[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.  But all of that was after more or less preparation.  Here, the Greeks simply started off and went over that range with only their rifles and the packs on their backs.  I know of nothing to compare with it save the taking of Kaymakchalan by the Serbs last November in the operations which freed Monastir.  Not many in Saloniki have had much good to say of the Greek as a soldier of late, but you may be sure that we can do with more men of the kind that crossed that mountain range, and there is no reason why Venizelos should not be able to bring them to us.”

[Sidenote:  A favorable position for observation.]

The hill from which we were to follow the action jutted out of the mountains into the plain like the bow of a battleship.  So favorable was its position for observation—­from its brow a wide expanse of mountain and valley was spread from twenty to sixty miles in three directions—­that the British and French as well as the Greeks maintained posts there.  We found the officers in both of the Allied “O.  Pips” [signal corps talk for O.P., meaning observation post] highly enthusiastic over the work of the Greeks in their attack of the preceding day.

[Sidenote:  The evening bulletin.]

We found two officers in the British Observation Post chuckling over the evening bulletin, which had just been delivered to them.  “You have to read between the lines of Sarrail’s ‘Evening Hope’ if you want to get at the real facts,” said one of them.  “It’s what it fails to tell you, that you really want to know.  Now, you might be able to gather from this that all the Balkan Allies have been doing quite a bit of attacking during the last day or two at various parts of the Front from Doiran west to Albania, but you have to go between the lines to find that our shifty Bulgar friend over there gave most of them as good or better than they gave him all the way.  It’s sad but true that in this, our ’Great Spring Offensive,’ as the papers at home have talked of it, the whole lot of us—­French, British, Russian, Italian, and even the Serb—­have been fought to a standstill by the Bulgar.  Far as I can see, the only gain we have to show for it is in the casualty lists.”

I failed to see just what there was to chuckle about in such an interpretation of the glowing lines of the evening bulletin, and said as much.