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1912] GENERAL HOLMSEN 95
seeing one’s own work through rose-coloured
spectacles.
Be that as it may, Holmsen himself was firmly
convinced that the Bulgarian and Serbian Armies were
infinitely inferior to the Turkish Army, and he maintained
this opinion with the straightforwardness and obstinacy
inherent in his Swedish nature. It is a fact that the brave
general did not know the condition of the Serbian and
Bulgarian Armies.
I met General Holmsen four years later in
Stockholm, on his return from captivity in Germany—he
was a physical wreck! From the beginning of the
war he commanded a brigade in the army corps of
General Buhakoff, which, at the time of our second
defeat in East Prussia in February, 1915, displayed heroic
courage in cutting through the hostile army which
surrounded it on all sides. General Holmsen told me
that there were neither guns nor shells left in some of
the battalions of the division of which he had become the
head on the battlefield, and half the bayonets were
twisted or broken by the continual shock of
hand-to-hand fighting. The soldiers, worn out by four days and
nights of continued fighting and marching, sometimes
fell down in the snow and went off into a leaden slumber
without paying any attention to death which was raging
round them—so terrible was their fatigue. At last the
remnants of the heroic army corps reached the first line
of defence of Grodno : alas! it was already occupied by
the enemy, so they had to surrender. They did not
know that Grodno was still held by Russian troops, and
that if they had advanced, these could have rescued
them. In listening to this heartrending account, I
naturally refrained from reminding the General of
our conversations in Constantinople and from pointing
out how mistaken he had been in his
prognostications !
One of the things which struck me most in
Constantinople was the complete serenity, the indifference even,
with which every one seemed to look on the Italo-Turkish
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