At The Same
Instant All Of The Turkish Batteries Opened With Great, Ponderous,
Booming Explosions, And The Little Mountain Guns
Barked and snarled
and shrieked back at them, and the rifle volleys crackled and shot
out blistering flames, while the
Air was filled with invisible
express trains that shook and jarred it and crashed into one another,
bursting and shrieking and groaning. It seemed as though you were
lying in a burning forest, with giant tree trunks that had withstood
the storms of centuries crashing and falling around your ears, and
sending up great showers of sparks and flame. This lasted for five
minutes or less, and then the death-grip seemed to relax, the volleys
came brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to
sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly by, and
from hill-top to hill-top the officers' whistles sounded as though a
sportsman were calling off his dogs. The Turks withdrew into the
coming night, and the Greeks lay back, panting and sweating, and
stared open-eyed at one another, like men who had looked for a moment
into hell, and had come back to the world again.
The next day was like the first, except that by five o'clock in the
afternoon the Turks appeared on our left flank, crawling across the
hills like an invasion of great ants, and the Greek army that at
Velestinos had made the two best and most dignified stands of the war
withdrew upon Halmyros, and the Turks poured into the village and
burned it, leaving nothing standing save two tall Turkish minarets
that many years before, when Thessaly belonged to the Sultan, the
Turks themselves had placed there.
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