Salt Lake Tribune | 1916-12-24 | Page 7 | General Grigorescu Acquitted by Court

GEHE1 GRiGQRESCU ' AGQUiTTEDBY COURT Rumanian Commander Is Purged of Charge of Cowardice. BLAMES HIS COMRADE Says General Todorescu Fled From Beleaguered City and Was Killed. BERLIN", Pec. 23. Rumanian papers report the trial of General Grigorescu, commander of the Fifteenth Rumanian division, before a court-martial. The pf general was accused of cowardice, but the court acquitted him after hearing his defense. With General Todorescu, the accused commander had orders to hold the fortress fort-ress of Tutrakan at any cost against the forces of Field Marshal von Mack-en Mack-en sen until reinforcements could arrive. ar-rive. After the advanced lines in front of the fortress were broken by the Germans, Ger-mans, Bulgarians and Turks, General Todorescu, who was commanding the field forces in the Dobrudja, left his troops and tried to escape across the Danube, but a German shell struck his boat and he was drowned with several of his officers. Failed to Defend. When the defeated army fell back into the fortress and General Grigorescu Grigo-rescu learned of the flight of his fellow fel-low commander, he lost his head completely. com-pletely. Instead of defending the fortress fort-ress he also fled across the river and his leaderless army of 23,000 men had to surrender. At the trial of the general the judge advocate held that Tutrakan could have been held at least forty-eight hours longer, and that in the meantime sufficient suf-ficient reinforcements for a strong defense de-fense and a counter-offensive would have arrived. In his opening speech the prosecutor characterized the behavior be-havior of the accused commander as ' ' disgusting cowardice. ' ' but the general gen-eral defended himself skilfully, although al-though much damaging evidence was given against him by officers and soldiers sol-diers under his command. Shifts the Blame. The general placed all blame for the disaster of Tutrakan on his dead comrade, com-rade, Todorescu, and flatly denied that he fled from the fortress and left his army to its fate. His defense was that the strongly fortified city could not be held after the defeat and flight of Todorescu. He admitted that he left 1, the fortress and crossed the Danube in a boat with some of his higher officers, but he maintained that he only removed re-moved his headquarters to the northern shore of the river to direct the difficult diffi-cult retreat of his forces from a point of vantage. Two colonels, a major and two captains cap-tains who escaped with the general testified that he gave orders for the evacuation of the fortress before he left it. This testimony saved the discredited dis-credited commander. The court, after long deliberation, decided that the charges against him were not substantiated sub-stantiated sufficiently by the evidence to justify his conviction. lie was acquitted, ac-quitted, .but has been removed permanently perma-nently from his command by the general gen-eral staff.