[Sidenote: The Greeks seem to understand the game of war.]
"Somehow this doesn't seem quite like the transport of a new army just
undergoing its baptism of fire," I said to my companion. "I've seen
things on the roads behind the western front in far worse messes than
any of these little jams we've passed to-night. These chaps are as
businesslike as though they'd been at the game for years."
[Sidenote: Veterans of the Balkan wars.]
"So they have," was the quiet reply. "Our army, as recruited so far, is
a new one only in name. The men who attacked yesterday were of the
famous S---- Division, which fought all through the last two Balkan wars
and gained no end of praise from all the foreign military attaches for
its great mountain work. It was this Division which scaled the steep
range beyond Doiran and drove the Bulgars out of Rupel Pass."
[Sidenote: The Battle of "Rupel Pass."]
"The S---- Division," "Rupel Pass." Instantly I recalled how a British
General, over on the Struma a few days previously, had pointed out to me
a steep range of serried snow-capped mountains towering against the
skyline to the northwest, and told me that the feat of the Greeks in
taking a division over it at a point where even the wary Bulgar had
deemed it impossible was one of the finest exploits in the annals of
mountain warfare.
"The Italians have fought the Austrians at a greater altitude in a
number of places in the Alps, and in our wars with the Himalayan
tribesmen we have sent our Gurkhas twice as high.
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