shell upon us and followed each rafale up with a determined infantry attack. “Outnumbering the Tenth division in the proportion of at least eight to one, they were obstinately bent on its destruction at whatever cost to themselves. Their artillery far exceeded ours in weight of metal, but in effectiveness there was no comparison. Almost all our shells told, while many of theirs did no more than splinter the rocks yards away. So Monday, December 6, was passed with the Tenth division mightily pressed but still well able to "hold its own. Tuesday, the 7th, was an exact replica of the previous day. -

Tenth Held Its Own. “The Bulgars heavily bombarded our line; then sent forward strong storming parties before whom we recoiled a little, but no more. The division never lost its cohesion, and it gave ground only at the rate of two miles a day, which is a proof, if any were needed, of the splendid rear-guard action that this much-outnumbered force fought. Our artillery kept them in sufficient check to give us all the respite we needed, and the rifle fire of the different regiments bit gaping wounds in the enemy mass that helped to throw them into temporary confusion. “Teodorow, the Bulgarian general, is a great believer in the German method of attack. He reckons no loss in men is too great ft the objective be gained. The objective in this case was the decimation of th« Tenth division, and under his orders the Bulgars charged and charged until the snowdrifts over which the battle was fought was black with the recumbent forms of his men. “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-enforce-ments were due. “The night of the 7th the Bulgara 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 Bth the force of the Bulgar attacks had spent itself. They still shelled our line and sent forward their infantry to the charge, but the sting had gone out of their efforts and we were able with comparatively little difficulty to repel them, our machine guns in particular doing bitter havoc in their serried ranks. Later our heroic Tenth division was placed in second line. The effect of our re-enforce-ments was quickly felt on the enemy, who as we continued our retirement became more cautious, following us only at a respectful distance. Proved Their Mettle. "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 equally of importance, they taught him the temper and morale of British infantry. The Bulgars were fighting on ground which they knew as well as the Inniskillings knew Ulster. They had the advantage of our men in artillery, and beyond all question In numbers. When they commenced their attack on Monday they disposed of at least three divisions, the whole of the first Bulgar army and part of the second. By the end of the first day the remainder of the second army had formed up so that one division of British was opposed to four Bulgar divisions, but the Tenth division had been thinned dowar - and it is no exaggeration to say that it fought against odds of eight to one.

“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, Saloniki. At the moment all that can be said is that they were high Words of praise. “They have brought the wounded

Connaughts, Munsters, Innlskillings, West Kents and the rest to Plymouth, and you will find them distributed over the various wards of the military hospital. A cheery, good-humored body of men they are, disposed to make light of their experiences. “It is hard to explain how the Tenth division, encompassed as it was, won through, and perhaps the most satisfactory thing to do is to fall back on the explanation of a Munster Fanger, whose only grumble is that he was kept twelve hours in those terrible fourty-eight hours’ fighting without food: ‘They beat us with numbers. We couldn’t hope to hold up against the crowd they sent against us, a* draft, clumsy gang of men. We gave ’em hell, but their numbers beat us. But two days wasn’t much of a time to give theirselves to make us see we were beaten, and so we got away with them still coming after us. You’d got to be there to see what happened.’ sound's very much like an anti-climat, but it is really what happened. The Tenth division escaped because it h „ rtn’t tlmfl in knftw. that hy ftU thfl rules it was beaten.”