Do you see those little winking flashes all along where the
infantry are moving? Some of them are from bayonets, but most are from
knives. A great man with the knife is the Bulgar. Did you ever hear that
song about him they sang at a revue the British 'Tommies' had at
Saloniki? It was a parody on some other song that was being sung in the
halls in London, and went something like this:
[Sidenote: A Bulgar song.]
I'm Boris the Bulgar,
The Man With the Knife;
The Pride of Sofia,
The Taker of Life.
Good gracious, how spacious
And deep are the cuts,
Of Boris the Bulgar,
The Knifer--
"Now for it! Look at that!"
[Sidenote: The barrages lift and the Greeks advance to meet the
Bulgars.]
I never did hear just what it was that Boris was a knifer of, for at
that juncture the two barrages--having respectively protected and
harried to the best of their abilities the advancing wave of infantry
down to within a hundred yards or so of the Greek trenches--"lifted"
almost simultaneously on to "communications," and that lifting was the
signal for the opening of the climacteric stage of the action. Without
an instant's delay, a solid wave of Greeks in brown--lightly fringed in
front with the figures of a few of the more active or impetuous who had
outdistanced their comrades in the scramble over the top--rose up out of
the earth and swept forward to meet the line of gray. The gust of their
first great cheer rolled up to us above the thunder of the artillery.
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