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THE MACEDONIAN
CAMPAIGN

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA

By Professor Pasquale Villari
Translated by Linda Villari
Illustrated. Cloth, 8s. 6d. net

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

By Professor Pasquale Villari
Translated by Linda Villari
Illustrated. Cloth, 8s. 6d. net

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD LONDON

GENERAL SIR G. F. MILNE.

Frontispiece.

THE MACEDONIAN
CAMPAIGN By LUIGI
VILLARI With Illustrations and Maps

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

First published in English 1922

(All rights reserved)

PREFATORY NOTE

The operations of the Allied forces, and in particular those of the Italian contingent in Macedonia, are less well known than those of almost any other of the many campaigns into which the World War is subdivided. There have already been several published accounts of it in English and French, but these works have dealt almost exclusively with the action of the British or French contingent, and are mostly of a polemical or journalistic character; very little has been written about the other Allied forces, or about the campaign as a whole. Owing to the position which I held for two years as Italian liaison officer with the various Allied Commands in the East, I have been able to collect a good deal of unpublished material on the subject, and I felt that it might be useful to give a consecutive account of these events, correcting many inaccuracies which have been spread about. The book was written originally in Italian, and dealt in particular detail with the operations of the Italian expeditionary force. In the present English edition I have omitted certain details concerning the Italian force, which were of less interest for a non-Italian public, while I have added some further material of a general character, which I only obtained since the Italian edition was written.

The published authoritative and reliable sources for the history of the Macedonian campaign are very few. A bibliography is appended. Besides my own notes and recollections of the events, set down day by day, and the records of various conversations which I had with the chief actors in the Balkan war drama, I must acknowledge the valuable assistance afforded to me by various Italian and foreign officers and officials. My especial thanks are due to the following:

General Petitti di Roreto, for information on the events of the early period of the campaign;

General Ernesto Mombelli, who supplied me with a great deal of useful information and advice on the latter period;

Colonel Vitale, under whom I worked for some time, and who first instructed me in the duties of a liaison officer;

Colonel Fenoglietto, who kindly provided a part of the photographs reproduced in the book;

Commendatore Fracassetti, director of the Museo del Risorgimento in Rome, who kindly placed a large number of photographs at my disposal, authorizing me to make use of them;

Captain Harold Goad, British liaison officer with the Italian force from soon after its landing at Salonica until it was broken up in the summer of 1919, who supplied me with many details concerning the topography of the Italian area of the Macedonian front, which he knew stone by stone, and his notes and recollections of many political and military episodes. Few men have done such admirable and disinterested work in favour of good relations between Britain and Italy, both during and after the war, as this officer, who was most deservedly decorated with the Italian silver medal for valour in the field.

L. V.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

GENERAL ERNESTO MOMBELLI, COMMANDER OF THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN MACEDONIA.

To face p. 10.

The Macedonian Campaign

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
REASONS FOR THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN AND FOR THE PARTICIPATION OF ITALY. POLITICAL INTRIGUES AND FIRST MILITARY OPERATIONS.

The great victory of our army on the Italian front with which the war came to an end made the Italian public almost forget the deeds achieved by Italian troops on other fronts, and particularly in Macedonia. This has happened not only in Italy; even France and Britain, who had far larger contingents in Macedonia than ours, do not seem to have appreciated at their full value the operations in that area. There was a whole school of strategists, professional and amateur, competent and incompetent, known as the “Westerners,” who desired that every effort should be concentrated exclusively on the French and Italian fronts, and that the operations on the various Eastern fronts should be neglected or even abandoned altogether. Until the Balkan offensive of September 1918, that front, in the opinion of the great majority of the public and even in that of many political and military circles, was of small importance; according to the pure “Westerners,” the Salonica expedition was an error in its very origin, and a useless dispersion of troops who might have been more usefully employed elsewhere. There were even those who maintained the necessity of withdrawing the troops already sent to the East, and others who, although they did not go quite so far, were opposed to any increase of the forces in Macedonia, and even objected to their being provided with the necessary reinforcements and materials.

In support of this view it must be admitted that the Salonica expedition absorbed a vast quantity of tonnage, at a moment when tonnage in all the Entente countries was dangerously scarce, and when the voyage between England, France, Italy and Macedonia was extremely risky on account of submarines. It is also true that for about three years that expedition produced no tangible results; so much so that the Germans called it with ironical satisfaction their largest concentration camp, “an enemy army, prisoner of itself.”

Yet it was with the victorious offensive of September, 1918, that the Entente struck the first knock-down blow at the Central Powers and produced the first real breach in the enemy barrier which helped the armies in France and Italy to achieve final victory. Even Marshal von Ludendorff, in his memoirs, recognized the enormous importance of the Allied victory in the Balkans. Until September 15th, 1918, in fact, the enemy’s line of chief resistance from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier, from the Stelvio to the mouth of the Piave, from the Voyussa to the Struma, was intact. When the Balkan front collapsed, the whole of the rest of the enemy front in the West as in the East was threatened by a vast encircling movement, the moral effect of which was not less serious than its material consequences.

But it was not only at the moment of the victorious offensive that the Eastern expedition justified itself. Even in the preceding period of long and enervating suspense, the presence of the Allied armies in Macedonia had an importance which was far from indifferent with regard to the general economy of the war. Owing to causes which we shall subsequently examine, the Army of the Orient[1] had not been able to carry out the task originally assigned to it of bringing aid to invaded Serbia and saving her from her extreme ruin, and it was therefore believed that that army had no longer any raison d’être. The truth, however, is very different, because for months and years it mounted guard in the Balkans, preventing the Central Empires from reaching Salonica and invading Old Greece,[2] where they might have established innumerable new submarine bases and thus dominated the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. This would have rendered any traffic with Egypt and consequently with India and Australia practically impossible, that is to say, with some of the most important sources of supply for the whole of the Entente and particularly for Italy. If the Army of the Orient was enmeshed amidst the marshes and arid rocks of Macedonia, on the other hand that Army nailed down the whole of the Bulgarian Army, consisting of close on three-quarters of a million men,[3] amply provided with artillery both Bulgarian and German, throughout the whole of the war, and for a time certain German and Turkish divisions as well, forces which might themselves have been employed elsewhere. Incidentally, the operations in Albania against the Austrians could not have been maintained without the support of the Army of the Orient on its right.

In Italy, perhaps more than elsewhere, the advantages of the Macedonian expedition were doubted, and in many political and military circles, as well as among the mass of the public, the current of opinion was opposed to any Italian participation in the operations of that sector. Even when Italian participation had been decided upon, and the Italian expeditionary force was actually in Macedonia, it was not always possible for it to obtain all that it needed, and the command had to struggle hard to obtain the indispensable minimum of reinforcements and materials. Even among the officers of that force, many considered Italian intervention in the East useless and even harmful. Various reasons contributed to this opinion. In the first place, the fact that Italy’s war aims were at the gates of Italy and not in the Balkans influenced public feeling in general. Secondly, the fact that our expeditionary force was in a subordinate position seemed to many to be derogatory to Italian dignity; a feeling which may be compared with the one that the war with Austria was in a certain sense apart from the general World War. This attitude, which lasted to the end, has been very injurious to our interests in the Balkans and elsewhere, and those among us who really felt the inter-Allied character of the war have had to struggle without ceasing both to convince our dissident compatriots of their error, and to prove to the Allies that those who maintained the purely Italian character of the war only represented a part of Italian public opinion, and that part not the best informed.

Yet Italy’s participation in the Eastern expedition was inevitable. Independently of boundary questions of a general character, it was not possible that Italy should remain absent from that area, which subsequent events have proved to be extremely important. Even before the war we had great political and economic interests in the Balkans, interests in part destroyed and in part menaced by the Austrians and Germans in the course of the campaign; it was absolutely necessary that we ourselves should participate in reconstructing them, instead of leaving this work entirely to others. Further, in the new settlement which the war would create in the Near East, fresh interests and new currents of trade were bound to be created. For this reason too it was necessary that Italy by her presence should participate directly in shaping this new settlement. We complain now that our interests in the East are not sufficiently recognized and respected, but how could we have claimed recognition and respect for them if we had had no share at all in the Macedonian campaign? Above all, what would have been our prestige among the Balkan peoples if the latter had seen the victorious troops of France, Britain, Serbia and even Greece marching past, and not those of Italy? Our victory in Italy would not have sufficed to affirm our position among the Balkan peoples if they had not seen us take part in the victory won in their own homelands. It would indeed have been better if our participation had been far greater and our expeditionary force on a far larger scale.

The vicissitudes of the Army of the Orient are much less known than those of all the other armies in the World War, and in particular those of the Italian expeditionary force are largely ignored by the public, even in Italy. Many believe that it was merely a modest contingent, because it was called the “35th Infantry Division,” whereas in reality its strength was superior to that of an army corps; and considering the conditions of the area where it was fighting, its importance was equal to that of an army. It is with the object of making known to the public a little more of the actions of that fine unit and the debt of gratitude which the country owes to its officers and men for their long and arduous struggle, conducted in one of the most pestilent climates in Europe amid great hardship, and the increase of Italy’s prestige obtained by their merit, that I have undertaken to write these pages.

* * * * *

When the World War broke out, Austria immediately commenced an offensive against Serbia, and the Entente Powers could not at first send assistance to the latter on account of her geographical situation, as she was surrounded on all sides by enemy or neutral States, except to the south-west, but communications through Montenegro were extremely difficult, and by that route only a few volunteers penetrated into Serbia. Supplies and armies could arrive by way of Salonica, but always in the face of serious difficulties, both on account of the obstruction offered by Greece, whose neutrality was not benevolent, and of the attempts made by Bulgarian bands, with or without the approval of the Sofia Government, which was also neutral but still less benevolent, to cut the Vardar railway. The Serbians, however, had proved themselves in the first months of the war capable of defending their country, and they inflicted serious defeats on the Austrians, first at Tzer, in the loop formed by the Save and the Danube, in September, 1914, and later on in the winter at Valievo, where the hostile army, after having occupied Belgrade and penetrated into the heart of Serbia, was beaten and put to flight, leaving thousands of prisoners and vast booty in the hands of the Serbians.

Nevertheless the Serbians were in urgent need of assistance. Their food situation was still very grave, their supply of arms and munitions quite inadequate, and a terrible epidemic of spotted typhus was raging throughout the country. But in addition to material obstacles, the very psychology of the people rendered it difficult to assist them. In the spring of 1915, when the intervention of Italy was certain, the Serbs had a chance of inflicting a new and perhaps decisive defeat on the Austrians by co-operating with us. France, Great Britain, and Russia then brought strong pressure to bear on the Serbian Government to induce it to launch an offensive in the direction of Agram at the moment when the Italians were about to attack on the Isonzo. The Government agreed, and submitted a plan of operations to the Allies, which was approved, but just when it should have been put into execution, the Serbian Army did not move; as a result of fresh pressure on the part of the Allies the Government again promised to attack, but again did nothing. Finally, when this pressure was renewed for the third time, reinforced, it is said, by a personal letter from the Tsar, Belgrade replied at the last moment that it had decided not to attack in the direction of Croatia, because it wished to carry out another plan against Bulgaria, who was still neutral! The reasons for this sudden change in the decisions of the Serbian Government must be sought in the influence of the secret societies which permeate the whole political life of the country, and especially the army. The most important of these societies was the notorious “Black Hand,” to which many of the regicide officers belonged. Although the Government itself was apparently favourable to the action proposed by the Entente, which offered great possibilities of success, inasmuch as the Austrians had only a small body of troops in Croatia, it was not strong enough to resist the influence of the secret societies, who placed their veto on any action in co-operation with Italy.[4] The full details of this affair are not quite clear, but one thing is certain, and that is that owing to Serbia’s inaction Austria was able to withdraw five out of the six divisions which were left on the Save and send them to the Italian front. At that period of the war the Serbian front was considered in the Austrian Army almost as a rest camp.

In the autumn of 1915 the Serbian débâcle took place, caused chiefly by the Bulgarian attack. The intervention of Turkey on the side of the Central Empires had rendered Bulgaria’s position extremely difficult, but that was not the chief reason of the latter’s intervention. Bulgaria had remained profoundly dissatisfied with the results of the Peace of Bucarest (1913), which brought the Turko-Balkan War to an end and deprived her of a great part of the fruits of her victory against the Turks. The fault was to a large extent her own, because she had attacked her ex-Allies, Serbia and Greece, and had been completely defeated by them; she then lost not only the whole of Macedonia, to conquer which she had entered the war, but also Eastern Thrace, with Adrianople and Kirk-Kilisse, which were reoccupied by the Turks when the Bulgarian Army had been beaten by the Serbs and Greeks, and a part of Dobrugia which had belonged to her since the creation of the Bulgarian State in 1878, and had been annexed by Roumania, who had intervened in the war at the last moment. This left a bitter feeling of spite in the soul of the Bulgarians, and sowed the seeds of a future war of revenge.

This violent irritation against the Serbs, Greeks and Roumanians was not the only cause which threw the Bulgarians into the arms of the Central Empires, and of their former mortal enemies, the Turks. Their main aspiration—almost their only one since the creation of the Bulgarian State—has been Macedonia. The Dobrugia and Thrace are of comparatively small interest to them, whereas Macedonia, on the contrary, is the bourne of all their desires. In Thrace and in the Dobrugia the population is very mixed, and the Bulgarians, in spite of the statistics drawn up by the Sofia Government, are a minority, and the non-Bulgarian elements of the population—Turks, Greeks, Roumanians—are racially entirely different. In Macedonia, on the other hand, at least in Central and Northern Macedonia, the great majority is Slav, and the Bulgarians consider it Bulgarian. In reality the population is racially and linguistically something between Serbian and Bulgarian, and the predominance of Serbian or Bulgarian sentiments varies according to the proximity of the frontier of one or other of these States, the activity of their respective propagandists, and the greater or less prestige and strength of the two Governments. I will not quote statistics which, being drawn up by Balkan writers, have a doubtful value and no scientific basis, but it is certain that the Bulgarian peoples are convinced that if Macedonia were annexed to Bulgaria, in a few years the population would become wholly Bulgarian, so that the State would find itself with a considerable increase of inhabitants—not aliens who cannot be assimilated, such as Greeks, Roumanians or Turks, whose territories can only be Bulgarized by massacre or deportation en masse, but of a race which is already very closely akin to the Bulgarian race. Further, in Macedonia there are several cities closely connected with the most ancient and sacred historical traditions of the Bulgarian peoples, such as Monastir and Ochrida. The latter was indeed for a time the capital of the Bulgarian Empire and for many centuries the see of the Bulgarian patriarchate. Bulgarian propaganda had always been much more active and more able than that of the Serbians under the Turkish régime, a propaganda based on excellent schools and assassinations, and, as until the wars of 1912–13, the Bulgarians appeared to be the most solid, and from a military point of view the strongest of the Balkan States, Bulgaria exercised a powerful force of attraction over the Macedonians. In consequence of this propaganda and of Turkish persecutions, a large number of active and intelligent Macedonians migrated into Bulgaria, where they occupied many important positions in the country. A large part of the political men, diplomats, consuls, high officials, professors, school-masters, officers and merchants in Bulgaria are Macedonians, and they have long dominated the internal and foreign policy of the country, directing it naturally towards Macedonia. On the whole, Bulgarian feeling predominates over Serbian or Greek feeling throughout almost the whole of Macedonia.

During the Turko-Balkan War, the Bulgarians had conquered a large part of Macedonia and Thrace, and their legitimate aspirations might thus have been satisfied, but, owing to the mad ambition of their Government, or rather of a small number of ambitious officers, they attempted to obtain a great deal more, and threw themselves without reflecting into the foolhardy enterprise which was the second Balkan War. The unfortunate result of that campaign made them lose the whole of their conquests, with the exception of Western Thrace and the districts of Strumitza and Djumaya forming part of Macedonia. They retained, it is true, the port of Dede-Agatch and the railway connecting it with the rest of Bulgaria, passing through a strip of Turkish territory (Sufli—Demotika—Adrianople—Mustafa Pasha). But if they were justly prevented from obtaining satisfaction for these exaggerated ambitions, they were on the other hand deprived of territories to which on national grounds they had some legitimate claims. The Serbian authorities in Macedonia, while maintaining that that country was purely Serbian, showed by their policy that they considered the population preponderantly Bulgarian, inasmuch as they instituted a system of such extreme and rigorous terrorism as is only explicable on the ground that they were ruling over a conquered territory, whose inhabitants were hostile to them, and must be kept down by force.

The Bulgarian aspiration to regain Macedonia was by no means eliminated by the unfortunate outcome of the second Balkan War. On the contrary, it was strengthened and embittered, and when the World War broke out Bulgaria regarded it merely from the point of view of a possible readjustment of the Macedonian frontier in her own favour. I have been told that the Bulgarian Prime Minister, when a British diplomat went to see him a short time before Bulgaria entered the war, pointed to a map of the Balkans on the wall and said: “We care little about the British, Germans, French, Russians, Italians or Austrians; our only thought is Macedonia; whichever of the two groups of Powers will enable us to conquer it will have our alliance.” I do not know if this anecdote is true, but in any case it represents crudely but accurately Bulgarian mentality. The Governments of the Entente understood this state of feeling, but their situation was embarrassing and delicate. They tried to convince Serbia of the necessity of handing over Macedonia, or at least part of it, to Bulgaria, promising her compensation elsewhere. But they did not care to insist too much, because Serbia was an ally, and the compensation offered to her was in territories still retained by the enemy, whereas Bulgaria was a neutral, but a short while ago Serbia’s enemy, who was attempting a sort of blackmail, and who hitherto made use of comitadji bands, or at least gave them a free hand, to blow up the bridges on the Vardar, Serbia’s only line of supply. Serbia would not hear of this proposal, and in fact intended, as we have seen, to attack Bulgaria before the latter came to a decision; but the Entente, and particularly the Tsar of Russia, naturally dissuaded them from such action, which would have been little different from that committed by the Germans in invading Belgium. Certainly Serbia would have been wiser had she shown herself more conciliatory towards Bulgaria; if she had done so, she would have avoided the catastrophe of 1915 and the three terrible years of German-Bulgarian slavery. But the Serbians, we must not forget, are a Balkan people. They have no high political sense nor broad views, and probably even on this occasion the secret societies, with their insatiable and megalomaniac ambitions, brought pressure to bear on the Government to induce it to reject any idea of compromise. However this may be, Serbia did not give way, and the diplomacy of the Entente could do nothing.

ARCH OF GALERUS, SALONICA.

To face p. 20.

The Entente counted much on the sympathy for Russia, which it believed to be very widespread among the Bulgarians, but that sympathy carried no weight in the decisions of the Sofia Government. The Bulgarians, like other Balkan peoples, are vindictive for all offences suffered, and understand gratitude largely in the sense of anticipation of benefits to come. In the case of Russia, moreover, their gratitude towards her for having freed them from the Ottoman yoke had been much weakened by the foolish, overbearing and intriguing conduct of the Russian officials in Bulgaria after 1878. The Bulgarians quickly forgot the thousands of Russians who had fallen at Plevna for Bulgarian liberty, but they retained a lively recollection of the persecutions and brutality of Generals Kaulbars and Ernroth, and of their satellites who misgoverned the country for many years; of Russia’s illicit interference in their internal affairs at the time of Prince Alexander of Battenberg; and of the fact that Russia abandoned Bulgaria when she was attacked without warning or provocation by Serbia in 1885. By the summer of 1915 the Bulgarians had come to the conclusion that the Central Empires were stronger than the Entente, and that the former therefore offered them a better chance of reconquering Macedonia than the latter. On September 10th, 1915, a general mobilization was ordered in Bulgaria, and on the 29th Bulgarian troops attacked Serbia at Kadibogaz, without a formal declaration of war.

Bulgarian intervention had, however, already been decided upon for some time. Bulgaria had obtained a loan from Germany which tied her hand and foot, and, further, after protracted negotiations promoted by Germany, she had concluded on September 6th an agreement with Turkey, whereby the latter granted her a rectification of the frontiers, so that the railway between Dede-Agatch and the rest of Bulgaria should pass wholly through Bulgarian territory. There were two immediate consequences of Bulgarian intervention. The first was that Turkey could now receive supplies from Germany with greater facility because there was only a small strip of Serbian territory to be invaded so as to establish communications by way of the Danube, and it was very soon occupied. The second consequence, which was a result of the first, was that the situation of the Allies on the Dardanelles became far more critical. The British Command knew that the arrival of powerful German artillery at Gallipoli was imminent, and that as soon as it was in position the situation of the Allied expeditionary force would become very precarious. The fact that Bulgaria was now an ally of the Central Powers greatly facilitated the sending of this artillery, and it was on the eve of its arrival that the evacuation of the blood-stained peninsula was decided upon.

Germany, after the various Austrian defeats in Serbia, determined to take the command of a new punitive expedition herself, and in view of the co-operation of Bulgaria she had concentrated a powerful Austro-German army, amply supplied with artillery, including guns of the heaviest calibre, in South Hungary under the command of the German Field-Marshal von Mackensen. The invasion of Serbia was carried out by the Austrians and Germans from the north and also from the west (from Bosnia), and by the Bulgarian Army from the east and south-east. The Serbians fought heroically, opposing a desperate resistance on three fronts, and at one moment it seemed as if they might miraculously succeed; perhaps indeed they might have saved themselves, or at least avoided the extreme disaster, if they had only followed the advice of the Allies. But although it soon became known that a new and more formidable attempt was about to be made by the enemy to crush Serbia definitely, the Serbs refused to create a modern defensive system of trenches and wire entanglements, which in a mountainous territory such as that of Serbia would at least have held up the invaders for a considerable time. To the suggestions made by the Allies that these methods be adopted, the Serbs replied with typical Balkan vaingloriousness: “Wire entanglements and trenches are all very well for the Germans and Austrians, for the French, Italians, British or Russians, but we have no use for them; we fight in the open and drive out the enemy.” Their victories over the Austrians had made them lose their heads and forget that these victories were not due solely to their own courage but also, to a considerable extent, to the serious strategical and tactical errors of the Austrian commanders, from General Potiorek downwards, errors which were not repeated by Marshal von Mackensen. The new invasion carried out by the formidable Austro-German Army to which we have referred, and there came also the stab in the back on the part of the Bulgarians.

The enemy had 12 German and Austrian divisions advancing up the Morava valley, and 7 Bulgarian divisions (divisions of 6 regiments each, many of whose regiments were of 4 battalions), which pushed forward in the direction of the Nish-Uskub railway. Altogether these forces comprised 341 battalions, of which 111 were German, 53 Austro-Hungarian, and 177 Bulgarian; against these forces the Serbs could only oppose 194 battalions—116 against the Austrians and Germans, and 78 against the Bulgarians. They were, moreover, exhausted by the long struggle, and reduced to about half their organic strength. Serbia had been deprived of her lines of supply via the Morava and Toplitza valleys by the enemy invasion. The only hope for her army was to establish a connexion with the relieving forces which the Allies were preparing to send up from Salonica. On October 17th the railway was cut at Vrania, thus interrupting communications with Salonica; on the 27th Veles and Uskub were occupied.

As soon as the preparations for a new enemy invasion of Serbia were known, the Entente decided to send an expeditionary force to Salonica and at the same time decided, as we have seen, to withdraw the Dardanelles force.[5] This decision was taken at the end of September, and on the 29th a mission, comprised of one British and two French officers departed from Mudros for Salonica with very vague orders. On reaching their destination, they set to work to prepare for the disembarkation of the troops, but they found themselves faced with the most insidious obstruction on the part of the Greek authorities. The Athens Government, of which M. Venizelos was president, had given its unwilling consent to the landing of the Allies, but the civil officials and the military commanders on the spot did everything to interfere with their operations. The first Allied contingents were British and French troops from the Dardanelles. They were elements of the 10th British Division commanded by General Sir Bryan Mahon, who for some time commanded all the British troops in Macedonia, and of the 156th French Division commanded by General Bailloud. The landing began on October 5th, and in a short time the 2 divisions were complete, although reduced in strength by sickness and losses to very weak effectives. Later, the 57th French Division arrived. On October 12th General Sarrail arrived at Salonica as Commander of all the French troops in the Orient. For a considerable time nothing was decided as to the relations between the different commands in Macedonia, and although the rank of Commander-in-Chief had been conferred on General Sarrail, the British Commander, and later also the Serbian Commander, insisted on maintaining their own autonomy. It was not until June 23, 1916, that an agreement was concluded on this matter between the French and British General Staffs, but even this was somewhat vague. “The question of the Command,” this document states, “is regulated by the following formula: Instructions concerning the initial offensive as well as the line of conduct necessary for the further development of operations will be established by mutual agreement between the French and British Commands. It is thus understood that the Commander of the British forces will give the Commander of the French forces assistance and co-operation in proportion to the effectives and equipment of the troops under his orders. He will be responsible, however, to the British Government for the employment of his forces. The Commander of the French forces will consult with the Commander of the British forces as to the manner in which the latter shall be employed; with this reserve, he will have as Commander-in-Chief authority to establish the duties and objectives to be attained, the area of action, and the date for the commencement of operations.”[6] It is easy to see that the authority of General Sarrail over the British Commander was quite illusory. His orders might be discussed, and they were. Field-Marshal French had said clearly to the British Commander in Macedonia: “You will never be in a subordinate position,” and in fact every time that Sarrail sought to make use of the British or even French troops, temporarily placed under British Command, he had to conduct negotiations as if it were a political act. We shall see subsequently why it was that he never succeeded in imposing his authority, but the fact certainly did not contribute to the success of the operations in the Near East.

Day by day fresh troops and fresh material arrived at Salonica, but the ill-will of the Greek authorities rendered everything difficult. The buildings which the Allies needed were always found to have been already requisitioned by the Greeks, so that the French and British had to encamp on Zeitenlik, a spot at 5 km. to the north of Salonica, at that time, before the drainage works afterwards carried out by the Allies, infected with malaria. In the purchase of foodstuffs and material every sort of difficulty was encountered. Worse still, every movement of the Allies was spied upon by and communicated to the enemy, either indirectly via Athens by the Greek authorities, or directly by the German, Austrian, Bulgarian and Turkish Consuls, who continued to reside in Salonica. The situation was absolutely preposterous—an Entente army operating in a neutral country which was friendly to the enemy.

On November 17th, 1915, the Anglo-French troops were about 120,000, of whom two-thirds were French, and on the 20th a fresh British division arrived, but they were still far from the 300,000 men deemed necessary for operations on a large scale. There was another greater danger which was anything but indifferent. The Greek Army, comprised about 240,000 men, of whom half were in Macedonia, and if its military value was not very formidable, it might have, in alliance with the enemy, represented a serious menace to the Entente.

The initial objective of the Allies was to bring assistance to the Serbs who were retreating before the Austro-German and Bulgarian invasion. This assistance was to have taken the form of an advance up the Vardar Valley towards Uskub or towards Monastir. As soon as the troops were landed at Salonica they were immediately pushed forward towards the front, the British to the east of the Vardar and the French to the west. On October 20th the French reached Krivolak on the Vardar and occupied the whole peninsula formed by that river and the Cerna, while the British were to the north of lake of Doiran, on the Kosturino Pass on the Beles Mountains, whence it is possible to descend into Bulgaria. The Serbs were being driven ever further south, but a detachment of their army was holding Monastir. If they had followed the advice of the Allies and had retreated towards them, perhaps a part of the army might have been saved; but, attracted by the mirage of an outlet on the Adriatic, or for some other motive, they insisted on deviating towards the west, thus undertaking that retreat across Albania which was to prove one of the most terrible tragedies of the whole war. Before the invasion the Serbian Army comprised 400,000 men, when it reached Albania it was reduced to 150,000, with some tens of thousands of Austrian prisoners; the rest had died of hunger and suffering. This miserable remnant was saved by the assistance of the Allies, and particularly of the Italians, as we shall see further on. The retreat through Albania rendered the situation of the Anglo-French on the middle Vardar untenable. When the French learnt that the Bulgarians had occupied the Babuna Pass between Veles and Monastir at the beginning of November, they tried to break the enemy front on the left bank of the Cerna in the hope of reaching the Serbs to the north-west of that pass. For fifteen days (November 5–19th) a fierce struggle went on between the French and the Bulgarians, in which our Allies showed all their admirable military qualities. The Bulgarians counter-attacked on the Cerna and were repulsed with heavy losses, but as the bulk of the Serbian Army had retreated towards Albania and the French had been unable to capture the dominating position of Mount Arkhangel (west of Gradsko on the Vardar), the offensive passed definitely to the Bulgarians. On the 2nd, General Sarrail ordered a general retreat from Krivolak on Salonica. Even this operation was anything but easy. It was necessary to withdraw 3 divisions (the 122nd had been recently added to the 156th and 57th) and an enormous quantity of material along the Vardar Valley over a single-track railway and without decent carriage roads, in a season when the rains converted the whole country into a vast muddy swamp. It must be admitted that General Sarrail conducted this retreat in good order. The Bulgarians were attacking from the north towards Krivolak and from the west on the Cerna, while from the east they were attacking the British at Kosturino, while irregular bands were trying to capture convoys along the Vardar, and enemy artillery from the Beles range dominated the railway. Added to this there was rain, snow and cold.

There were two plans of retreat, which may be described as the maximum and the minimum. The first consisted in withdrawing to the entrenched camp at Salonica, the other in resisting on an intermediate position between the Krivolak-Cerna line and Salonica along the Greek frontier. The first had the advantage of considerably shortening the line to be defended, and of bringing it nearer to the base: but on the other hand, besides adversely affecting the prestige of the Allies, it would have left the road from Macedonia and Albania into Old Greece open to the enemy, thus renewing and reinforcing German pressure on King Constantine in favour of Greek intervention on the side of the Central Empires. In that case Salonica, and with it the whole of the Allied Armies, would have been irreparably lost. Consequently the second plan was adopted.

The French retreat was carried out by echelons. First the detachments on the left of the Cerna were withdrawn to the right bank and the bridge at Vozartzi destroyed. Then a concentration took place at Krivolak, which was the rail-head, and the troops retreated in four stages. The Bulgarian attacks near the Cerna having been repulsed, the French reached Demir-Kapu without difficulty. They passed through the narrow gorge by night, while the rearguard covered the retreat. The Bulgarians tried to out-flank the French, advancing by mountain paths on the Marianska Planina so as to fall on them when emerging from the gorge, but their attempt failed. On December 7th the bridge and tunnel at Strumitza were blown up. On the 8th, although exhausted by the interminable march, the French repulsed still other enemy attacks. The great depots at Ghevgheli were evacuated, and on the 10th, as the Bulgarians were attacking along the river, the convoys had to continue their retreat over the mountains. The two African march regiments counter-attacked with great vigour, and on the 11th, the depots having been burnt and the railway and the bridge destroyed, all the troops withdrew beyond the Greek frontier.

The British (10th Division), who occupied the area between the Vardar, the Lake of Doiran and the Kosturino Pass, were not attacked until the end of November, but on December 6th the Germans and Bulgarians attacked and the British commenced their withdrawal. On the 12th they too had crossed the Greek frontier between Ghevgheli and Doiran, and the enemy did not advance farther for the time being.

The enemy had by now occupied the whole of Serbia, including Monastir, which had been evacuated on December 5th, the Serbian garrison having withdrawn to Salonica, but for political reasons they did not wish to cross the Greek frontier, as they considered the Greece of King Constantine (Venizelos having fallen) a benevolent neutral. This gave the Allies breathing space and time to reinforce themselves. On December 3rd, the French Government ordered General Sarrail to create an entrenched camp at Salonica. The area from Topshin to Dogandzi and Daudli was entrusted to the French, that from Daudli to the sea, passing along the Lakes of Langaza and Besik and through the Rendina gorge, to the British. The former had their usual 3 divisions, the British five (22nd, 28th, 26th, 10th, and in addition the 27th without artillery in reserve at Salonica). Within two months the first positions were created with three lines of resistance and a barbed wire entanglement 10 metres broad defended by 30 heavy batteries. These defences had been made according to all the latest scientific rules of war, and had the advantage of not having been constructed under the pressure of the enemy, as was the case with the great entrenched camps in France. Of the three lines of defence, the first and second were in excellent condition, whereas the third was merely sketched. The works were in groups of three, so that the two more advanced ones were dominated by the one in the rear. They were united to each other by communication trenches, which could also be used as firing trenches. Beyond the entrenched camp the Allies occupied advanced positions, the French as far as Sorovich, and later (March 21st, 1916) Florina, and farther east along the railway between Kilkish and Kilindir; the British towards the Lake Doiran.

Allies and enemies now stopped along the line which they were to occupy without important change for several months. The enemy lines passed to the south of Kenali (on the railway between Florina and Monastir) along the ridge of Mount Kaimakchalan and thence along the mountains to Lake Doiran. Beyond the lake they ascended on to the crest of the Beles mountains, following the Græco-Bulgarian frontier of 1913. The enemy attack was expected from week to week, but it did not come, and in the meanwhile the Allies continued to receive reinforcements (French and British) and material, and they were able to strengthen their defences and improve their situation.

In all there were at the beginning of 1916 a little less than 100,000 French troops, about as many British and a few thousand Serbs, altogether about 200,000 men to defend the entrenched camp, forming an arc of a circle of 120 kilometres, in addition to the advanced positions. There were 358 French and 350 British guns, but the heaviest French guns were only long 155 mm. and the heaviest British were of 6 in. General Sarrail had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in the Orient. The British Army, in May, 1916, was commanded by Lieutenant-General George (now Sir George) Milne, under the superior command, although in a limited measure, of General Sarrail. The enemy forces amounted to about 280,000 men.

The results of these operations, although disaster had been avoided, cannot be regarded as brilliant, nor were they of such character as to raise the prestige of General Sarrail with the Allies, nor of the Allies in general with the enemy States and those who were still neutral. A well-executed retreat without heavy losses in men or material may be a fine operation from a technical point of view, but it does not arouse enthusiasm. On the other hand, the relative conditions of the two armies amounted to a situation of stalemate from which it would not be easy to emerge. General Lord Kitchener, who had come to inspect the Macedonian Army in December 1915, had actually proposed the withdrawal of the expedition, which appeared to him as to many other experts a useless dispersion of forces, and the Governments were in doubt as to whether or not it were advisable to carry out this suggestion. But in the course of 1916 the Allies received a new reinforcement, in the shape of the revived Serbian Army, which was destined to exercise a considerable political and military influence on the future vicissitudes of the Oriental campaign.

The disastrous retreat through Albania in which the Serbian Army had lost nearly all its artillery and more than half its effectives, took refuge in Corfu, save a few detachments which were sent to Bizerta. In Corfu the exhausted and worn-out soldiers rested, were re-equipped with everything and thoroughly reorganized. As soon as they began to recover from their terrible experiences they wished to go to Macedonia to take part in the Allied operations. They began to reach Salonica in the spring of 1916, and at the end of April there were about 15,000 of them, besides the detachment formed of the men who had escaped from Monastir. At the end of June they amounted to 120,000 and in July to 152,000. They were divided into three armies, each comprising two divisions: I Army (Morava and Vardar Division); II (Shumadia and Timok) and III (Drina and Danube), in addition to the cavalry division and the volunteer corps, with 72 machine-gun sections. The artillery was supplied to a great extent by the French, except for a few guns saved in the retreat, to which some others captured from the enemy were afterwards added. They had 6 groups of 75 mm., 6 of 80 mm. mountain batteries (afterwards replaced by 65 mm. quick-firing guns), 6 groups of Krupp 70 mm. or Schneider 75 mm. mountain guns, 6 groups of 120 mm. howitzers, 6 batteries of 58 mm. trench guns. Scattered about the mountains along the border between Macedonia and Albania and in Macedonia there were irregular Serbian comitadji bands estimated, in July 1916, at about 5,000 men, who broke up and reformed according to circumstances, now attempting a raid, now hiding among the mountains. Other bands continued to exist in Old Serbia, and in fact they rose in revolt in the winter of 1916–17, causing serious anxiety to the enemy; the movement, however, was ruthlessly repressed.

But the situation of the Allies continued to be made extremely difficult by the conduct of the Greek authorities who, although officially neutral, were in reality most unfriendly. They had created a regular system of espionage in favour of the Central Empires, headed by Colonel Messalas, who sent reports of every variation in the strength and distribution of the Allied troops to the Ministry of War at Athens and to the King and Queen, whence they reached the German G.H.Q. The Consuls of the enemy States were naturally extremely active in this work of espionage and the Allied G.H.Q., owing to its peculiar situation, and not wishing to come to a regular breach with Greece, either because it was feared that she might definitely go over to the enemy or in the hope of inducing her to join the Entente, had its hands tied. When, however, in consequence of information supplied by enemy agents, German aeroplanes bombed the city, causing considerable damage, and killing a number of people, General Sarrail declared that he would henceforth consider the area occupied by the Allies as a war zone, and on the night of December 30th Franco-British patrols arrested the four enemy consuls and seized their archives, whence they obtained valuable information concerning enemy spies. A British detachment had on its own account arrested the German Consul at Drama in the train near Serres, in spite of violent rhodomontades and protests of the Greek officers in the same compartment.

Graver anxiety was caused by the Greek Army. At the end of 1915, its distribution was as follows: The I and II Corps were in Old Greece, except the artillery, which was between Salonica and Vassilika; the III Corps was echeloned between Salonica, Yenidje-Vardar, Verria, Ekshisu, Banitza and Florina; the IV between Serres and Drama, and the V between Langaza and Guvesne. In theory the Greek troops were to guard the frontier, preventing the Germans and Bulgarians from violating it, but none of the Allies had the slightest confidence that they would have offered any resistance to an attempt at invasion, even if they did not actively co-operate in it. Further, Greek officers and officials conducted an active and lucrative contraband in favour of the “hereditary enemy.” The British writer, G. Ward Price, notes that it is remarkable how instinctively the soldiers of the various Allied Armies—the most heterogeneous collection of characters, types and standards of conduct—were agreed in hating the Greeks at that time.[7]

The Allies now began to bring pressure to bear on the Greek Government in order that the Greek Army should be withdrawn from Macedonia and demobilized. On January 28th an Anglo-French detachment, with the co-operation of warships, among which was the Italian cruiser Piemonte, occupied the forts of Karaburun, south-east of Salonica, the port of which is dominated by them, and expelled the Greek garrison. On the night of January 31st-February 1st, a German Zeppelin bombarded Salonica; it was afterwards brought down and destroyed near the mouth of the Vardar, and at the same time luminous signals were seen coming from the city. General Sarrail, who since January 15th had assumed the control of the police, the railways and the telegraph, seized the occasion to proclaim the state of siege. The chief of the French Sûreté and the British A.P.M. proceeded little by little to cleanse the town of suspicious elements, and there was good need of it. In the meanwhile the Greek troops slowly and unwillingly began to evacuate Macedonia. On May 23rd, 1916, the Germano-Bulgar Army, on the pretext that the Allies were carrying out threatening movements in the Serres area, crossed the Greek frontier and demanded the evacuation of Fort Rupel dominating the narrow defile through which the Struma opens its way to the east Macedonian plain and flows down to the sea. The Commander of the garrison made a feeble protest, fired a few shots to salve his conscience, and asked for instructions from Athens. These were to the effect that he should hand over the fort with all its material, which he did with enthusiasm. In conformity with analogous instructions, the whole of the IV Corps, distributed through the Serres area and commanded by Colonel Hadzopoulos, surrendered to the Bulgarians and Germans, except 2,500 men of the Serres Division who, with their Commander, Colonel Christodoulos, refused to submit to this dishonour and managed to escape to the island of Thasos, whence in September they were transported to Salonica and formed the nucleus of the future Venizelist army.

The conduct of the Greek Government is explained by some retrospective history. M. Venizelos, although convinced of the erroneous policy pursued by King Constantine, hesitated to promote an open rebellion against him, also because he saw much weakness and indecision among the Allies. The King had dissolved the Chamber in June 1915, and whereas in that Parliament, which had been elected by 750,000 voters, the majority was in favour of Venizelos, in the new Chamber, elected by only 200,000 voters in December in an illegal manner under Government pressure and threats, the majority was hostile to him. But independently of these illegalities, Greek public opinion was to a great extent opposed to the policy of Venizelos, who desired the intervention of Greece in favour of the Entente, not only in order to meet Greece’s obligations of honour towards Serbia, but also in the higher interests of Greece herself. Facts have proved that he was right, but in 1915 the policy of Constantine might well have been deemed the more prudent. Serbia was, like Belgium, invaded and devastated; Bulgaria and Turkey allied to Germany and Austria; one half of Albania occupied by the Austrians and the other half by the Italians—the latter undesired neighbours of Greece—and German terrorist propaganda, which in Italy had failed so miserably, in Greece achieved the success of fear. “Should we throw ourselves into this conflict and run the risk of seeing our country invaded and devastated?” the Greeks asked themselves, and most of them came to the conclusion that it was better to remain neutral and to make money through war trade; from the point of view of their immediate interests, they were not altogether wrong. It is not true, however, that the whole population was pro-German. The King and the Queen (sister of the Emperor William) were pro-Germans, and so also were nearly the whole of the General Staff, and the majority of the generals and field officers educated in Germany or at least trained according to German methods. The masses were indifferent to the respective moral merits of the two groups of belligerents, and did not want war, and as Constantine would have found it extremely difficult to make war in open alliance with the Central Empires, he tried to help them by remaining neutral. In the popular mind Venizelos consequently came to be synonymous with intervention and Constantine with peace; the people preferred peace. Further, as the army was still mobilized there was a good deal of discontent, and the people regarded Venizelos as responsible for this state of things. Another reason in favour of neutrality was that if Greece had intervened she would have found herself in alliance with Italy, against whom she was much irritated owing to the question of the Dodecannese and Southern Albania. Finally, she had reason to believe that the Allies had offered a considerable part of Macedonia to Bulgaria in September 1915, in the vain hope of obtaining the latter’s intervention against the Central Powers. In the meanwhile, Venizelos was awaiting the moment for action. For all these reasons, the surrender of Rupel and of the IV Army Corps did not arouse that reaction which was expected, and which in other circumstances would certainly have occurred. King Constantine had received as a reward for his policy a loan from the Central Empires of 75 million drachmæ, while at the same time he was trying to negotiate another for 125 millions from the Allies. In spite of the declaration of the Prime Minister, M. Skouloudis, in the Chamber, there was a general belief throughout the Allied countries, as even M. Coronillas, Greek Minister in Rome, and his colleague in Paris, M. Caclamanos admitted, that the Government of King Constantine had concluded an agreement with Thrace, Germany and Bulgaria.[8] The treachery of Rupel and the 4th Corps produced very unfavourable results for the Allies. The whole of Eastern Macedonia fell into the hands of the enemy without a blow having been struck. Demir-Hissar, Serres, Drama, Kavalla were occupied by the Bulgarians, and the fighting line was brought to the course of the Struma from Rupel to the sea, and although these towns might have been retaken without great difficulty, they were dominated by very strong positions on the mountains behind them, which were immediately fortified. For this reason, Great Britain, France and Russia renewed their demands on the Government at Athens in order that all the remaining Greek troops be withdrawn into Greece, the army demobilized, and the anti-Constitutional Government abolished.[9] It will be noted that in all the affairs of Greece it was always these three Governments who acted, and not the Entente as a whole. This was due to the fact that, owing to the London Convention of May 7, 1832, these three Powers were declared the protectors of the Greek Kingdom and of its Constitution. The evacuation of Macedonia was carried out slowly, as was also the demobilization. What remained of the Greek Army was nearly all concentrated in the Peloponnese, where it could be easily watched and prevented from returning towards Macedonia. But the Royal Government did everything in its power to avoid fulfilling its engagements, and while the demobilization was being carried out, leagues of Epistrates (Reservists) were being formed. These associations, organized by officers devoted to King Constantine, constituted a new element hostile to the Entente. Then also, the Government tried to maintain armed forces in Northern Greece by strengthening the gendarmerie and creating hidden deposits of arms. Although the importance of these attempts were much exaggerated, they nevertheless caused some anxiety to the Allied Armies in Macedonia.

CHAPTER II
OPERATIONS IN THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1916

I have already set forth the reasons wherefore I consider that Italy’s participation in the Macedonian expedition was opportune, and indeed indispensable. Our Government was finally convinced of this necessity, but accepted it somewhat unwillingly, both for political and military reasons; consequently our participation was ever maintained within modest proportions. In accordance with the terms of the agreement concluded between ourselves and our Allies, Italy undertook, in the summer of 1916, to participate in the Macedonian expedition with a division, which, however, was only to be provided with mountain artillery; the field and heavy artillery attached to our contingent was to be supplied by the French Army. There were then some good reasons for not endowing these troops too generously with artillery; the Italian Army in general was inadequately provided with guns, and during the Austrian offensive from the Trentino in the spring of that year it had lost many batteries, especially of medium and heavy calibre. These reasons, however, did not continue to exist in the later phases of the campaign, but nevertheless our expeditionary force in the Balkans was never provided with artillery of its own, except with the above-mentioned mountain batteries, a fact which was to cause us considerable difficulties in the future.

Our contingent consisted of the 35th Infantry Division, a name destined to occupy a high place in the roll of honour of the Italian Army, although it has been hitherto less well known than that of many other units. To this division many other detachments had been added which properly belong to an army corps or even an army. Originally, it had consisted of the Sicilia Brigade (61st and 62nd Infantry Regiments)[10] and the Cagliari Brigade (63rd and 64th), several machine-gun companies, a squadron of the Lucca Light Cavalry (16th Regiment), eight mountain batteries of four 65 mm. guns each, various companies of engineers, transport and other services, etc. The division had achieved an honourable record on the Alpine front, where it had suffered heavy losses; but before coming out to the East it had been reorganized, brought up to full strength, and admirably equipped. The command of the force had been entrusted to General Petitti di Roreto, a very distinguished and gallant officer, and an excellent organizer; his Chief of the Staff was Colonel Garbasso.

The first Italian detachments reached Salonica on August 11, 1916. The fine appearance, smart equipment, and the vigorous and martial aspect of the men in their grey-green uniforms and steel helmets, marching along the quay under the brilliant summer sun, created an excellent impression. Representatives of the various Allied armies were there to receive them, with the band of the Zouaves. The numerous and patriotic Italian colony, which had seen the troops of almost all the other Allied armies arrive—there was even a Russian contingent which had come over from France—was in a paroxysm of excitement when at last it saw the Italian troops and admired the battle flags of our fine regiments fluttering in the breeze. It was not only to strengthen the Allied front in the Orient that it was advisable to send an Italian contingent, but also to affirm Italian prestige among the Balkan peoples, a duty which the 35th Division fulfilled no less well than it accomplished its purely military tasks.

Our expeditionary force was at first destined to take part in an action on the Macedonian front, in co-operation with the Russian and Roumanian offensive, Roumania’s intervention being already decided. But the total strength of all the Allied forces in Macedonia was insufficient for an operation on a large scale, and by the time the Italians had landed this scheme was hardly thought of any longer. General Petitti was to take orders directly from the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in the Orient (General Sarrail), as regards the tactical employment of his troops, but he alone was responsible for all the details of their employment, and it was agreed that the Italian division should not be split up.

The Italians had not come to the Balkans to stop in Salonica, and General Petitti was anxious to be sent to the front at once. He was at first entrusted with the Krusha Balkan sector, east of Lake Doiran and opposite the Beles mountains, a formidable and imposing rock barrier strongly held by the Bulgars. A month after the landing of the first detachment the bulk of the division was already at the front. This area, which had been first held by the 57th French Division, was not then very active, but we had a front of 48 km. to hold with only two brigades; there were no defences to speak of, and everything had to be created anew. In the short time which we occupied it we completely transformed it. Many lines of trenches were dug, wire entanglements laid down, works of all kinds constructed, and, in addition, the whole area was provided by us with a complete network of roads.

GENERAL LEBLOIS BIDDING FAREWELL TO GENERAL PETITTI AT TEPAVCI.

LANDING OF ITALIAN TROOPS AT SALONICA.

To face p. 38.

At first we were in liaison with the British on our right and the French on our left; besides occupying the Krusha Balkan positions, we also relieved the French in certain advanced positions in the valley between the former range and the Beles. General Petitti from the first disapproved of this distribution, because the aforesaid advanced positions were isolated and so far from the main body of his forces that they could not receive assistance in case of a sudden attack, nor be protected by artillery, being beyond the range of our guns. General Sarrail insisted on those positions being maintained, but the Italian Commander repeatedly requested to be authorized to evacuate them, all the more so as they represented no military advantage. They were held by a battalion of the 62nd Regiment, of which one company was at Gornji Poroj, a large village at the foot of the Beles range, and the others at other points in the valley. Finally, on September 17th, he received instructions to evacuate them, and he immediately gave the necessary orders. On the day fixed for the withdrawal Gornji Poroj was suddenly attacked by overwhelming Bulgarian forces, but it should be noted that the attack had been provoked by us in order to give support to another attack which the British were carrying out elsewhere. The Gornji Poroj Company (the 6th),[11] was faced by a battalion and a half of Bulgars, and had orders to resist at all costs so as to protect the withdrawal of the other three companies, and it carried out its task with great gallantry. The Bulgarian barrage fire prevented the arrival of reinforcements, and the company was soon entirely surrounded. It continued to hold out throughout the afternoon and night, and it was not until 36 hours after the commencement of the engagement, when its ammunition had given out, that the gallant survivors ended their resistance with a charge. The battalion commander continued to hear in the far distance the cries “Savoia!” and “Viva l’Italia!” without being able to send assistance. Some 180 men failed to answer the roll call. The 8th Company, which had remained at Poroj Station, some distance from the village, to collect stragglers, was also attacked and almost surrounded by superior hostile forces, but managed to effect its withdrawal during the night.

General Petitti soon had occasion to be dissatisfied with the conduct of General Sarrail towards the Italians. As I have said, we had a French division (the 16th Colonial) on our left. On September 26th the Italian Command learned from General Gérome, without any warning from G.H.Q., that a part of that division was being withdrawn, as well as certain other detachments on the lines of communication which were expected to act as reinforcements for our troops. Thus the Italians found themselves with their left flank in the air and not a single battalion in support nearer than Salonica, whereas they had 6 Bulgarian regiments directly in front of them and a whole division on their flank. General Sarrail even wanted them to extend their line towards the left so as to relieve the departing troops. General Petitti addressed an energetic protest to General Sarrail against such conduct, refused to extend his front, and referred the matter to the Italian Supreme Command. The protest proved effective, and a British brigade relieved the departing French.

We now found ourselves with the British on our left as well as on our right. From the very first our relations with the British Army had always been of the friendliest nature. This complete collaboration between the armies of the two Allied countries was afterwards intensified on the Italian front, but I do not think that the feeling was anywhere more intimate or cordial than in Macedonia, and this in spite of the insinuations of General Sarrail to General Petitti. During the two years in which the Italians fought on the Macedonian front there was never the slightest conflict or disagreement between ourselves and the British, which is more, I venture to think, than can be said for any other two armies on that front.

Knowledge of the incidents with the Italians reached the French G.H.Q. and General Sarrail received a reprimand from his superiors in consequence. On October 2nd he came to our H.Q. at Karamudi with the Prince Regent of Serbia and two French parliamentary commissioners, and after the usual exchange of compliments, he complained to General Petitti that he had caused him (Sarrail) to be reproved by Marshal Joffre. General Petitti replied that he had merely communicated to the Italian Comando Supremo the protest which he had sent to General Sarrail himself. The latter showed him Joffre’s telegram, in which it was stated that he had failed to maintain a spirit of camaraderie with Petitti; General Petitti then showed him the text of his own telegram to the Comando Supremo, whereupon General Sarrail, addressing himself to the Prince Regent of Serbia and the two deputies, said: “From the cordial manner in which General Petitti has received us, you will gather by what a friendly spirit of camaraderie we are united, and how a trifling incident has been magnified.” This explained the reason why Sarrail had induced the Prince Regent of Serbia and the two French political men to accompany him to Karamudli.

Our troops suffered a great deal from malaria, their area being one of the unhealthiest in the country. The broad valley between the Krusha Balkan and the Beles ranges, which had once been thickly populated and well cultivated, was now a desert; having been abandoned for two years, it constituted a terrible hotbed of malarial fever. The shores of the lakes of Doiran and Butkova, at the two ends of the valley, are marshy, and muddy watercourses flow sluggishly down, widening the fen zone. The troops in the lower positions near the plain were the worst sufferers, and a large part of the malaria cases in the Cerna loop in 1917 and 1918 were in reality relapses from the Krusha Balkan period.

During the spring of 1916 the Germans and Bulgars had been busy preparing for an offensive on a large scale against the Allies. The 11th Bulgarian Division, composed of Macedonian troops, who were not too trustworthy and provided a number of deserters, was dissolved. The Monastir front was strengthened with units drawn from the Dobrugia and Eastern Macedonia. In the spring there were 3 Bulgarian divisions between Strumitza and Xanthi, 3 in the Dobrugia and 5 in the Monastir area, in addition to 2 German divisions, and in July we have the following distribution of forces; 3 divisions and 1 cavalry brigade in the Dobrugia, 2 brigades and some other units on the Struma, 2 Bulgarian and 1 German division (the only one left in Macedonia) on the Vardar, all these forces being detailed for the attack on the entrenched camp at Salonica. In the Monastir plain there was a mobile reserve for attack consisting of two infantry divisions and 3 cavalry brigades. In all, 8 Bulgarian infantry and 1 cavalry division, 1 German division, and 1 or 2 Turkish divisions. The plan consists of a rapid offensive on the two wings, with the object of cutting the Allies’ retreat towards Greece or Albania,[12] so as to oblige General Sarrail to fight a siege battle and perhaps to capitulate. Since the retreat along the Vardar down to the summer of 1916 Sarrail had had orders to remain on the defensive, but now that the alliance with Roumania had been concluded, the Entente Powers contemplated, as we have seen, an operation in Macedonia to give support to the Roumanian Army and perhaps effect a junction with it. Roumania declared war on August 28th, but she had asked that the Army of the Orient should attack ten days before. It was, on the contrary, the enemy who was the first to attack.

General Sarrail was now “Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in the Orient,” and his command was known as the Commandement des Armées Alliées, abbreviated “C.A.A.” The French troops under his orders were grouped together under the name of Armée française d’Orient (commonly called the “A.F.O.”), and then commanded by General Cordonnier. It was the latter who conducted the operations of the summer and autumn of 1916.

On August 17th the Bulgarians crossed the Greek frontier at two points, advancing eastward to the mouth of the Struma and westward towards Lake Ostrovo, which they reached on the 23rd. Soon after they occupied Florina and Banitza, obliging the Serbs, who were holding that area, to fall back on Ekshisu and Sorovich.

Against the enemy the Allies disposed of the following forces: rather less than 200,000 French and British, 120,000 Serbs, 10,000 Russians (who had arrived in July) and 30,000 Italians. The French artillery amounted to 346 guns, the British to 370, the Serbian to 284, ours to 32. The machine guns were a little over 1,300, the cavalry about 3300 sabres. In all 360,000 men, but in reality the strengths were much reduced owing to malaria and the difficulties of communications, so that barely half of that number was available.

The enemy had one great advantage as compared with the Allies—the real and effective unity of command. While the greater part of the enemy forces were Bulgarian the chief command was German, and it was exercised without question. The Allies on the other hand only resigned themselves to the unity of command—that of General Sarrail—in July, 1916, and even then most unwillingly. The other Allied commanders had no confidence in Sarrail’s military qualities, and above all distrusted him for his taste for petty political intrigue. Consequently he could never exercise that absolute authority which is an indispensable condition for success.

Our expeditionary force took orders from General Sarrail, but when any question of great importance arose, such as the change of sector of the division or of a part of it, the extension of its front, etc., the consent of the Italian Comando Supremo was necessary. All this of course interfered with the development of the operations, and General Sarrail complains about his situation in that connexion very bitterly in his memoirs, but it was due to his own defects as recognized by all.

The Bulgarian advance in the Monastir area at one moment made the situation of the Allies appear really critical, because if the enemy had succeeded in breaking through the line on the mountains north of Vodena there would have been nothing more to stop them from descending to the plain and consequently penetrating into Greece, and the Allies would have had to remain besieged within the entrenched camp of Salonica. But the further they advanced the more they became exhausted, whereas while the Serbs fell back they were more and more strongly reinforced. The critical point was the Lake of Ostrovo; on August 22nd the Serb left repulsed five successive attacks on the heights west of the lake between the Kayalar plain and the Rudnik basin, and was subsequently reinforced by a part of the 156th French division. The Allies immediately launched their counter-offensive, which was also designed to assist the Roumanians, then just commencing hostilities.

On August 25th an Anglo-French incident occurred, neither the first nor the last. General Cordonnier had requested General Sarrail that the French Division on the Vardar, then at the disposal of the British, should be placed under his own orders for the imminent operations towards Monastir. General Sarrail not having authority to give orders to General Milne, merely passed on the request to him; but General Milne would not agree to the departure of more than one French regiment. At the same time General Cordonnier, having placed some French batteries at the disposal of the Serbs, at their own request, sent a French general to the Serbian Army as “artillery commander.” This aroused vigorous protests at the Serbian G.H.Q. in Salonica, and the French artillery general had to be satisfied with the title of “adviser.”

The duty of the British and of the Italians in the eastern area was to watch the enemy and keep them occupied with demonstrative actions, while the Serbs’ objectives were the Malka Nidze and Kaimakchalan mountains, and the French and Russians under Cordonnier were to attack the Bulgarians’ flank further west. The attack was to take place on the 12th of September on the western sector, but there were considerable difficulties owing to the great distance from Verria where the reserves were concentrated, and it was by no means easy to distribute them so that they should be at the disposal of General Cordonnier. On the 13th the Serbs advanced fighting, and occupied the Malka Nidze and Ostrovo, capturing 25 guns, the 156th Division pushed on from Kayalar and Rudnik towards Banitza, the Russians towards the Neretzka and the 57th French Division, with the two regiments of Chasseurs d’Afrique, towards Kastoria. On the 17th the French and Russians occupied Florina, and the Serbs, after having driven the Bulgarians from the bare sinister heights of Gornichevo—the pass between the lake of Ostrovo and the Monastir plain—attacked them with fierce energy on the Kaimakchalan. The Bulgarians resisted desperately, but the Serbs, spurred on by the incentive of wresting from the enemy a first tract of their invaded fatherland, after a long protracted struggle captured the positions. Barely a hundred Bulgars were taken prisoners; the other defenders were all dead. On September 29th the Bulgars still held a line south of Monastir, passing through Kenali and along the north bank of the Cerna; the French and the Serbs had been ordered by Sarrail to attack once more, but they were repulsed owing to the failure of the artillery preparation.

General Sarrail was determined to achieve a theatrical success at all costs, and on the 28th he ordered a fresh attack for October 2nd in the plain south of Monastir. General Cordonnier, after having conferred with the commander of one of the Russian brigades, replied that, owing to the state of exhaustion of his troops, it was impossible to demand this fresh effort from them so soon. But Sarrail, still conducting the campaign from his office in Salonica, reiterated the order. The date of the attack was adjourned for a few days, then again anticipated, thus imposing a vast amount of work on the Staff to keep up with these various changes. Finally the Franco-Russian attack was launched on October 6th, but it achieved no other result than that of costing the Allies heavy losses, without gaining any ground to speak of. But the surrender of a whole Bulgarian battalion convinced the C.-in-C. that the moral of the enemy was very much depressed, and he ordered yet another attack which took place on the 14th. It was no more successful than the previous one, and cost the French 1,500 casualties. General Sarrail then went to General Cordonnier’s H.Q., and in the presence of various French and foreign officers of inferior rank, made a violent scene to the Commander of the A.F.O. He declared that it was only the Serbs who had done anything at all, and refused to listen to his excuses. General Dietrich, commanding one of the Russian brigades, wrote a letter protesting against the order of attack addressed to Cordonnier, but intended for Sarrail, and sent a copy of it to the Russian Government.

General Petitti was anxious that the 35th Division should not remain inactive during these operations. In October the Ivrea brigade (161st and 162nd Regiments), commanded by General Beltramo, had arrived, together with a second squadron of the Lucca Cavalry Regiment and some other detachments, which brought our effectives up to over 50,000 men. General Sarrail now asked General Petitti whether he preferred to extend his front to the left, so as to relieve the British, or, making an exception to the principle that the division was not to be split up, to send a brigade to take part in the operations in the Monastir area. For political reasons, i.e. to render our co-operation more effective, and also because he was certain that the arrangements for any extension of his front would be made regardless of the forces actually at his disposal, General Petitti chose the second alternative. Having asked for and obtained the necessary authority from the Comando Supremo, he sent the Cagliari Brigade with a squadron of cavalry and some mountain batteries towards Monastir.

It was then possible to realize how appalling was the state of communications in Macedonia. The Salonica-Monastir railway had a very small carrying capacity, and we could only dispose of three trains a day for transport of our troops. The movement began on October 22nd, and the Command had orders to advance from Ekshisu on November 7th, but as the various services had not yet all arrived the march was unable to commence until the 11th. When General Roques, the French Minister of War, came to Macedonia, he spoke of sending out fresh contingents of troops, but General Petitti wisely reminded him that in the present state of the roads these reinforcements would be immobilized and useless.

The task of the Cagliari Brigade was to relieve the left brigade of the 57th French Division and advance along the crest of the Baba range south-west of Monastir, towards Kichevo and Gradeshnitza. A French column was to advance in a direction parallel to ours, between the crest of the ridge and the plain, while a Franco-Russian group marched forward across the plain directly towards Monastir. On the right the Serbs were operating in the Kaimakchalan-Cerna loop area. The advance of our troops was extremely hard, as the Cagliari Brigade, besides having to overcome the vigorous resistance of the enemy, had to struggle against the snow blizzards over very broken ground, some 2,000 m. above the sea. The brigade had a front of attack of 12 km., and advanced slowly, gaining ground step by step, amid very deep snow. On the 18th it occupied the Ostretz hill, on the 19th the 63rd Regiment conquered the “tooth” of Velusina and occupied Hill 2209.

In the meanwhile the Serbs had made considerable progress at the extreme right. On October 31st they reached Tepavci in the Cerna loop (our future H.Q.); on November 2nd, Jaratok; on the 5th, Hill 1378, the culminating point of the southern part of the loop. In the centre the Franco-Russian column advanced fighting and broke through the Kenali line. But here the Germans and Bulgarians offered a more stubborn resistance, and on the 14th they repulsed an Allied attack with heavy loss. The fall of Hill 1378 and the Italian advance along the Baba range, however, threatened all the enemy positions round Monastir, which were now no longer tenable. On the 15th the Bulgarians abandoned their lines and soon afterwards evacuated Monastir. On the 19th a platoon of French cavalry entered the town, followed by the rest of the Franco-Russian column.

The Cagliari Brigade and the French at its right were to have pushed on towards the Tzrvena Stena so as to capture the positions north-west of Monastir. In fact, on the 21st the 63rd Regiment, after having overcome the enemy’s resistance, captured Bratindol. But the French column lower down, instead of continuing its advance in a parallel direction towards the Tzervena Stena, effected a conversion to the right and entered Monastir where it should never have gone. This obliged the Cagliari Brigade to deviate also towards Monastir, as it could not advance with its right flank as well as its left uncovered. Our troops were disappointed in not having been able, through no fault of their own, to participate directly in the taking of Monastir, to which they had so greatly contributed, nor to drive the enemy from the positions dominating the town from the north and north-west. Then there came an order from G.H.Q., Salonica, suspending any further advance beyond Monastir, and the French who had occupied some heights 5 km. from the town, advanced no more. This brief respite gave the enemy, who had been in full retreat towards Prilep, fresh courage, and they now returned and reoccupied some important positions on Hill 1248; thence they proceeded to bombard Monastir, which remained under fire until the offensive of September 1918. The bad weather and the complete defeat of the Roumanians induced the Entente Governments to suspend operations in Macedonia.

The Italian troops entered Monastir soon after its occupation, and on that occasion General Petitti, Brigadier-General Desenzani and some other officers and men were wounded by the explosion of a shell near the Italian Consulate, and Major Tamajo, engineer-in-chief of the expeditionary force was killed.

The Serbs continued to advance, fighting from height to height and had even captured Hill 1050, destined to become so famous, but worn out and exhausted as they were with the long-drawn struggle and endless marching, they were unable to withstand the fierce counter-attacks of the enemy and the highest summit was lost. One of their armies was reduced from 30,000 men to 6,000, and they were for the time being incapable of any further effort.

On November 26th General Sarrail called on General Petitti in the hospital at Salonica and informed him that the whole Italian expeditionary force was to be relieved on the Krusha Balkan by the British, and thence transferred to the Monastir area. This transfer gave yet another opportunity for realizing how badly organized was the inter-Allied G.H.Q. The British were sent into our area without the Italian Command having been warned, so that the Italian troops were not yet ready to leave; the arrangements for the movement of troops were extremely faulty, and the Italian Command and above all the Intendenza were over-burdened with work necessary to make good deficiencies for which they were not themselves responsible. The march proved extremely arduous, above all owing to the lack of roads, the destruction of the villages and the floods, which, especially between Sarigöl and Naresh and between Topshin and Vertekop, had been very serious. For weeks our troops never had a dry resting place. Even the horse-drawn cavalry lorries could not proceed, and had to be substituted by the small battalion carts. An English journalist tells the story of a M.T. driver who was seen by his comrades buried up to the neck in mud, and while they were trying to extricate him from his difficulties, he said gaily: “I am all right, I am standing on the roof of my lorry!”

During this period there were fears of an attack by the Greeks, and General Sarrail decided to send some troops to the south to defend the defiles from a possible Greek invasion from Thessaly. He therefore asked General Petitti to send the two brigades of the 35th Division, which had come from the Krusha Balkan, to Verria instead of to Veretekop. General Petitti consented, although the movement promised to be very difficult owing to the state of the roads. The information supplied by G.H.Q. in this connexion proved absolutely erroneous, and orders and counter-orders followed each other in quick succession. Finally, on December 12th, General Sarrail ordered the concentration of the whole division at Negochani, 15 km. east of Monastir, as news had been received of the arrival of a German division at Prilep and an enemy counter-attack was expected. The movement was carried out, and on the 18th Sarrail ordered our troops to relieve the French in the sector due north of Monastir.

General Petitti raised objections to the arrangement proposed. In the first place his troops, who had been on the march since the beginning of the previous month without a break, their services being completely disorganized owing to the confusion reigning at G.H.Q., were in absolute need of rest. The Cagliari Brigade in particular was exhausted by the long and difficult march through the snows of Mount Baba. For the defence of Monastir, which was one of the most ticklish sectors of the whole front, at least one brigade was needed as a mobile reserve, but the 35th Division was not in a position to provide it. Further, it was necessary that the question of field and medium calibre artillery to be assigned to our expeditionary force should be settled. “I do not propose,” wrote General Petitti to General Sarrail, “to undertake the responsibility of the defence of Monastir unless I am placed in a position to do so with at least a probability of success; I do not intend to sacrifice my troops and the honour of my Army by exposing myself to an almost certain defeat, thus allowing it afterwards to be said that the Italians were unable to hold what the other Allies had conquered.” As a matter of fact, he felt sure that General Sarrail would not place at his disposal the means necessary for the defence of Monastir, and he believed that the C.-in-C. merely wished to rid himself of this awkward task by handing it over to us, so as to be able to wash his hands of all responsibility if the enemy succeeded in reconquering the town. The true reason of the objections of the Italian Commander was his want of confidence in the loyalty and military qualities of General Sarrail.

On December 18th Sarrail again called on Petitti at the hospital, and asked him to choose his own sector himself, undertaking to place at his disposal two groups of 75 mm. batteries and the medium calibre artillery which happened to be already in the sector chosen, and to leave the division which the 35th was about to relieve in its immediate rear, unless and until it became necessary to employ it elsewhere owing to exceptional circumstances. Subsequently General Petitti, who was now recovered, went to Florina, and, by agreement with General Leblois, the new Commander of the A.F.O. who had relieved General Cordonnier, he chose the western part of the Cerna loop, from Novak to Makovo as his sector, and this arrangement was approved by General Sarrail. Our division relieved one and a half French divisions and one Serbian division. As the whole of the 35th Division would now be supported on either side by troops of the A.F.O., Petitti himself proposed that he should be placed tactically under the orders of the Command of the latter. During the month of December the whole expeditionary force was concentrated in its new sector in the Cerna loop (except of course the base units at Salonica and the L.O.C. detachments), and there it remained until September 1918, save for a few slight rectifications of the line.

After the occupation of Monastir, the distribution of the Allied forces was stabilized as follows. From Ersek, where a liaison had been effected with our Albanian force (I shall deal later with the relations between the armies in Macedonia and those in Albania) to the eastern arm of the Cerna, the line was held by the A.F.O. The latter now comprised seven French divisions, viz. the 30th, the 57th, the 76th, the 156th, and the 11th Colonial, the two Russian brigades, the 35th Italian, the 16th and 17th French Colonial Divisions. Of the two Russian brigades which were for a short time in the Cerna loop, one was soon afterwards transferred to the lake of Presba and the other to the east of the Cerna. Later, when they were amalgamated into one division, they were concentrated in the Presba area, where they remained until their final break up. The 16th and 17th Colonial Divisions were on our right in the Cerna loop. Between the Cerna and a point near Nonte there were the three Serbian armies, afterwards reduced to two. The line between Nonte and the Vardar was held by the 122nd French Division, subsequently strengthened by one, later on by two, and finally by three Greek divisions. The A.F.O. was divided into two “groupements de divisions” (corresponding to army corps), one between the Cerna and Albania, one in the Cerna loop (comprising the Italian troops); the 122nd Division with the Greek forces afterwards added to it formed the “1^er groupement.” Between the Vardar and the mouth of the Struma in the Gulf of Orfano was the British area—the XII Corps (10th, 22nd and 26th Divisions) from the Vardar to lake Butkova, and the XVI Corps (27th, 28th and 60th Divisions) from Butkova to the sea. There were in addition the 228th Garrison Brigade and two cavalry brigades. The 10th and 60th Divisions and the cavalry brigades were transferred to the Palestine front in the summer of 1917.

The medium and heavy calibre artillery was wholly French and British, and in the A.F.O. all the artillery was French, except for the Italian mountain batteries, to which the Greek ones were afterwards added. A fixed quantity of French field and medium calibre artillery had been assigned to our division, and it was placed under the orders of the Italian artillery commander. Some other medium and heavy artillery, which was under the orders of the Army Command, was from time to time assigned to the Italian sector in varying quantities, according to necessity.

The Allied strengths at the beginning of 1917 were roughly as follows:

I shall subsequently have occasion to mention the variations in these strengths.

This distribution shows how General Sarrail’s object was to have French detachments always dovetailed in between troops of other nationalities. Thus the Russians, who were at first divided into two separate groups, were between two French divisions, the 35th Italian Division was also between two French divisions, while French units separated the Italians from the Serbs and the latter from a British and the Greeks. He knew that he did not enjoy sufficient prestige with the other Allies to be able to do what he liked with them, so that he kept French troops scattered about all over the front, and he stated that he acted thus in order to avoid incidents between Allies who did not get on with each other. But he never succeeded in having the whole of the Armée d’Orient under his absolute control, and for every operation undertaken in common or transfers of non-French units, diplomatic negotiations were necessary, in which the interested Governments took part and did not always decide according to Sarrail’s desires. General Leblois commanded the A.F.O. for a short time, and was subsequently relieved by General Grossetti, an excellent officer with whom our Command was always on the best of terms. Unfortunately he became seriously ill, and had to return to France, where he died. General Régnault succeeded him temporarily, and finally General Henrys, who commanded the A.F.O. until the end of the war. With him, too, our Command always got on satisfactorily.

The Allies were faced by the enemy’s Army of the Orient, under a German Commander-in-Chief, General von Scholtz, whose G.H.Q. was at Uskub, with a German Staff. In the early part of the campaign, until after the fall of Monastir, the Army comprised several German divisions, 2 Turkish ones and some Austrian battalions. But gradually the German units were withdrawn, except the Staffs of the C.-in-C., of one of the armies, 2 corps and 1 division, some infantry battalions (at first they were about 20, afterwards reduced to 3 or 4), the artillery and some detachments of specialists (air force, engineers, machine gunners, trench-mortar companies, Flammenwerfer, etc). The Turkish forces were all withdrawn, except the 177th Infantry Regiment, which remained until the beginning of 1918. Several Austrian battalions remained in the area west of the lake of Ochrida, some of whom took orders from the Macedonian Command, whereas others, although they were facing detachments of the Allied armies in Macedonia, belonged to the Austrian Army in Albania. All the rest of the infantry was Bulgarian, and there was also a considerable amount of Bulgarian artillery.

The area between the lake of Ochrida and the Mala Rupa (east of Nonte) was held by the so-called XI German Army (German, as we have seen, only in name and regards the command, but composed almost entirely of Bulgarian troops), with its H.Q. at Prilep and commanded by General von Steuben. It comprised two corps, the LXI and LXII German Corps, whose liaison was at the western curve of the Cerna. The LXI consisted of some Austrian battalions, the mixed Bulgarian division, the 4th, 1st, and 6th Bulgarian Divisions. The LXII Corps comprised the 301st German Division consisting of a few German battalions, and several Bulgarian regiments. It occupied the whole of the Cerna loop opposite our division and the two French colonial divisions. Further east were the 2nd and 3rd Bulgarian Divisions. From the Mala Rupa to a point on the Beles range opposite Dova Tepe (east of Lake Doiran) the line was held by the I Bulgarian Army comprising the 5th, 9th and Mountain Divisions. Next, from Dova Tepe to the sea, came the II Bulgarian Army (commanded by General Lukoff), together with elements of the IV Army; the II comprised the 7th, 8th and 10th Divisions. Along the Ægean coast as far as the river Mesta, the Ægean Coast Defence Group was spread out. The II Army was nominally independent of the German Command, but practically it was, like the whole of the rest of the Bulgarian Army, at the complete disposal of the Germans. The Bulgarian Commander-in-Chief was General Gekoff. The total strength of the enemy on the Orient front varied from 600,000 to 800,000. The number of battalions was slightly inferior to that of the Allies, but the battalions were stronger, and whereas all Allied reinforcements had to be transported by sea, with great difficulties and still greater risks, the enemy’s depots were close at hand. Moreover, Germany and Austria were, until the beginning of 1918, ever able to send troops to the Balkans with much greater facility and speed than we could. Even Turkey might have sent reinforcements to Macedonia by rail; but Germany did not wish to make use of this assistance, because the Bulgarians were jealous of Turkish co-operation in a country like Macedonia, which until a few years ago had formed part of the Ottoman Empire.

The number of the enemy’s field and mountain guns was slightly inferior to that of the Allies, but they were much stronger in medium and heavy calibre guns; they also had a number of guns of greater calibre and range than anything of which we could boast, and they kept their forces on the Macedonian front supplied with their best and most up-to-date material, whereas the Allies neglected theirs.

The enemy defences, which were rudimentary at first, were gradually perfected until they came to constitute a system of really formidable fortifications, especially in the Monastir area, Hill 1050, and the sector west of Lake Doiran. Opposite the Serbian area and in certain other sectors there were fewer artificial defences, but the enemy positions were there, as indeed along almost the whole of the front, infinitely superior to ours. In the Italian sector, as we shall see, the summits of the ridge were all in the hands of the enemy, by whom our lines of access were to a large extent dominated; the same conditions existed opposite the II Serbian Army (Dobropolje-Vetrenik area) and opposite the British, west of Lake Doiran.

It should always be borne in mind that the war in Macedonia, owing to the nature of the country in which the operations took place, the scarcity of railways, roads and resources, the pestilent climate, the sparse population and the great distances which separated us from our centres of supplies, was essentially a colonial campaign. But the Germans, and the Bulgars organized and trained by the Germans, had all the means and materials of modern war at their disposal. During the early days of the expedition the Allied Command was not even provided with staff officers who were well acquainted with modern warfare, and the material means which the armies received from Europe were of inferior quality. The C.A.A. never attributed sufficient weight to these difficulties.

CHAPTER III
THE COMMAND OF THE ALLIED ARMIES IN THE ORIENT. THE FRENCH TROOPS.

Let us now see how the Chief Command of the Allied Armies at Salonica was organized. This should have been essentially an inter-Allied Command. But in practice it always remained a French Command, to which some liaison officers were attached representing the other Allied armies. Instead of devoting his attention to operations exclusively, and particularly to those executed by several Allied forces in collaboration, General Sarrail, and to a lesser extent even his successors, was principally occupied with the Armée française d’Orient, although the latter had its own Command and Staff. Sarrail moreover attended personally to a number of other matters, such as the police, the Press and postal censorship, trade, archæology etc., which ought not to have required the attention of the Commander-in-Chief, or at least should have been delegated by him to subordinates.

General Sarrail came to Salonica from the French front, where he had commanded the III Army. He had proved himself a gallant soldier, and had distinguished himself at the Marne and at the first battle of Verdun. But he was not a good army commander, nor was he popular at G.H.Q. on account of his intriguing nature. The French Government wished to get rid of him, and, having recalled him from the command of the III Army, contemplated sending him to the East to take command of an expedition which was to have operated in the Dardanelles and in Asia Minor. But when the impossibility of holding the Dardanelles became manifest that scheme was abandoned, and General Sarrail was appointed to command the troops in Macedonia. He at first did not wish to go, as he regarded that command as inferior to his rank, but he soon saw that the choice lay between Salonica and Limoges, so that he had to accept.

He therefore reached Macedonia under the shadow of failure, and this was the initial reason which prevented him from exercising great authority or personal prestige over the other Allied commanders. His policy of intrigue increased this lack of confidence in him. In a certain passage of his memoirs he makes the characteristic admission that, while he was still in Paris before coming out to take up his duties in the East, M. Millerand, then Minister of War, enjoined on him at their last interview “not to frequent members of Parliament.” He was extremely ambitious and had high political aspirations, so that from the beginning of his reign at Salonica we find him deeply involved in diplomatic questions, and he subordinated his whole military activity to political considerations. He never showed himself a really inter-Allied commander; he constantly acted in what he thought were the interests of France, but he understood French interests only in the narrowest and most exclusive sense, not only to the detriment of the interests of the other Allies, but also to that of a common friendly agreement of all the Allies, and consequently even of the real higher interests of his own country. Many of the far more serious disagreements which have subsequently developed between France and her Allies have their remote origins in the bickerings engendered by General Sarrail’s policy in Macedonia.

In appearance he was a handsome, attractive-looking man, of martial bearing, in spite of his white hair, and he was affable with everybody. He affected a slightly exaggerated bonhomie which occasionally assumed a somewhat vulgar tone, easily degenerating into coarseness. Nor did he always maintain that dignity which should characterize the bearing of every officer, but particularly of one invested with such important functions. He allowed Captain Mathieu, attached to his Staff (an officer of whom I shall have more to say later) to behave and adopt a tone towards him at his own mess which scandalized the other French or Allied officers who were present at these unedifying scenes. A freemason, an anti-Clerical, of strong Radical-Socialist sympathies, he had composed his Staff of officers having the same views, many of whom had no other qualifications for their jobs. The great majority of the French officers were anything but enthusiastic towards Sarrail’s military and political conduct; they complained of favouritism in the matter of promotions for merit, which were reserved for a small clique of officers in his immediate entourage, and were seldom granted to the real fighters. He rarely visited the front, save on the occasion of ceremonies, conferring of medals, official visits, etc. He prepared his plans of operations in his office at Salonica, where he spent nearly all his time, even during important offensives.

His amorous relations were the subject of a vast amount of gossip. His friendship for a Russian lady of high rank reached such a point that she was allowed to enter his office at G.H.Q. at any moment, even when he himself was not there and confidential documents were spread about his desk. The lady in question was actually suspected of espionage, and apart from this charge, which was probably unfounded, she was also accused of illicit interference in political and military affairs. In this connexion she once said to an Italian officer, some time after Sarrail’s departure; “It has been stated that when General Sarrail was here, it was I who commanded the Armée d’Orient. Unfortunately, this was untrue; if I had commanded it, far fewer bêtises would have been committed.” The greatest surprise caused by General Sarrail was his marriage with a French Red Cross nurse attached to one of the military hospitals in Salonica, in the spring of 1917. The affair caused a considerable scandal, as all Allied officers were forbidden to bring their wives out to Macedonia, whereas Sarrail not only married, but kept his wife with him in Salonica.

CHURCH OF ST. GEORGE, SALONICA.

To face p. 58.

The absolute want of confidence of the Allied commanders under his orders in General Sarrail’s military qualities, his position became ever more impossible. To command an army composed of soldiers belonging to five different nationalities, two of them indigenous to the country, each with its own military organization, is at best no easy task, and only a leader endowed with great tact, a conciliatory spirit and a keen respect for the national feelings of others could have done so with success. In a national army the orders of the commander are obeyed without discussion; but in a force like the Armée d’Orient the Allied commanders under General Sarrail were representatives of their respective G.H.Q.’s and Governments, to whom they could always apply if he gave orders which appeared to them out of place. Sarrail ever gave the first consideration to the political effect which this or that event would produce, and he often gave orders for an operation simply because he believed that it would make a good impression on the public and on the Press, and consequently on the world of politicians, even if it were of no real military value. It was clear that with such a leader, even if he had had military qualities superior to those which he actually possessed, and if he had had really abundant resources at his disposal, it would have been very difficult to carry out an offensive on a large scale with any likelihood of success. In fact, while the Monastir offensive was only half a success and produced hardly any results, the offensive of May, 1917 was, as we shall see, a complete failure. Sarrail’s only real achievement was the deposition of King Constantine, and that was a political rather than a military enterprise.

A characteristic side of General Sarrail’s activities was his commercial policy. He took a lively interest in the promotion of French economic development in Macedonia, to the detriment, not of enemy interests, which were non-existent, but of those of the other Allies. He had instituted a very well-organized commercial bureau, but it was generally regarded as not quite correct that an inter-Allied Commander should avail himself of his position as such to develop the trade of his own country alone. To attain this object he also made use of the postal censorship, to which he devoted considerable attention. By its means he learnt which local merchants sent their orders to France and which to other countries; the latter were not infrequently the objects of thinly veiled threats and persecutions, inflicted with a view to inducing them to alter their ways. Matters reached such a point that the other Governments ended by establishing postal censorships of their own over the correspondence between Salonica and their respective countries.

General Sarrail had numerous conflicts with the Italian Command. I have already mentioned the incidents which occurred in connexion with the Monastir operations and the transfer of the division. But incidents were of almost daily occurrence. One day a movement order concerning our own troops was not communicated to the Italian Command; another time a communiqué from G.Q.G. on some operation in which an Italian detachment had greatly distinguished itself failed to mention the Italians at all. On one occasion the local French or Greek press was allowed or inspired to print articles attacking and libelling Italy, while on another the local Italian paper La Voce d’Italia was suspended for having replied in a somewhat violent tone. It might be thought that the Italians were too susceptible on these matters, but incidents of this kind occurred with such frequency in connexion with them that it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that there was considerable animosity on Sarrail’s part against them. But above all our Command was convinced that he had no notion of what war in the Balkans really was. In this it was in perfect agreement with the other Allied Commands.

With the other Allies too Sarrail’s relations were anything but cordial. He was in constant disagreement with the British, whose commander had succeeded in getting himself invested with the rank of Commander-in-Chief so as to reduce his dependence on Sarrail to a minimum. Even with the Serbs he was not on good terms. They complained that French help had come too late to save their country from disaster, and that the French never forgot to remind them of their debt to France. They did not wish to take orders in matters of tactics from the C.A.A., both because their army was commanded by the Crown Prince who refused to accept a subordinate position, and because they considered that they knew a good deal more about Balkan warfare than Sarrail, and in this they were not altogether wrong. They were moreover irritated by the fact that the French communiqués never gave sufficient prominence to the actions of the Serbian troops, so that their G.H.Q. ended by issuing communiqués of its own. Even with the Greeks, to whom, after the Venizelist revolution, he always spoke “honeyed words” in public, he was on the worst of terms, as appears from his memoirs and articles published since the war. The street in Salonica which had been gratefully baptized “Odos Sarrail” has recently had its name altered.

It can be fairly stated that General Sarrail stands condemned by his own memoirs more severely than by any outside criticism. The volume is very interesting and well written, but, as a distinguished Italian officer stated, “on a background of undeniable truths, he has woven a tissue of venemous untruths, with which he has sought in vain to justify his action in the Orient.” His political intrigues, his conduct towards the Allies, the manner in which he treated many gallant French officers, such as General Cordonnier—to mention one case alone—all this appears in the clearest light in his Apologia pro vita sua.

The G.H.Q. of the C.A.A. was of course at Salonica. It was, like other French Army Commands, divided into two main branches—the État-major de l’Avant and the Direction de l’Arrière. The Chief of the General Staff under General Sarrail was first Colonel George and then General Michaud. The Avant was divided into four bureaux: 1st, effectives and materials; 2nd, information (intelligence); 3rd, operations; 4th, supply and transport. Relations between the liaison officers and the Command and its bureaux were as a rule extremely cordial, and for my own part I shall always have the pleasantest remembrance of them, especially of my connexion with the Deuxième Bureau, to which we liaison officers were for a long time attached; its successive chiefs (these unfortunately were constantly changing) were regular, and usually very distinguished, officers of field rank, and the other members of it were reserve officers, some of them eminent men in different walks of life—university professors, archæologists, jurists, etc. With the 3rd bureau too, to which we were afterwards attached, I always got on well. But it should be added that with the French Command (advisedly, I call it French, although in theory it was inter-Allied) there was never that same camaraderie that there was with the British. With the former we were welcome guests, whereas the latter treated us as brothers and hid nothing from us. Let me quote an instance of this difference with regard to the question of strength returns. It was very important for all the Allies to know each other’s respective strengths. We naturally communicated ours to the C.A.A. and the other Commands periodically and in the greatest detail. To learn the French strength required immense labour and ingenuity in collecting, collating and completing the figures; they were communicated to us unwillingly, in an incomplete form and with considerable delay—it was indeed far easier to learn what were the enemy’s effectives than those of the French. The British on the other hand placed their statistical returns at our disposal, showing the organic strength, the actual strength, the reinforcements asked for and those known to be on their way out, for each unit and specialty. Nor did the Serbs or Greeks have any objection to communicating their strengths to us. It was generally believed that the reason of this reticence on the part of the French was that, while they maintained the number of their units unchanged, their effective strength was greatly reduced, and that they feared that the Allies, especially the British, might avail themselves of this state of things as a pretext for refusing to recognize France’s right to the supreme command of operations in Macedonia. I do not know whether this was the real or only reason, but the fact in itself is undoubted, and it certainly rendered co-operation much more difficult than it ought to have been.

TRANSPORT IN WINTER.

THE ALLIED LIAISON OFFICERS AT G.H.Q., SALONICA.

To face p. 62.

The services of the Army were carried out partly by the 1st and 4th bureaux of the Avant, and partly by the Direction de l’Arrière, the latter being for a long time under the sympathetic and jovial General Boucher. The organization was not perfect, and transport and supplies were sometimes faulty. The Italian expeditionary force in particular often suffered from these defects whenever its services had to be supplied by the French, not on account of any ill-will on the part of the latter, but owing to the defects of the system and the imperfect manner in which orders were executed. The French themselves were wont to say that more time was needed for a letter to go from the Avant to the Arrière than to ask for and obtain instructions from Paris.

Of the 8 French divisions 5 were Metropolitan (i.e. raised in France proper)—the 30th, 57th, 76th, 122nd, and 156th—and 3 Colonial—the 11th, 16th and 17th. At first they were all of 4 regiments of 3 battalions each. But subsequently, owing to the reduction of strengths and also to the general reorganization of the French Army, the Metropolitan divisions were reduced to 3 regiments each, and the brigades (which had been of 2 regiments each) abolished. Each regiment in the colonial divisions comprised 2 white and 1 coloured battalion. The divisions, as we have seen, were formed into groups, corresponding to army corps but of somewhat looser formation, of whom there were at first 2 and afterwards 3, and they also included non-French troops. Special units were from time to time constituted according to necessity for special operations, etc. There was in addition the Cavalry Division, comprising the 1st and 4th Chasseurs d’Afrique and the Morocco Spahis (coloured), commanded by General Jouinot-Gambetta. There were also some units not forming part of any division such as the 2nd bis Zouaves, the Algerian, Annamite, Madagascar, Indo-Chinese tirailleurs, the Koritza gendarmerie, etc.

* * * * *

It was generally admitted that the French artillery in Macedonia was excellent. In spite of the defective and seldom renovated material the gunners accomplished wonders, and although the enemy during the early period of the campaign had a larger number of guns than the Allies, and was supplied to the very end with guns of heavier calibre and greater range, the French batteries held their own admirably. The French artillery officers attached to our force were always on the best of terms with their Italian comrades, and they learned to appreciate each others’ fine military qualities.

As regards general education, the French officers were superior to those of any of the other Allied armies. There was hardly one of them who had not a literary, political and historical culture which we should have regarded as above the average, and in this they also ranked above the British; their conversation was nearly always extremely agreeable owing to their high intellectual level, wide range of interests and their keen wit. Their knowledge of foreign languages on the other hand was very slight; regular officers usually knew German, and among the reserve officers one occasionally came across some who for business or other reasons knew foreign languages, but the great majority only understood French. Personally they were generally attractive, had good manners, made a great many compliments and very keenly appreciated any courtesy extended to them. At mess their behaviour was decorous, and they spoke less loudly than their Italian colleagues, many of whom invariably raised their voices to add strength to the arguments they were sustaining. But they had a somewhat exaggerated idea of the absolute superiority of the French over all other nations in everything, and they did not hide it; for this reason they sometimes appeared ungenerous, and succeeded in irritating their foreign colleagues of all the Allied armies. The officers attached to the General Staff seldom made any attempt to disguise their weakness for foreign decorations, and the extremely transparent allusions which they made to the subjects when conversing with liaison officers or others whom they believed to have ribbons galore at their disposal contributed not a little to make the horrors of war quite bearable.

French Staff officers were always under the incubus of the mot d’ordre. One day the word would be passed round that optimism was to be the keynote, and then one saw nothing but smiling faces, cheerfulness and confidence in the final victory within a month. Another day the mot d’ordre was in a minor key; that meant long faces, black pessimism, le cafard, no end to the war in sight, the Germans invincible, peace goodness knows when and at goodness knows what conditions. All this had nothing to do with the actual military events either fortunate or the reverse, but was the result of orders from above. Similarly, their attitude towards the Allies varied from day to day, being warmly cordial at one moment and coldly courteous the next.

But whatever the faults of the French may have been, it must be admitted that in actual combat they were marvellous. Officers and soldiers vied with each other in patriotism and courage. When they were in the front lines no one could fail to admire their dash and gallantry; their battle discipline was magnificent. On the other hand, their discipline at the rear and on the lines of communication left much to be desired, and the behaviour of the soldiers and even of not a few officers at some distance from the front, especially at Salonica, often led to unpleasant incidents. Once they were away from the front these men seemed to forget the respect due to their officers, who seldom dared to reprimand them even for quite serious disciplinary offences. They often behaved riotously, got drunk, appeared with their uniforms in disorder, and it was an unusual sight to see two men dressed alike. A British officer connected with the officers’ clothing store told the writer that as long as French officers were forbidden to wear Sam Brown belts he was constantly receiving applications for authority to purchase them (they could not be sold to non-British officers without written authority from the A.Q.M.G.), but as soon as their G.Q.G. issued a circular removing the ban on that article of equipment the applications from the French fell off!

Rioting among French soldiers was by no means unknown, and encounters were particularly frequent between French and Allied soldiers, whereas other allies seldom had rows among themselves. Even the French camps were less orderly and well-arranged than those of the British or Italian troops. Where French and Italian troops were in direct liaison at the front relations were excellent, and the former often had recourse to the latter’s assistance in constructing huts.

But it was enough to see a French unit in fighting kit on the march towards the front lines or returning from them to realize the high military and warlike spirit of the French nation. Patriotic feeling was extremely developed among all. “Defeatist” talk, expressions of sympathy, or complaisant admiration for the enemy, such as were heard among the officers of some other armies, were unknown, and would indeed not have been tolerated for an instant. They might, as I have said, often talk in a pessimistic tone, but anything like sympathy for the enemy was inconceivable. The tradition of ten centuries of splendid military history was not belied.

Of the sectors held by the French two were particularly hard—that of Hill 1248, north of Monastir, and around the city, and the eastern part of the Cerna loop, which presented features similar to those of our own sector. The other French sectors were extremely uncomfortable, as was indeed the whole of the Macedonian front, but less dangerous from a purely military point of view. The Monastir area was exceptionally hard, inasmuch as the town exercised a peculiar fascination over the Bulgars—to them it was the symbol of Macedonia, the Mecca of their Balkan aspirations; indeed almost the only territory not yet occupied by them to which they laid claim, and which they had reasonable hopes of acquiring. They therefore maintained a relentless and vigorous pressure on those lines in the hope of breaking through and achieving not only a strategic victory of considerable importance, but also a highly significant moral and sentimental success. The German Command at one time was anxious to withdraw from the Monastir area altogether, but the opposition of Bulgaria to this plan for once prevailed. The struggle round the town therefore continued with great violence, and the troops on Hill 1248 had to keep a ceaseless vigil, sustain perpetual attacks or deliver counter-attacks, and were always under the fire of heavy bombardments. Monastir itself suffered severely as it sheltered various staffs, and also many batteries of artillery.

The A.F.O. front was reached by railway to Armenohor (the station for Florina) or Sakulevo, and thence by road and décauville to the first lines, but supply trains at night went almost into Monastir. For the troops west of the Pisoderi pass a “telepheric” line was used for supplies, but it sufficed only for a small part of the necessary materials, and the rest had to be conveyed by lorry or cart. The two divisions in the eastern half of the Cerna loop were supplied by the same routes as those used by the Italians. The H.Q. of the A.F.O. was at Florina, a pleasant little town at the foot of the Pisoderi pass, well watered by many runnels and adorned with trees. The troops of the Premier groupement (122nd Division and Greek units) were supplied by the Vardar railway to a certain point, and thence by road.

CHAPTER IV
THE BRITISH SALONICA FORCE

The British Army in Macedonia, officially known as the B.S.F. (British Salonica Force), originally consisted, like the French force, of units transported from the Dardanelles. Later it was reinforced by fresh divisions and became on autonomous army, although always under the superior command of the French C.-in-C. It comprised 2 Army Corps (the XII and the XVI), at first of 3 infantry divisions each (10th, 22nd, 26th, 27th, 28th, and 60th), the 228th Garrison Brigade and 2 cavalry brigades; in the course of 1917, as we have seen, two of these divisions—the 10th and the 60th—and the cavalry brigades were withdrawn and sent to Egypt, so that only four divisions remained, plus the garrison brigade, composed of men not fit for the front line. The artillery was strengthened in 1918 by a fairly large number of 6-in. guns and howitzers. Each division consisted as usual of 3 brigades, and each brigade at first of 4 battalions, but later on, when strengths had fallen very low, they were reduced to three. Each division had its own artillery, cavalry, engineers, and other services, and sometimes even the brigades were so provided, and there were in addition the army corps and army artillery and services, and the air force. The troops and services in the base area and on the lines of communication were under the Base Commandant; later a G.O.C. Lines of Communication was also appointed. As regards effectives, strengths were allowed to fall dangerously low, because the War Office was always somewhat hostile to the Macedonian enterprise—at a certain moment, as we shall see, a proposal was made that it should be withdrawn into the Salonica entrenched camp. Consequently, reinforcements were sent out grudgingly and in insufficient numbers, while disease and to a lesser extent war losses caused serious inroads into the strength of the B.S.F. During the last phase of the war the battalions rarely had more than 500 men each.

G.H.Q., Salonica, attempted to make good these losses by repeated “combings out,” sending to the battalions at the front all the men who could justly be regarded as fit, and reducing the number of British transport drivers, muleteers and soldiers attached to the base and lines-of-communication units to a minimum, and substituting them with Indians, Cypriots and Macedonian natives; a school for these new transport drivers was instituted at Lembet near Salonica and gave good results, while a great deal of useful work was accomplished by native labour battalions; the latter were also employed by other Allied armies, and there was a considerable amount of lively competition among the different forces to secure as large a share as possible of the available supply of native workers.

The British G.H.Q. was, as I have said, at Salonica, and Lieutenant-General Sir George Milne, who relieved General Mahon, was appointed Commander-in-Chief. He took orders from the C.A.A. only in the case of joint operations, and as long as General Sarrail was in Macedonia General Milne was his subordinate only in name, as he refused to tolerate any interference on the part of the former in whom he had no confidence, and whom he always suspected of political intrigue. General Sarrail on his part disliked General Milne, so that combined operations were practically impossible. General Milne was a man of uncommon intelligence, with extremely shrewd powers of observation and insight, and, unlike Sarrail, he was exclusively a soldier and did not take any interest in political matters. Our relations with him were always of the most cordial character. For General Mombelli he had a special regard, which was thoroughly reciprocated by the Italian Commander. He was a fine-looking man, a great lover of sport, a hard worker, a gentleman in every sense of the word; and he had a keen dislike for the atmosphere of Salonica as a hotbed of mean political and personal potins and petty jealousies. He resided a great part of the year at Guvesne, some 24 km. from Salonica, where he had established his advanced G.H.Q., equally handy for reaching either of his two Corps H.Q.’s. While staying at Guvesne he usually motored into Salonica every morning, except when he went out to the Corps H.Q. of the front lines.

I knew his three successive Chiefs of the Staff—General Gilman, a singularly attractive personality, with whom our relations were more than cordial, especially in the dark days of the spring of 1917, when after the collapse of Russia it was felt to be particularly important that the armies of the only two Monarchies left among the great Powers of the Entente should keep on the terms of the closest friendship. He said to me when I called to bid him farewell on his departure for Mesopotamia: “Our two Armies out here have always been on such friendly terms that I can see no reason why this state of things should not continue under my successor.” General Cory, in fact (a Canadian by birth), followed on General Gilman’s footsteps, and when he left to take command of the 27th Division, General Duncan, who was appointed M.G.G.S. in his place, showed himself if possible even more cordial; he is now British Military Attaché in Rome. The Intelligence and Operations branches were in charge of lieutenant-colonels, assisted by numerous distinguished officers, many of whom were reserve or temporary officers, especially those in “I,” chosen for their knowledge of the country and the local languages. In both branches I was always received in the most friendly manner, and kept informed of everything of interest, even of extremely confidential matters, strengths, details concerning unsuccessful actions, etc.

In dealing with the British one had, in a word, the sensation that one was among real Allies. And this does not only refer to the General Staff, but also to all the other branches and the commands of units at the front. The Quartermaster-General’s branch (Q), corresponding roughly to our Intendenza, was organized on essentially business lines, with all the methods in use in business houses; many of the officers attached to those services were in fact business men in private life. Archæologists were found particularly useful in “I” work, because their training rendered them thoroughly capable of weighing, sifting, and co-ordinating evidence, and deducing accurate or at least reasonable conclusions. If a larger proportion of men of this stamp had been employed in these services, not only in the British, but also in other armies, a great many unfortunate and sometimes disastrous mistakes would have been avoided. Unluckily, however, a number of Staff officers seemed to have no other qualification for their work than an extensive knowledge of the novels of William Le Queux and Phillips Oppenheim, or the adventures of Arsène Lupin, whose situations they attempted to realize in practice. At the head of the Q branch was the Deputy Quartermaster-General, of whom I knew two; the first was Major-General Travers-Clarke, afterwards Q.M.G. in France, the second and last Major-General Rycroft, both of them very capable officers and organizers. With the Adjutant-General’s branch, which dealt with personnel, I came less frequently into contact. There were also many offices and special services, among which that of the Military Secretary, whose duties comprised such matters as the promotion of officers, decorations, official visits and dinners and protocol generally; for a long time this position was held by the brilliant and agreeable Major Dudley-Carleton.

The British War Office made a point of selecting the officers for the B.S.F. with peculiar care, especially those destined for Staff appointments. As they would naturally come into frequent contact with foreign officers, it was considered very important not to send any officer to Macedonia who was not a thorough gentleman, so as to avoid unpleasant incidents; officers were chosen for these services not only for their technical ability, but also and above all for their high moral character and good manners, points to which insufficient importance was attached in some other armies. I cannot say that I ever came across a man of the “T.G.” type in any responsible post. British officers never caused scandals or provoked inter-Allied incidents, and cases of financial shortcomings were extremely rare and severely punished as soon as they were discovered. In the conduct of operations they showed, if not genius—in this the French were very superior—considerable efficiency and a thoroughly practical spirit. The most complicated transactions were carried out with the utmost simplicity—a couple of telephone calls, the sending of two or three “chits” (usually written in pencil), and the thing was done. In my position as liaison officer I had wide experience of the practical character of British military methods. We were constantly in need of assistance from the Allies for many of our services, especially in the matter of transport, because our expeditionary force was in certain respects incomplete, and according to the terms of the previous agreements, it was the C.A.A. that was bound to supply the deficiencies. The British were therefore under no obligation to assist us. But when we applied to the French we were bandied about from pillar to post before arriving at some useful result; very often we obtained nothing at all, or if we did obtain what we required we had first to overcome innumerable obstacles and refusals. The British on the contrary did everything in their power to satisfy our requests, and when they refused it was because the thing was really impossible, so that it was useless to go back on the matter. What was particularly agreeable about the British was their manner of rendering services as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I remember how on one occasion, I had to make an urgent application to the British G.H.Q. for some fifty motor ambulances to transport a large number of Italian wounded from the station to the hospitals after the action of May 1917; although I had received no instructions on the subject until late in the evening and some of the British officers responsible for that service had gone to bed, the whole matter was arranged without the slightest difficulty, and the next morning the motor ambulances were ready at the station punctual to the minute. I afterwards went to thank the A.Q.M.G. on behalf of our Command, and all that he replied was: “We’ve got to win the war together.”

Another instance of the admirable organization of the British services occurred during the great fire at Salonica. When the conflagration began to approach the port, the building containing the British Army telephone exchange was menaced, and in fact it caught fire soon after; in less than an hour the exchange was transferred to a place of safety, and at once began to function regularly.

British officers not only had a very high sense of duty, but some of them seemed to have an almost fanatical attachment to their particular job, which occasionally had its amusing side. One very distinguished officer, whose duties were connected with the topographical section, looked at every event on the Macedonian or other fronts exclusively from the point of view of map-making. His only comment on the deposition of King Constantine and the return of Venizelos to Athens was that he trusted that it would now be possible for him to obtain certain maps of Thessaly which the Royalist Staff had hitherto refused to give him. During the gloomy days of the great German push in March 1918, what he chiefly deplored was the probable capture by the enemy of the topographical plant and depot at the V Army H.Q. in Albert. After the collapse of Bulgaria in September following, he regretted that the end had come so soon because there was a certain sector of the British front which he had not quite finished mapping, and now he would be unable to complete the work; not to mention the fact that all the beautiful maps which he had prepared with so much care were now mere wastepaper!

In the British Army differences between the various arms and services seemed to be less marked than in others, but the esprit de corps among officers and men of the same regiment was extremely strong, even though a regiment was not an effective unit. What appeared to many officers of other Allied armies as a most excellent institution was that of temporary rank. The fact that an officer entrusted with duties pertaining to a higher rank than his own, on account of his peculiar fitness for the position, could be temporarily promoted to that higher rank, even though for administrative reasons it was not possible to give him the effective rank, was very useful and presented many advantages. With us, subalterns who in civil life held important positions, in the army were either detailed for duties far below their real capabilities and were thus wasted, or if they were entrusted with more responsible duties, they retained their modest military rank and often came into conflict with superior officers of the regular army who were jealous of them. As a liaison officer, although only a lieutenant, I seldom did any business with foreign officers below the rank of major, and usually dealt in generals, but as I represented a foreign army I was treated practically as an equal, which of course was not the case when I had to do with Italian officers of superior rank.

There was a very strong sense of equality between officers of different rank when off duty—at mess, in sport, etc. Officers belonging to the same mess never waited for each other when dinner was announced, whatever the rank of the absent colleague might be, nor were inferiors expected to salute their superiors at mess or at the clubs, even in the case of a general. This custom sometimes caused offence to certain Italian generals or field officers, who could not understand why they were not saluted by British subalterns whom they met at a restaurant or club; it was of course not due to lack of deference on the part of the latter, but to that tendency to exclude all feeling of malaise between inferiors and superiors when off duty. The one real distinction between categories of officers in the British Army was that existing between those attached to the Staff and those who were not. The feelings of the latter, especially of regimental officers, towards the former were sometimes rather bitter, as indeed has been the case in all armies from the days of the Iliad downward; in our own army the distinction was particularly marked. In the B.S.F., as I suppose in other British armies, the Staff officer considered himself superior intellectually to the average regimental or A.S.C. officer—and he generally was—while the latter had a certain contempt not unmixed with envy for the red-tabbed super-man enjoying the privileges and comforts of G.H.Q., and proximity to that magnificent divinity the C.-in-C., or even of such minor divinities as corps or divisional commanders, and avoiding the dangers of life in the front lines. “We run all the risks and do all the really hard work, whereas they get all the plums,” expresses the general attitude. But the conflict is inevitable and universal, and should not be taken too seriously, the more so as the majority of staff officers had usually been through the mill of trench warfare themselves, and often had been given staff appointments only after having been badly wounded. If anything, in the British Army the feeling against supposed embusqués was less virulent than in others.

The discipline of the British troops in the East was really admirable, and was all the more remarkable inasmuch as a very large part of the army was improvised; the men, however, had acquired a military bearing equal to that of their professional comrades, but without a trace of that militarism which made the Prussian so justly disliked. If at the front the British Tommy was a first-class fighting man, his discipline was equally well maintained at the base or along the lines of communication. His personal cleanliness was remarkable, and so was that of his kit and quarters. At Salonica drunkenness was by no means uncommon, even among officers, especially those who had come down from the trenches on a few days’ leave, but it seldom led to violence and riotousness, and the much-dreaded A.P.M. was apt to come down with a heavy hand on delinquents. British road discipline was also excellent, and blocks seldom occurred even along the most frequented roads and in moments of exceptionally heavy traffic. What greatly impressed the local population, accustomed through centuries to the passage of native or foreign armies, was the fact that this was the first war in which, as regards the British area, women could move about the country freely, without fear of being molested. This applied also to the smaller Italian area, but not always to those of all the other Allied armies.

The British military authorities took special care of the well-being of the troops, which was particularly important in the case of armies like the B.S.F. operating at a great distance from home and deprived of all the amenities which made life on other fronts more tolerable. Not only were all possible measures for safeguarding the health of the men rigorously applied, but nothing was neglected that could contribute to keep up their moral. Great importance was rightly attached to every form of sport. Wherever a British detachment was stationed, football and cricket fields and tennis courts were provided, and even the newly invented game of handball was introduced. Gymnastic competitions of all kinds, boxing matches and horse races were organized. Horse-shows were held on a large scale, and it was very interesting for foreign officers to attend them, not merely for the shows themselves—although these were usually attractive spectacles—but because they enabled them to see how admirably the British kept their horses and mules, in spite of the enormous difficulties of supply and the terrible scarcity of forage. Horses of the very first class were rare, but the average level was extremely high, and one never saw lean or ill-groomed animals. At the horse-shows there were competitions for troop horses, artillery and transport teams, and points were also based on the state of the harness; if the brass was not properly polished several points would be lost. Above all, the mules were magnificent, and if, as a British remount officer said to me, the prices paid for them were likewise magnificent, the services they rendered were invaluable. Even when the greater part of the British Tommies had been withdrawn from those services and substituted with Indians, Cypriots or Macedonians, British officers and N.C.O.’s succeeded in getting their animals almost as carefully groomed as before. When General Lukoff, Commander of the II Bulgarian Army, came to Salonica to negotiate the armistice, he was enormously impressed with the British mules, and he said that if he had had such transport animals his army would by that time have been at Athens.

THE AUTHOR.

To face p. 76.

The various sporting events were not only held in Salonica or in other parts of the base area, but also in the vicinity of the front lines, at a few kilometres from the trenches. They were occasions for large gatherings of officers, soldiers and nurses, and proved a most valuable means for alleviating the monotony of life in Macedonia and eliminating the cafard. Anyone who attended these entertainments felt, if only for a few hours, that he had returned to civilian and civilized life and to home habits, and the preparations for them aroused great interest and distracted men’s thoughts from the discomforts and dangers of the campaign, while the physical exercise that they involved had an excellent effect on the health of all those who took part in the matches, and these were very numerous. Officers of all arms, and not merely those of the mounted services, took part in races and horse-shows; I have been present at jumping competitions in which army chaplains and even naval officers took part with distinction. The British school of horsemanship is not so perfect and artistic as the Italian or French schools, and few British officers have the same wonderful mastery of the art as some of their Italian or French colleagues. But there is a far larger number of officers who ride well than in either of the other two armies, as that form of sport is far more widespread.

It had been noticed that the enemy hardly ever opened fire or dropped bombs on these large sports gatherings, which appeared to offer ideal targets, and certain fields near the front lines, which were sometimes used as exercise grounds and sometimes for football or other matches, were constantly fired at in the first instance, but never in the latter. This suggested that brother Bulgar had certain sporting instincts, which enhanced the respect which the British Tommy had for him. After the Armistice, however, it was discovered that the real reason for the immunity which sports enjoyed was somewhat different. Orders were discovered among the enemy’s papers that no form of sport was to be interfered with because the big matches and horse-shows always involved the sending of many telephone messages as to the movement of details of the various units from their regular quarters to the scene of the event; the enemy listening posts were often able to intercept them and thus gather valuable information as to the distribution of British troops. Thus was another pretty war legend knocked on the head.

Another aspect of British military life in Macedonia was the soldiers’ theatres. They were not instituted until the second year of the campaign, and at first encountered a good deal of opposition on the part of the recognized officers of the old school. But gradually all opposition was overcome, and the theatre became a recognized institution. Each army corps, each division and many smaller units had their own theatres. Officers attached to the postal censorship assured me that these performances produced extraordinarily good results, as appeared from the soldiers’ letters, the general tone of which showed a marked improvement since the introduction of the theatres. “These entertainments,” a British Staff officer told me, “are equivalent to an increase of several battalions.” Officers and soldiers who took part in them were usually exempted from all other duties while the rehearsals and performances lasted, and no one dreamt of talking about embusqués in this connexion because everyone appreciated the importance of this form of activity. Soldiers’ theatres were also introduced into other armies, including our own, but the chief feature of the British system was the fact that the performances were acted exclusively by officers and soldiers, usually belonging to the same units as the bulk of the audience. This interested and amused the men far more than a more ambitious performance, even if acted by professional artists of the first rank. The writer was so much impressed by the British soldiers’ theatres that he sent a detailed report about them to the Italian Commander; the report was forwarded to the Comando Supremo, and as a result General Mombelli was authorized to introduce theatrical performances into the 35th Division. They proved a great success.

I assisted at several of these entertainments, which were all admirably acted and elaborately staged. On one occasion I witnessed a first-rate performance of the “Chocolate Soldier”—quite a pièce de circonstance, as the scene is laid in Bulgaria during the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885—at the theatre of the 22nd Division at Rates, only 5 km. from the front lines; and on another a variety entertainment at the XII Corps theatre at Janes, especially built by the Y.M.C.A.; the tenor of the troupe had been detailed for a bombing expedition that very night, but as he was the best artist available he was let off duty when it was known that the Italian liaison officer at G.H.Q. was to be present! I was much flattered.

At Salonica there were comparatively few British troops. There were of course a great many officers at G.H.Q. with their orderlies, clerks, batmen, guards, etc., and the magazines, depots and hospitals required a numerous personnel. Along the Monastir and Lambet roads these vast stores and dumps extended mile upon mile. Immense engineer parks, mountains of packing-cases, clothing stores without end, remount squadrons, veterinary hospitals etc., occupied huge areas; on the other side of the town, on the hill of Kalamaria and towards the bay of Mikra there was a whole city of hospitals in huts or tents, and close by a colossal M.T. heavy repair workshop. The other armies in Macedonia also had enormous supply depots and establishments of all kinds, but those of the British struck one as being on the most imposing scale, erected regardless of cost or labour; this system may have its drawbacks, as the British tax-payer has discovered, but it certainly did contribute to efficiency, and if it was also designed to impress Allies and natives with the might and wealth of the British Empire it achieved its purpose. The hospitals were magnificent; they increased considerably in numbers during the last two years of the war, because the Q branch was anxious to free the largest possible number of ships from hospital service and the transport of the wounded and sick. During the early days of the campaign serious cases were sent to Malta or Alexandria. But it was found that malaria and dysentery patients recovered very slowly in those places, and many succumbed; at the same time their transport monopolized a large number of ships at a moment when the ravages of submarine warfare made it necessary that the largest possible amount of tonnage should be available for the transport of troops and supplies. Consequently General Rycroft, on assuming the duties of D.Q.M.G. thought that it would be better to increase the hospitals at Salonica and in the neighbourhood, and the convalescent hospitals on Mount Hortiach, where the air is excellent, and evacuate only the most serious cases requiring a very long period in hospital. Thus the transport of the sick was much reduced and the patients benefited by the new system. But in spite of the great care which the British Command devoted to the sick, malarial cases were extremely numerous. In the summer of 1916 there were 11,500 beds in the British hospitals at Salonica, and some 30,000 malarial cases admitted. These figures increased during the succeeding summers, because, in addition to the new cases, there were the relapses of the preceding years. Thus in 1917 malarial cases rose to 63,000, and in 1918, when the total strength was much reduced, to 67,000. Early in 1918 the so-called “Y” system was introduced, whereby chronic malarial cases were sent home.

To reach the British front there were two main arteries—the Janesh road and the Serres road. Both had existed before the war, but were then in such an appalling state of neglect as to be in places almost impassable, and full of holes throughout their entire length; they were indeed little better than tracks, save for a few kilometres here and there. The British military authorities had had practically to rebuild them, and they made them into really magnificent thoroughfares. Their construction and maintenance required armies of native labourers and cost vast sums. But the expenditure was in a sense an economy, because it spared the wear and tear of the lorries, the renewal of which would not only have cost far more if the roads had been neglected, but they would have been difficult to replace owing to the scarcity of tonnage and submarine risks. These roads and the others built by the French and the Italians, were a magnificent legacy left to Greece and Serbia, but a few weeks of Balkan régime, after the greater Allies had handed them over, sufficed to reduce them to their original state of hopeless dilapidation and ruin once more.

Transport to the XII Corps area was effected by means of the Constantinople railway as far as Sarigöl or Kilindir (goods were conveyed by rail as far as lake Doiran), and thence by the various décauville and the network of ordinary roads to the infantry and artillery positions. Beyond Janesh the country opens out into a wide plateau, somewhat undulated, surrounded by mountain ranges; those to the east and west are fairly high, while immediately to the north they appear insignificant, but in reality constitute formidable defences. As occurred almost invariably on all the mountain fronts in the war, from the Stelvio to the Struma, the enemy held all the higher and stronger positions, dominating those of the Allies. Immediately to the west of Lake Doiran rises the terrible group of the Grand and Petit Couronnés[13] and the “P” ridges, which cost so much blood to the British troops in their heroic efforts in 1917 and 1918. The “P” ridges spread out in a succession of hills—P1, P2, P3, P4, P4¼, P4½, P5—west of the Grand Couronné, forming with it an obtuse angle; the “P” ridges dominated all the approaches to the Grand Couronné and the latter those to the former. The Grand Couronné, which I visited immediately after it had been evacuated by the enemy, was formidably defended by the most perfect system of fortifications known to modern military art; the dug-outs and O.P.’s were cut out of the living rock, and often the sides and roof were several metres thick in solid stone. A huge white splash near the summit, visible for many miles in all directions, proved on inspection to be due to the tremendous but useless bombardment of the British artillery.

It was on this sector that the enemy first tried his famous Gotha aeroplanes on the Balkan front—it was, I believe, the first time that they were used at all in the war, and then they were more formidable than any machine possessed by the Allies. The officer in charge of the O.P. who first noticed them, telephoned at once to the XII Corps H.Q. that a new type of aeroplane had appeared above the lines; he was immediately asked in a sceptical tone on what evidence he based his assertion that they were of a new type, to which he replied: “In about five minutes you will find out yourselves from personal experience.” In fact immediately afterwards the Gothas were bombing Janesh for all they were worth.

On this sector the Allied and enemy lines were often quite close to each other as on the French and Italian fronts. East of Lake Doiran there was a wide gap between the two lines, formed by a valley running from that lake to Butkova. The main line of resistance extended along the Krusha Balkan range south of the valley, but there were advanced positions further down, such as the fort of Dova Tepe.

Between the eastern end of the lake and the western spur of the Beles is a broad gap, and there many British officers believed that a break through might be effected, although it was dominated by the batteries on the Beles. But no attempt was made here, save an attack during the last operations in September 1918, and even then it proved abortive and was soon abandoned.

The XVI Corps area was reached by the great Serres road, some 70 km. in length from Salonica to the Struma. For the first 25 km., as far as Guvesne, transport could also be effected by means of a normal-gauge railway built by the British during the war; at railhead there was a M.T. park, whence innumerable lorries conveyed men and supplies to the Struma. Various décauvilles spread out from the end of the road towards the front lines. The road climbed over several steep ranges of hills and plunged down into deep gullies, for the mountain chains in this part of the country all run parallel to the Struma. The Corps H.Q. was at Sivri in summer, a charmingly situated village just below the last range of hills before the drop into the Struma valley; in winter it moved down to a spot nearer the main road. The positions of chief resistance were along this ridge in parallel lines, but there were also a series of important bridge-heads along the river. Beyond the river there were two or three lines of villages, some of them quite large, others merely chifliks or farms, abandoned by the inhabitants and partly in ruins. Sometimes the first and even the second lines would be held by the British, while the Bulgars held others further away, along the foot of the mountains behind Serres. But in the summer of 1917, owing to the great heat and the ravages of malaria, the villages beyond the Struma were evacuated by the British, and the bridge-heads held with only an indispensible minimum of troops, while the defence of the spaces between the bridge-heads was entrusted to the river itself, which is difficult to wade, and to the cross-fire of the ports defending the bridge-heads; in any case, in order to attempt the passage of the Struma the enemy would have had to traverse a broad tract of open country before reaching its banks, exposed to the fire of the British batteries hidden amid the dense vegetation or in the crevices of the hills to the west of the right bank. In order to maintain contact with the enemy the British made frequent raids with infantry and cavalry patrols into the villages occupied by isolated detachments of Bulgars; the Bulgarian patrols and outposts did not show much fighting spirit and usually retired precipitously. Sometimes the British patrols penetrated into positions held by permanent enemy garrisons. The most important and successful of these raids was that on Homondos in the autumn of 1917, where many prisoners and some machine guns were captured, as well as a voluminous official correspondence, whence valuable information was acquired, especially concerning the enemy’s moral, which appeared at that time to be considerably shaken.

On the whole this was a quieter front than that of the XII Corps, as there were no positions corresponding to those of the Couronnés and the “P” ridge, and a no-man’s-land some 12 km. wide separated the two armies. For this reason it was deemed possible to hand it over to the Greeks to hold when the rest of the Allied troops were being concentrated elsewhere for attacks on a large scale.

The houses of Serres and Demir Hissar are easily visible to the naked eye, and beyond the latter town I had pointed out to me from an O.P. on a ruined belfry well beyond the river a large white slab on the mountain side, and I was told that in 1913, after their victories over the Bulgars, the Greeks had engraved on it an inscription in honour of King Constantine (then still Diadoch) “Bulgaroctonos,” or slayer of the Bulgarians, thus reviving the title of a famous Byzantine Emperor! The Bulgarians I imagine must have erased it, perhaps with the approval of him in whose honour it had been engraved.

CHAPTER V
THE SERBIANS

Of all the peoples who participated in the Great War the fate of the Serbs represent the most tragic. Our subsequent disagreements with the Yugo-Slavs should not make us forget the heroic part played by the Serbians even though unfortunately they have forgotten the immense benefits which we conferred upon them. It is the merit of the Italians if the miserable remnants of the Serbian Army, after the disastrous retreat through Albania, were saved from death by starvation, together with thousands and thousands of Serbian civilians, who found a refuge and a warm welcome in Italy, when their country was overrun by the enemy. Let us hope that in the not too distant future the Serbs will remember these facts, and also remember the many Italians who died on Serbian soil fighting for the liberation of Serbia.

After the retreat through Albania the Serbian Army found itself in the most appalling condition. Before the third enemy invasion it comprised some 400,000 men, with 70,000 horses and 65,000 oxen (the mechanical transport service was extremely limited). By the time it reached the Adriatic it was reduced by hunger, cold and sickness, as well as by fighting, to barely 150,000 men, 40,000 horses and 10,000 oxen. Part of the army marched towards Scutari and Alessio and the rest towards Durazzo. The second group was accompanied by several thousand civilian refugees, and also by old King Peter, who was seriously ill, and the Prince Regent Alexander, who was ill, too, for a part of the time. As regards armament, equipment and food, everything was lacking. The soldiers had been living for many months on 200 to 300 grammes of biscuit every five days.

The work of the Italian Navy in saving the Serbians has often been ignored. The Serbians appear to have forgotten or altogether denied it, as have also some of their foreign apologists. It may therefore be of interest to repeat what Admiral Sechi, the Italian Minister of Marine, said in the Senate on July 19, 1920 in this connexion. After reminding his hearers that the transport of the remnants of the Serbian Army with their supplies, from the ports of Northern Albania, where they had arrived exhausted and famished, to Valona, was the work of the Italian Navy, it was, he said, one of the Allied Governments that, at the end of October 1915 requested the Italian Government to provide for these necessities, and “in spite of the almost insuperable difficulties of the operation, especially on account of the insidious enemy attacks, and the almost total lack of any landing facilities in the places of disembarkation, the Italian Navy granted the request and the transport was carried out successfully and without interruption.” It was the Italian Navy which provided the transport of supplies for the Serbian Army (about 28,000 tons). In all about 245,000 Serbian soldiers, 25,000 Austrian prisoners whom they brought with them, over 10,000 animals, and a great deal of material, was thus transported. In spite of the ever-present danger of enemy submarines, in all this vast movement not a single ship was lost, nor did a single Serbian soldier die.[14] But we did not only provide transport and food for these most unfortunate warriors and civilians. Our military and naval medical officers worked admirably for the assistance of the Serbians, saving thousands from death by hunger, exhaustion and infection, as typhus and cholera were raging among the Serbians. An English writer has described in eloquent language this work in a book on the Italian Navy. “Day and night,” writes Archibald Hurd, “caring nothing for the risk of infection, striving with all weapons of modern research to prevent this plague spot from infecting half a continent, the naval and military doctors, with their sailor and soldier orderlies, fed, tended, bandaged, and with hands soft as women’s nursed these poor spectres of fellow creatures.”[15] On December 17 it was decided to send the Serbs to Corfu. They were now reduced to 100,000 men with 54,000 rifles, 160 machine guns, and 70 guns. When they were transported to Valona King Peter also went to Corfu and embarked on the Italian torpedo boat destroyer, G. C. Abba. He wished to receive the salute of the officers of the ship thanking them with generous words for all they had done and the dangers they had faced on their mission of charity. Reminding them of Garibaldi, their own national hero—to many of them already, perhaps, almost a legendary figure—he told them that he had himself twice met that famous soldier. Recalling to them the dark pages of their own national history, with its eventual triumph, he suggested to them that possibly Serbia might be the Piedmont of all the Serbians, and even in this, its blackest hour, the forerunner of an undreamed of and triumphant unity.[16] The Austrian prisoners were re-embarked for Italy and interned in Sardinia, but many of them died of cholera during the voyage. It may be added that while the most generous material assistance was lavished on the Serbians by our Command, as well as by our officers and men, the moral treatment accorded them by one or two of our officers left something to be desired. Although this does not in any way justify the ingratitude which the Serbs have subsequently shown towards Italy, it may serve in part to explain it. Even a cruel phrase or a lack of consideration for anyone who has suffered so terribly are enough to cancel the memory of the great benefits received. As we shall see, Generals Petitti and Mombelli did everything in their power to make the Serbians forget these unfortunate incidents, and they succeeded, at least for the time being.

The bulk of the Serbian troops were concentrated at Corfu, save a small number at Bizerta. The first convoy embarked on January 6, 1916 and during the winter the Allies, especially the British and the French, set to work to re-equip and reorganize the army, and it must be said the soldiers were greatly desirous of going to Salonica as soon as possible to take part once more in the struggle against the invader, although at that time to hope for success seemed madness. The Serbian Government and Parliament also established themselves at Corfu, where they remained until after the Armistice. The reorganization of the army was carried out fairly quickly, and about the middle of April the first detachments began to arrive at Salonica; to these were added the troops who escaped from Monastir or down the Vardar Valley. Throughout the second half of 1916 and the winter of 1916–17 the Serbians continued to arrive, and in May 1917 the army was complete. But the Serbs did not wait until then to begin fighting, because, as we have seen, they took a very prominent part in the operations of the summer and autumn of 1916. As each detachment reached Salonica it was first concentrated in the Serbian camp at Mikra near the city, and then sent towards the front, and its training in modern war methods was completed in Macedonia.

The reorganized Serbian Army then comprised about 150,000 men, divided, as we have seen, into 3 armies of 2 divisions each. Each division comprised 3 regiments of 3 battalions each. As regards armament they were fairly well equipped, and the number of rifles[17] was higher than in the other armies in Macedonia because they had very few transport or lines-of-communication troops. The Allies to a very great extent supplied them with these services.

GENERAL MOMBELLI INAUGURATING A SCHOOL FOR SERB CHILDREN BUILT BY ITALIAN SOLDIERS AT BROD.

ITALIAN BRIDGE OVER THE CERNA AT BROD.

To face p. 88.

The Crown Prince Alexander, nominally Commander-in-Chief, kept his modest Court at Salonica, but he spent a good part of the year at the Serbian front with the soldiers, with whom he was very popular. King Peter also resided habitually at Salonica, where he led an extremely retired life an account of his illness, and he saw hardly anyone. The military household of the Prince was composed for the most part of field officers who had been seriously wounded, and as Minister of the Royal Household he afterwards appointed M. Balugich, who was considered to be one of the shrewdest diplomats in the Balkans. The various foreign Governments had their representatives at Corfu, as the Serbian Foreign Office was there, but the Prince Regent wished to have a small diplomatic corps attached to his own person. The British and French Governments acceded to this wish immediately, the former sending Admiral Troubridge and the latter Commander Picot as honorary A.D.C.’s. Later on he also wished to have an Italian officer, in the person of Colonel Bodrero, formerly Commander of the Italian troops in Salonica and afterwards in Valona, and the request was finally granted. Admiral Troubridge, an attractive type of naval officer, had been Commander of the squadron which had pursued the Goeben and Breslau at the beginning of the war, and had afterwards commanded the British naval batteries on the Danube. After the Serbian débâcle he followed the remnants of the army to Corfu, and it was on that occasion that Prince Alexander got to know and appreciate him. Admiral Troubridge had great affection for Italy, whose language and literature he knew extremely well, and he liked to be in the company of Italian officers whom he often invited to his house, and in turn, he often went to their mess. He did his best to maintain friendly relations between Serbians and Italians, and gave excellent advice to Prince Alexander.

The actual Commander-in-Chief of the Serbian Army was the Chief of the General Staff, General Boyovich, and the armies, afterwards reduced to two, were commanded by the Voivods Michich and Stepanovich.

In the spring of 1916, Voivod Michich, Commander of the I Army, was appointed Chief of the General Staff in the place of General Boyovich, who took command of the said army in his place. The change was made on the eve of the general offensive, because the plan of operation was to a large extent the work of Michich himself. Although General Boyovich was an excellent soldier and had always greatly distinguished himself, Voivod Michich was a man of genius, one of the ablest leaders that the Balkans has ever produced. Personally he was a very sympathetic figure, jovial, always serene and good-tempered, even in the most tragic moments, and always certain of final victory. The soldiers had such great confidence in him that during the long period in which illness kept him in hospital, they used to say: “We shall never be able to return to our country if we have not Michich to lead us to victory.” He never ceased to show cordiality towards Italy, and even after the Armistice, in spite of the infatuation of hatred against Italy with which the Serbian people had been filled, probably as a result of a propaganda conducted by persons interested in sowing dissension, his feelings towards us never changed, and if one day Italo-Serbian relations improve, it will certainly be due in part to the work of the gallant Voivod. His death, which occurred a short time ago, is a real loss from every point of view.

In a general way the Serbians in Salonica conducted themselves modestly, as was but becoming in their condition of exiles living on charity—I use the word without any intention of offence. In this connexion they offered a notable contrast to the Russian officers after the Bolshevik revolution. Even their Commands and offices were very simple, and their leaders were singularly free from bureaucratic formalities.

The Serbs were supplied by the British and French, but even the material supplied by the former reached them through the French Intendance. They were not however, satisfied with this system, and often complained of the manner in which the French treated them, both on account of the insufficiency and the bad quality of part of the supplies—they actually declared that the goods of excellent quality supplied by the British were exchanged during transit through the French offices, for others of inferior quality. They also objected to the tone which the French adopted towards them, never letting them forget that it was they (the French) who were maintaining them. The French on their part complained of the excessive demands of the Serbians, to whom they attributed what they called la mentalité des sinistrés.

Relations between officers and soldiers were not always good. The soldiers complained of being neglected and ill-treated by their officers, and even accused some of them of financial dishonesty. An American doctor, who had lived long in Serbia and with the Serbian Army and knew the language well, assured me that these accusations were justified, and that the Serbian civil and military administration was both corrupt and incompetent. He believed, indeed, that when the Serbian Government succeeded in re-establishing itself in Serbia it would encounter serious difficulties with the population because the Austrian Government, although politically oppressive, had accustomed it to a more honest and competent civil service than that of the Serbian State. These difficulties were due in part, according to this same American, to the great gap existing between the slightly educated classes, to whom the officers belonged, and the ignorant peasants, who formed the common soldiers. The officers did not take sufficient care for the well-being of their men, and a very large number of them lived comfortably at Salonica, where they had little to do, while the soldiers and the rest of the officers were fighting and suffering great hardships at the front. There is certainly some exaggeration in all this, but there is also some truth. In a general way, the officers of the old Serbian Army were excellent, but as a really educated bourgeoisie does not exist in the country, most of the reserve officers, drawn from the semi-educated middle classes, left a great deal to be desired. Another difficulty was due to the fact that the Government was at Corfu while the army, which represented all that remained of the nation, was in Macedonia, and the former soon lost all touch with the latter. The atmosphere of Corfu had become a hotbed of personal ambitions, intrigues and petty spite. The Serbians themselves called it their Capua. Among the Serbians moreover, as I have said, secret societies flourished, and these found a field of great activity in the conditions of the moment. Even exile did not make the Serbians forget the habit of conspiracy.

From the moment the Serbian Army took up its position in Macedonia its front extended from the eastern arm of the Cerna to the neighbourhood of Nonte. Divided after its reorganization into 3 armies, these were as we have seen, in consequence of the reduction of the effectives, reduced to 2 of 3 divisions each, plus the cavalry division. The I Army (Drina, Morava and Timok Divisions) commanded by Voivod Michich, had its H.Q. at Votchtaran and occupied the western sector; the II (Vardar, Danube and Shumadia Divisions), commanded by Voivod Stepanovich, occupied the eastern sector, with its H.Q. at Dragomantzi. Although the Serbian G.H.Q. was at Salonica, there was also an advanced G.H.Q. near Mount Floka. The ground on the Serbian front was extremely rough, with huge masses of rock, high peaks and great forests spread over it. The area of the II Army was a particularly uncomfortable one, as it was almost everywhere exposed to the enemy fire. The roads were few and bad, and communications extremely difficult. For its supplies, the I Army made use of the Monastir railway as far as Sakulevo, then of the décauville for a few kilometres, and finally of the ordinary roads. The II Army could not use the railway beyond Vertekop. At the railway terminus there were motor parks supplied by the British, who organized an excellent service, principally with small Ford lorries which could go anywhere, even over the most impossible roads. The Serbians knew how to make the best use of the scanty agricultural resources of the country, and although they complained that the least fertile areas had been assigned to them, they managed so well that their horses never lacked forage and always appeared fat and well fed. They were indeed excellent horse-masters.

In the early days of the Macedonian campaign our relations with the Serbs were somewhat cold. We could not help admiring their splendid military qualities and burning patriotism, although we did not fail to notice their serious defects of character, due to Oriental tradition. The Serbs, on their part, were irritated against us on account of the incidents in Albania already mentioned. General Petitti, however, made every effort to eliminate misunderstandings by means of a conciliatory and cordial policy. He began by the cession of materials, of which the Serbians were in sore need, and did it with the greatest possible tact, so as to avoid in any way hurting their feelings. The Serbs, as we have said, were dependent on the French for their services, and General Petitti, knowing that the latter were not always adequate, often assisted them with motor vehicles, movable huts, etc., whenever the occasion arose. As it was necessary to evacuate the civilian population from a part of the Italian area, he made a point of always consulting the Serbian authorities, to whom he showed the greatest possible deference, before taking any action, and he provided transport and even food for the people who were being evacuated. Relations between our troops and the Serbian troops and the civilian population never gave rise to any incident, and the Serbians could not help admiring the order and efficiency of our transport and other services and the condition of our animals, to which they were not accustomed in Macedonia, except in the case of their own horses. In his work of conciliating the Serbians, General Petitti found useful collaborators in Lieutenant Cangià, Italian liaison officer with the I Serbian Army, in Captain Goad, British liaison officer with the 35th Division, and in Dr. Reiss the Swiss scientist, who was a good friend of ours and of the Serbians.

When General Petitti was requested to grant facilities for the journey of Voivod Michich’s wife from Italy, he arranged that she should cross on one of our best steamers and then travel on an Italian staff car from Santi Quaranta, escorted by an Italian officer. The Voivod had first applied to the French authorities, who informed him that his wife must travel via Patras. He therefore preferred that she should avail herself of the facilities offered by the Italians.

On the occasion of the fighting in February 1917 on Hill 1050, Voivod Michich, who had been present, sent a message to General Petitti[18] expressing his unbounded admiration for the dash and gallantry of our troops, which was sent to Italy and published, and made a very good impression.

Personal relations between our officers and soldiers and the Serbians went on improving, and many cordial individual friendships were formed. General Mombelli continued General Petitti’s policy for a rapprochement with the Serbians and intensified it. He was on excellent terms with the Prince Regent and neglected nothing to render himself a persona grata with him and his army. Our Command was very generous in concessions of motor transport to Serbian officers and officials travelling between Salonica, the Serbian front, and Corfu, and they constantly applied to us for this purpose, preferring our service even to that which was subsequently instituted by their own Command.

We also co-operated in Serbian propaganda in Macedonia. In the small strip of Serbian territory reoccupied after the capture of Monastir, there was a mixed Serbo-Bulgarian population of somewhat uncertain political sentiments, but predominantly Bulgarian. The Serbian Government did everything to spread the Serbian idea among the inhabitants by means of schools and propaganda. In the villages of Brod and Tepavci, which were in our military area, General Mombelli had some schools built by Italian soldiers for the native children. The Serbian Relief Fund (a British association) and the American Red Cross provided food, clothes, furniture etc. and also some nurses, while the Serbian Government provided the teachers. The inauguration of the school at Brod was a very pleasant festival of Italo-Serb cordiality.

The great weakness of the Serbian Army was its deficiency in effectives, and this became more serious day by day. While all the Allies in Macedonia suffered from the same trouble, because the Governments and General Staffs were reluctant to send reinforcements (only our expeditionary force was kept up to strength, at all events until the autumn of 1917), the condition of the Serbs was far more serious, because, save for small groups of volunteers from Europe and America, very often of advanced age and unable to endure hardships, there was no source whence reinforcements could be drawn to make good the constant losses caused by fighting and sickness. “Our reinforcements,” said a field officer attached to the Serbian G.H.Q., “are always the same—the men who come out of hospital more or less cured.” This was a cause of great depression among the Serbians, and in spite of their intense patriotism, there were, as we shall see, moments in which their faith faltered and they contemplated the possibility of concluding a separate peace. This tendency among certain parties was very marked, and resulted in sundry plots and intrigues.

CHAPTER VI
THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

The Italian expeditionary force, as we have seen, reached Macedonia in August 1916; after a short stay at Salonica it was transferred to the Krusha Balkan near Lake Doiran, and then to the Cerna loop, where it remained until the offensive of September 1918. At Salonica the Italian base was created, which subsequently became a detached section of the Intendenza at Taranto (commonly known in “initial” language, adopted in the Italian Army in imitation of the British, as the “U.S.I.A.M.”—Ufficio staccato Intendenza Albania-Macedonia). The latter comprised the sanitary branch, the commissariat department, the engineer command, artillery and engineer parks, the H.Q. of the M.T. service, many depots of various kinds, ammunition dumps, the garrison command, the Comando di Tappa (where officers and men were forwarded to their destinations) the court martial,[19] the convalescent camp, the remount camp, etc. Part of these establishments were at Zeitenlik, some 4 or 5 km. from the town, and on the outskirts were the three military hospitals, one of which was the old Italian civilian hospital, enlarged and militarized.

Our base had to be created in very difficult conditions, because when we came to Salonica most of the scanty resources of the country had already been requisitioned by the French and British Armies, who had been in the country for ten months, so that we had to be content with leavings. Furthermore, owing to the comparatively small size of our contingent, we had to do without many institutions which would have contributed to the welfare of our men as well as to our national prestige. Unlike the British and French, we had few officers accustomed to dealing with Oriental conditions. Nevertheless we managed to create a base which in many respects was a model of its kind, and our soldiers with their great ingenuity succeeded in making up for other material deficiencies. A British medical officer, whom I escorted on a visit of inspection to our military hospitals, was quite astonished at the sight of what Italian soldiers had been able to create out of nothing, and at the comparatively low cost at which these results had been achieved. The men showed a love for their work which aroused the admiration of everyone. When the Italian troops left the Krusha Balkan, where they were relieved by the British, there was a certain bridge which they had begun; the men engaged on the work asked to be left behind to finish it, because they feared that their British successors might not carry out the plan according to the original design.

The Italians at the base and on the lines of communication maintained an excellent discipline, and were always noted for their good conduct and almost total absence of drunkenness. Nor did one ever see Italian officers take part in the outrageous orgies at the Tour Blanche or other night resorts. If one criticism can be made it is addressed to those who were responsible for selecting the officers to be sent to Macedonia; only the most educated, best mannered and most gentlemanly men should have been chosen for a force which was to be in such constant contact with other armies. Whereas the great majority did fulfil these requisites, the same cannot be said of all; if they never got drunk, there were some who were not à la hauteur as regards character and conduct. The French made the same mistake, and indeed not a few of their officers were sent to Macedonia as a punishment. It was only the British who, as we have seen, made a point of sending out their best men, especially those on Staff appointments. If this insufficient consideration of character and manners is a general defect of our whole bureaucratic system, a special effort should have been made to overcome it in connexion with the Eastern expedition.

The excellent organization of our base services was largely due to the merit of Major (now Colonel) Fenoglietto, director of the Intendenza, who in all the confusion of Macedonian conditions never lost his head or his temper, and succeeded in conciliating the most opposite tendencies and the most crotchetty characters. Organizing capacity such as his was particularly necessary, inasmuch as Salonica was our only base for supplying a force of over 50,000 men; even when the Santi Quaranta route was opened up and reinforcements and men going home on leave or returning began to travel that way, supplies, munitions, and material of all sorts continued to be landed at Salonica, and everything was concentrated at that base.

There was not on the front in Italy a division or even an army corps whose first lines were so far from their base as were those of the 35th Division. The distance from Salonica to Hill 1050 was not less than 170 km., most of which had to be covered either by the Monastir railway, which also supplied seven French divisions, all the Serbian Army, and at different times sundry Greek and Russian units, or by the high road, which also was in part used to supply those same forces. The railway journey was not a pleasant experience; one spent the night in a sordid dilapidated coach, often enlivened by bugs, with broken windows and torn cushions. This train de luxe conveyed us to Armenohor (the station for Florina), whence one continued the journey by lorry. It was more interesting to go the whole way by lorry or car, as well as quicker and more comfortable.

On emerging from the narrow ill-paved streets of Salonica we get on to the wide and very dusty Monastir road, overcoming numerous obstacles in the shape of holes and other irregularities. Right and left the British depots and dumps spread out over vast areas. Once the last huts and sheds are left behind, we cross the wide desert plain of the Vardar, partly marshy and very little cultivated, enclosed on the north-east by the mountains behind Vodena. The vast pastures and the silvery patches of water, with the background of distant blue mountains, remind one of the Roman Campagna, but on a larger scale, less populated and lacking in those stately ruins which render the country round Rome so deeply suggestive and give it that sense of vitality derived from the remains of the past. Here too there are historic memories in abundance, for many splendid civilizations flourished in this land, but the innumerable Barbarian invasions which devastated Macedonia have wiped out almost every trace of them, and it would be necessary to excavate in order to find ancient remains.

Shortly before reaching Yenidje-Vardar a strange-looking structure appears to the right of the road; it consists of massive walls and great blocks of stone into which iron pipes have been introduced, whence water pours out in abundance. It is popularly known as the Fountain of Alexander, and is, in fact, on the site of the ancient Pellas, Alexander the Great’s capital; not far off, amid the fields, the ruined arches of an ancient aqueduct may be seen. The fountain has been restored by the Allied troops and is used by their pack and transport animals. It was probably in the main piazza of the town; there, where the horses of the great Macedonian king were watered twenty-two centuries ago, those of the Chasseurs d’Afrique and of the Cavalleggeri di Lucca and of the A.S.C. of the Armée d’Orient were watered but yesterday.

Every now and then our car is held up by a Senegalese sentry—the French make much use of these troops for their lines-of-communication services—but as soon as he sees that it contains Allied officers we are allowed to pass on. Soon after Alexander’s fountain we reach Yenidje-Vardar. It is a large village, the only place of any importance along the 85 km. between Salonica and Vodena, built on a ridge which declines gradually towards the high road; it is very Oriental and picturesque, dirty, and in a state of utter dilapidation. The open shops, with their poor wares exposed on their window sills, are typically Turkish; the narrow, tortuous, dirty side-streets, the large trees and the abundance of greenery, and the numerous minarets are signs that we are in the really Turkish East. The largest of the mosques is externally handsome in appearance and imposing, but internally almost a ruin. It had been occupied successively by Turkish troops in flight, by Greeks in pursuit, and then by French, Serbs, Italians and Russians passing through; even up to the end of the war it served as a temporary shelter for French transport animals. The walls around the courtyard had been adorned by the Greeks with the names of their victories in the two Balkan wars—Yenidje-Vardar, for it was here that the battle which decided the fate of Salonica took place on November 1st-2nd, 1912,—a victory due to the Diadoch Constantine—Kilkish (July 4th, 1913), Doiran (July 7th), etc. Close to the mosque is the mausoleum, also in ruins, of the Hadji-Evremos family, who have a curious history. Its founder was a Greek converted to Islam in the reign of Osman (1317) and appointed Governor of Brussa; in the expedition for the conquest of Salonica (1428), when Yenidje-Vardar was the capital of Turkish Macedonia, several members of the family distinguished themselves as stout warriors and pious Moslems. For these merits the Sultan Murad II endowed them with the tithe of Yenidje-Vardar in perpetuity, i.e. he granted them the right to raise and enjoy the taxes in that district. This constituted an important revenue, and the Hadji-Evremos became one of the wealthiest families in the Empire, retaining their riches until our own times—a rare distinction in Turkey. But with the Greek conquest of Salonica the Hellenic Government refused to recognize their right which it regarded as derogatory to the prerogatives of the State. There were protracted discussions on this point during the peace negotiations, but the Turkish Government in the end had to give way, and the Hadji Evremos lost their revenues. The story of this family thus marks the beginning and the end of Turkish rule in Salonica. Yenidje has lost almost all its ancient importance. It is still frequented as an agricultural centre in a townless territory; the country round is fertile and fairly well cultivated, but malarious.

Some 25 km. further on, after crossing several branches of the Nisi Voda river, we reach Vertekop, at the foot of the mountains; here we again meet the Monastir railway, which has made a wide curve from Salonica, passing Verria and Niaussa, before reaching Vertekop and beginning the steep ascent. After Vertekop the road enters one of the few really smiling tracts of land in this forbidding Macedonia. The Nisi river falling from the heights of Vodena on to the plain, whence it reaches the Vardar, forms innumerable cascades and runnels, glimmering white amid the thick vegetation, reminding us of

The green steep

Whence Anio leaps

In floods of snow-white foam.

On reaching the plain below it divides again into many branches and channels, irrigating a tract of country which is thus rendered green and fertile. The road follows one of these streams, and the sight of many fine trees, cultivated fields and orchards is very restful to the eye. There are a few buildings amid the greenery, of the usual Turco-Macedonian type, and the Orthodox monastery of Agia-Triada, in whose grounds many antique fragments have been found, including some fine statues. Along the route one occasionally encounters wayside posts guarded by aged Serbian soldiers.

Then the road begins to ascend the steep incline up to the edge of the cliff at Vodena. Looking back, we have a magnificent vista of the Vardar plain, spreading out to the sea in the south-west and surrounded by wild bare mountains. Vodena is a pleasant little town, which the Greeks are trying to Hellenize, but they have not yet been able to destroy its semi-Slav semi-Turkish appearance. Narrow streets, flanked by picturesque houses of wood and plaster, the windows barred by musharabieh screens, all somewhat dilapidated; here and there a few more pretentious modern buildings, large trees in the middle of the streets and many runnels along the side walks, Oriental bazaars and cafés—the usual Macedonian ensemble. Of antiquity we see no trace, save a few fragments of ancient walls, but it is certain that if excavations were made remains at least of the Byzantine epoch would be unearthed. Amid the variegated Oriental crowd, French and Serbian officers and soldiers strut about, and occasionally a few Senegalese.

Just beyond Vodena is Vladovo, a large Bulgarian village, after which the road ascends a broad, fresh, green valley, the sides of which, in spite of the ruthless destruction, are still clad with forests of high trees and thick undergrowth. The forest of Kindrovo had been assigned to our army, and it was there that timber was cut for trench and barbed wire supports, and firewood for the bakeries and heating. There was plenty of raw material, but every now and then a breakdown occurred on the railway and for a time no more wood could be transported; and then every expedient had to be resorted to to procure the indispensable fuel.

The scenery now becomes less smiling, and soon after we emerge into the arid basin of Ostrovo with its pretty blue lake amid high bare mountains. We are now in a rocky, mountainous region, without a tree or a house; at every turn we have a fresh glimpse of the Lake of Ostrovo, whose irregular bays penetrate into the folds of the mountains, and then further off we see the silvery surface of Lake Petrsko. Gornichevo, at the top of the pass, is a gloomy, forbidding village, of primitive houses of rough stone, swept by icy winds in winter. Here were fought fierce combats between Serbs and Bulgars in the summer of 1916, and here the former held up the advance of the enemy who, if they had reached the lake, would have had an open road before them to Vodena, and perhaps even to Salonica.

THE BAND OF THE 35TH DIVISION PLAYING IN THE PLACE DE LA LIBERTÉ AT SALONICA.

GENERAL GUILLAUMAT VISITS GENERAL MOMBELLI AT TEPAVCI.

From Gornichevo the road descends by a series of hairpin bends into the vast plain of Florina, which merges insensibly into that of Monastir and Prilep. We pass through Vrbeni, a picturesque village, which still bears the traces of the fighting in 1916, and close by are the vast French and Italian dumps and depot of Sakulevo; here begins a décauville which goes to Brod and beyond, and is used by the Italians, the I Serbian Army and two French divisions. Just beyond is Hasan Oba, where there is the Italian M.T. park. Here reigned my good friend Major Anziani, famous throughout Macedonia for his exceptional efficiency and cordial hospitality; he had made of his unit a model of its kind, and indeed the Italian M.T. services in Macedonia, although far less richly endowed than those of the other Allies, always worked admirably, and in spite of the fearful strain to which they were subjected, never broke down.

A few kilometres from Hasan Oba we pass the Græco-Bulgarian frontier, but without noticing it because it is war time, and this is the Zone des Armées, where only the writ of the inter-Allied Command runs. The Serbs, however, clung to this, the first tract of their fatherland to be reconquered, and although the civilian population was still very scanty—the area was too near the front—the Serbian Government had instituted prefects, sub-prefects and mayors, and even a military-agricultural commission to introduce scientific improvements in local farming. The first Serbian village is Batch, where the Crown Prince often stayed, his H.Q. being the local school. Close by was our aviation camp, with a flight commanded by Captain Aimone, a very gallant officer, many times decorated for valour and a perfect fanatic of flying, who, together with other Italian airmen, had occasion to distinguish themselves several times during the campaign. Here, too, but on the Greek side of the frontier, was one of the Scottish Women’s hospitals, where, I believe, occurred the celebrated incident of the Russian soldier, knocked down and injured by an Italian lorry, conveyed in a French ambulance to a Scotch hospital in Greek territory which looked after the Serbian wounded; there he was attended to by a Canadian doctor, and the only language in which the two could converse was German! This gives one some idea of the mixed conditions of the Macedonian campaign.

After leaving Batch we reach Brod on the Cerna, where the décauville divides into two branches, one going to the front of the I Serbian Army and the other to the Italian lines. The Cerna, which is crossed here by several military bridges, is a slow, muddy, winding river; it makes a vast loop in the Monastir plain and amid the mountains west of the Vardar, within which the whole of the Italian sector, as well as those of the 16th and 17th French Colonial Divisions were comprised. A good road, built by Italian soldiers, leads to Tepavci, which for twenty-two months was our H.Q.

AREA OF THE ITALIAN FORCE.

To face p. 104.

Tepavci is a wretched little Macedonian village, half way up one of the barest of the nameless hills of this barren land. Close by a camp was made, which for six months sheltered the Italian Command. But during one of the long periods of inactivity on this sector, the interim commander thought of having a few stone huts built, as it seemed as though this front were to remain immobile for years. When General Mombelli took command he continued the work, and by the autumn of 1917 there was a smart new village of stone, with quarters for the officers, offices for the command, a wireless station, and a commodious mess hut decorated with clever caricatures (types of the Allied armies) by an Italian lorry driver, in which one was well sheltered from the intolerable heat of the summer as from the rigours of winter. The whole thing was done at a minimum of expense, as the raw material was there in abundance and the labour was supplied by the army. At no other H.Q. in Macedonia were the officers better housed and fed, and nowhere else were passers-by more cordially and hospitably received. General Mombelli did everything handsomely, and Tepavci became a favourite resort for Allied officers. Many indeed were the visitors to Tepavci, Italian and foreign. Among the latter was the Crown Prince of Serbia, who came there often, and was always on the best terms with General Mombelli; on the eve of the last offensive he expressed his deep regret that the Serbian Army was not to be in direct contact, during the coming operations, with the Italians, because, as he said himself, there was always cordiality between Serbs and Italians. The other Alexander, King of Greece, also came, a fanatic of motoring and an excellent horseman. Besides the three successive Commanders-in-Chief (Sarrail, Guillaumat and Franchet d’Espérey), and many other French generals, several British officers came up, including Generals Cory, the M.G.G.S., and Fairholme the Military Attaché at Athens, where he had been a colleague of General Mombelli in the work of thwarting German espionage. Comic relief was supplied by a British north-country doctor who came out, not as a doctor, but as something else; a dissenting parson wholly innocent of papers who got through the Zone des Armées goodness knows how; a well-known explorer in black town clothes and a bowler hat who refused to put his horse to a canter when the road was being heavily shelled from fear of breaking his photographic plates, and was held up by the French on the charge of supposed pro-German sentiments; and an aged and amiable Transatlantic General who had not the remotest notion of what was going on in the Balkans and was chiefly interested in the farming possibilities and prospects of the country.

To get a good general idea of the Italian sector it was best to begin with a visit to the Trident, as the divisional O.P. was called, reached on horseback by mountain paths, or by motor along the new road built partly by us and partly by the French (it also supplied the two French divisions on our right). Some dug-outs had been arranged for the G.O.C. and a few officers of his Staff, who often remained there for days at a time when operations were in progress. The view was very extensive and grand. Opposite arises the famous Hill 1050, with other peaks to the right—the Piton Rocheux, the Piton Brûlé, Hill 1378, etc. Still further to the right were the French positions. Between the O.P. and Hill 1050 was a sea of rocks, gullies and hillocks, amid which the second and third lines of defence wended their way; they had been cleverly planned and executed by General Mombelli, and greatly reduced the danger of an enemy break-through. Beyond Hill 1050 the broad plain of Prilep spreads out, the optatus alveus of our desires, which seemed, when I ascended the Trident for the first time, so hopelessly far and unattainable. Behind Prilep, to the north, were other mountains, higher and more arduous yet—the Babuna and the Baba—so that we could not help asking ourselves: “If we do succeed in piercing the enemy lines on the terrible 1050 and reaching Prilep, shall we not find ourselves faced by other obstacles equally formidable, guarded by not less imposing defences?” More to the west lies the plain of Monastir, once all cultivated with wheat, vegetables and fruit, but now almost deserted as it was under enemy fire. A white patch at the foot of the mountain is Monastir itself, and behind it we can make out other terrible peaks—Hill 1248, the Tzervena Stena, the Peristeri, and all the mighty barrier which separates Macedonia from Albania. To the extreme right is another wild sea of mountains, peaks and rocks extending to the Vardar—the area of the Serbian Army. Thus the whole of the western half of the Macedonian front is spread out before us like a topographical chart.

Hill 1050 is reached from Tepavci by a road, the first part of which can be used by lorries; and during the last months of the war the décauville from Brod had been prolonged almost to the foot of the mountain. The landscape is quite fantastic. From a wilderness of stone rise up pinnacles of black rock, suggestive of the scenery in the pictures of the Italian primitives representing the hermitages of the Thebaid, and one would hardly have been surprised if a thin, ascetic, monkish figure had suddenly emerged from a cave, or from the crevices of the rocks some monstrous dragon or serpent. Instead, we met Italian infantrymen escorting heavily laden mules, and in the little valleys we came upon A.S.C. camps or sanitary units, while from the dug-outs emerged officers in shirt-sleeves, shaving. The last bit of the road is on the flat, and being in sight of the enemy we always did it at a canter. The enemy did not keep up a systematic fire on the lines of approach, but the shell holes which we frequently encountered proved that they did fire sometimes. On other parts of our sector the approaches were so persistently shelled that supplies could only be carried up after dark.

We descend into a gully where we are fairly sheltered, and cross a broad torrent-bed, nearly dry in summer. Beyond it are sundry dug-outs excavated out of the rock, as enemy shells and trench-mortar bombs are frequently dropped. Here are detachments of Italian mountain artillery and trench-mortar batteries and of the French field and medium calibre artillery assigned to the Italian force, but the Italian guns and trench mortars are not here; the former are higher up and further back on the slopes towards the east, hidden amid the undergrowth and rocks, whence they can fire without being discovered. The trench mortars are also higher up, but further forward, half way up Hill 1050. We now begin painfully to toil up the famous mountain, which for over twenty months has been the centre of Italian military life in Macedonia. All roads lead to 1050, all thoughts are concentrated on its hideous slopes. Steamers convey hundreds of thousands of tons of food and munitions to feed men and guns on the hill; the Santi Quaranta road has been built in the face of immense difficulties so that lorries may transport the reinforcements sent to take the place of the killed, the wounded and the sick. From Italy and foreign countries all sorts of improved scientific instruments are brought up to help in the study of the 1050. A map department has been created at the Divisional H.Q., the principal duty of which is to portray the topography of 1050. Amid these wild rocks and lower down towards the plain numerous cemeteries have been made where sleep the victims of the pitiless monster, and they are not few. The whole activity of the Italian Command is concentrated on the study of the hill in all its details, the officers on the Staff visit it day and night without respite, risking death so that they may know it better, the officers and men of the infantry regiments live on its slopes and in its caverns, and each one tries to know his own sector stone by stone, sod by sod. Every peak, every topographical detail, every gully, every tiny watercourse, every irregularity has its own fancy name, conferred on it by the soldiers on account of some fancied resemblance or remembrance—Il Pane (bread), Il Capello di Napoleone (Napoleon’s hat), La Graziosa (the gracious one), L’Albero isolato (the lonely tree). Curiously enough, the figure whereby the hill is known is inaccurate; it is called Hill 1050 owing to an error in the original triangulation, and is in fact considerably higher. But as that figure appeared on the first maps of the area it has always been maintained. Seen from a distance, the hill looks like an enormous tooth, and indeed it is a poisoned tooth, which pierces and kills. For the soldiers it has acquired a character of almost diabolical malignity. Other positions on the sector—the Piton Brûlé, the Piton Rocheux—are no less terrible, but none exercises the same baleful fascination as the 1050.

The Italian sector is not all on 1050; it begins at the extreme western end of the Cerna loop in the plain. The loop encircles a chain of rocky heights, arid and broken, which are an extension of the Prilep mountains, constituting what is known as the Selechka Planina, rising here and there to the height of 1,500 metres. The Cerna, which has its source in the mountains north of Monastir, flows across the plain in a southerly direction, broadening out at certain points into a marshy lake; south-east of Monastir it makes a conversion towards the east at the foot of the Kaimakchalan, passing Brod and Skochivir, and then turns northward through a narrow mountain gorge to its confluence with the Vardar. The slopes of the Selechka Planina, high and steep in the eastern part of the loop, decline towards the west, and all the western part is flat. The Monastir-Prilep plain is one of the rare gaps through the rugged mountain chains extending across the country from east to west, a passage through which innumerable hordes and armies have made their way since the dawn of history. It is, however, dominated by the heights within the Cerna loop. The possession of those heights was therefore indispensable for dominating the Monastir corridor; and as half of them were in the hands of the Allies and half in those of the enemy, neither side could be regarded as master of the plain and of the passage. Had we lost our positions, the road would have been open to the enemy towards Greece; if we had succeeded in capturing the whole of the range all the enemy’s communications in the Vardar valley would have been menaced. That is the meaning of the long-protracted struggle for the possession of those arid rocks.

The lowest point of the ridge is the Makovo pass; to the north of it a long spur stretches out, whose culminating point is the famous 1050. The position, as we have seen, had been reached by the Serbs in the autumn of 1916, and its conquest had obliged the enemy to evacuate Monastir. But the Serbs were so exhausted with the long and desperate struggle that they were unable to hold their ground, and a Bulgaro-German counter-attack drove them off the ridge. This enabled the enemy to hold their own in the Monastir area for many months longer. In order to secure the position the enemy Command garrisoned it with some of their best troops and provided it with all the most perfect defences known to the modern art of war. The fighting which took place on these rocks left their traces in the corpses with which they were covered, and the mere fact of remaining there cost the lives of innumerable Italian, French, Serbian, Russian, Bulgarian and German soldiers. The 1050 was as famous among the enemy as among our own men; in the Bulgarian town of Dubnitza the chief restaurant was called—even after the Armistice—the “Restaurant of Hill 1050 of the Cerna.”

The enemy line followed the crest of the mountains comprised within the loop to north of the valley of the Morihovo torrent in the eastern part, and that of Hill 1050 and of the great pitons to the north of the Suha torrent in the western part, and then crossed the plain to a point north of Novak on the Cerna. The Allied line was a little below the crest, but at many points very close to that of the enemy. The total length of the line within the loop was about 25 km., of which the western part (a little more than half) was held by the Italians, and the rest by the French.

To the north of the Makovo pass rises a great mass of rock known as the Piton Rocheux, from whose summit the enemy dominated our lines to the right and the left, as well as the Morihovo and Suha valleys. In the Piton Rocheux the enemy had excavated numerous caverns and dug-outs, which hid machine-gun nests and sheltered the troops from the fire of Allied artillery. The Italians here occupied a series of irregular tooth-like rocks, between which were lines protected with sand-bags. But they were dominated by the enemy on the Piton Rocheux, so that one could not go from one position to another with comparative safety except at night. Further west the enemy held another dominant position, the Piton Brûlé, whose fire dominated the Italian positions which were out of the range of that of the Rocheux. Our infantrymen in the front lines had no other shelter in this part of the sector than the shallow holes dug into the rock known as “Serb holes,” with low parapets of heaped up stones and sand-bags in front of them; they were about 30 m. from the enemy and 10 m. below them. The communication trenches between these holes were so exposed that they could only be used after dark. In no other sector of the Macedonian front were the troops more exposed to the burning heat of summer, to cold, snow and wind in winter, and to enemy fire at all seasons.

Beyond the Piton Brûlé the enemy trenches receded to some extent from ours, ascending to the summit of 1050, which was also bristling with machine guns. The enemy positions on 1050 and on the Rocheux sustained each other mutually, so that if we had succeeded in occupying the one we should have been exposed to an infernal fire from the other.

Hill 1050, seen from on high, may be compared to a long arrow-head pointing towards the north-east, with two sharp barbs, and a triangular depression between the two, about 1 km. broad at its widest. We held the south-west barb and the depressions of the Meglentzi valley; our line of main resistance ascended this spur, and at the head of the Meglentzi valley met the first line. Thence it pushed on until just below the highest ridge known as the Castelletto (little castle).

From the Castelletto the enemy could observe the whole Italian front from the Piton Rocheux to Novak, as well as the lines of approach, except certain little gullies hidden beneath the steep rocks, where the batteries were placed. Not a supply column, not a lorry, nor even an isolated horseman or pedestrian could escape observation. In order to give some shelter to the troops holding these positions trenches had been cut out of the rocks, every little irregularity utilized, caverns excavated in the mountain side. But the enemy bombardments, which were often concentrated on these defences—sometimes as many as a thousand shells were dropped in one day on a very narrow tract of the line—had reduced the hill to a mass of shingle and sand which offered but slight protection.

At the head of the Meglentzi valley our front line followed a zig-zag course down into the triangular depression described. Although comparatively far from the enemy, this was one of our worst positions because it was exposed more directly to the fire of the trenches above. Here no movement at all was possible along the line in day-time, and even the wounded had to be evacuated at night, as the enemy did not hesitate to fire on them. The communication trench with the line of main resistance was equally impassable by day, although a whole battalion had to be supplied by this, the only route.

The southern barb of Hill 1050 was cut at one point by a pass or saddle, which separated the rocks of the 1050 proper from three isolated heights known as the “Mamelons of Lebac,” on which were Italian defensive works; they were very important because they dominated the Meglentzi valley. The first line was here at about 1 km. to the north of them and a little beyond the ruins of the village. Below the pass there was a group of trees, which were soon reduced to mere skeletons by the constant bombardment. On the crest of the southern spur were enemy trenches, culminating in the O.P. known as “Point A,” dominating the whole valley and our line as far as the Cerna. The H.Q. of the battalion defending the positions below the village of Meglentzi was in caverns dug into the side of a gully formed by a torrent, which was so steep that in some places there were two tiers of holes, one above the other.

From Meglentzi our lines followed the gully, being at one point very close to those of the enemy. Finally they left the mountain area, which here gradually declined, and crossed the swampy plain as far as the Cerna. The last 6 km. of trenches were on the flat and at some distance from the enemy. The 9 km. of mountainous front were held by 3 regiments, whereas for the 6 km. of plain one was enough. Beyond the lines were elaborate wire entanglements. The centre of the defences in the plain was the village of Novak, east of Monastir. A tumulus in the second line, probably an ancient sepulchre, and the only eminence over a wide stretch of country, made an excellent O.P. The trenches here were all underground, and although the sector was quieter than the mountainous part, the troops suffered from floods in winter and malaria in summer.

The whole plain, which was once cultivated, was now a waste, but the grass grew high and flourished, and at night the troopers of the Lucca Cavalry went out beyond the barbed wire entanglements to mow it and bring it back to their camp—often it was the only forage available for the poor horses and mules of the 35th Division. In these agricultural-military expeditions occasionally shots were exchanged, generally without consequences.

The Cerna marked the end of our sector, and here the French area began. A wooden bridge, well defended by earthworks armed with machine guns, united the two areas. For a long time (in Macedonia units seldom changed their quarters) the division adjoining ours was the 11th Colonial, with whose officers ours were always on the best of terms. From this point a road led to Monastir, but although it was the shortest route between that town and our H.Q. no one was allowed to go along it on horseback or by motor, as it was under enemy fire. Monastir itself, which could be reached by another road, although constantly under fire, offered to those who lived on the Macedonian front the attractions of a city. A large part of the population had returned, and the shopkeepers simply coined money with their modest establishments, as they could demand what prices they liked. By the end of the war about two-thirds of the houses were in ruins, and few were those which did not bear traces of the two years’ bombardment.

Let us now visit the front lines near the summit of 1050. Firing trenches, communication trenches, dug-outs, shelters of all kinds, are cut out of the living rock and it would be difficult to imagine more uncomfortable positions than these. Near the summit our lines are but a few metres from those of the enemy, and through the loop-holes one may see the tin hats of the Germans and Bulgars. Here there have always been some German battalions. After the operations of the autumn of 1916 the German units were to a large extent withdrawn from Macedonia, and the number of German battalions from about twenty was gradually reduced to three or four; but some of them constantly remained on 1050 opposite our troops. The enemy command considered this to be the most important point of the whole defensive system, and therefore garrisoned it with the troops in which it felt most confidence. A tour through our trenches offered some curious sights. As most of the work had to be done at night, a daylight visitor found the great majority of the men fast asleep; he saw nothing but emerging feet, because the shelters opened on to the communication trenches and the soldiers slept with their heads inside and their feet stretching out towards the opening. At intervals, in some wider space, he came upon groups of soldiers washing, shaving, playing cards, reading or writing letters. There were always some, officers or men, who “did the honours” and pointed out the curiosities; it was impossible to pass near a mess without being asked in to drink a glass of good wine and eat biscuits or even cake, but if it was anywhere near meal time he was forced by friendly and cordial comrades to stay to lunch or dinner. The ingenuity with which officers and men managed to make themselves fairly comfortable in quite impossible situations was really wonderful. Hanging on to a bare mountain side, the summit of which was held by the enemy, who dominated the lines of approach and supply, who spied our every movement, in an extremely variable and always detestable climate, life under such circumstances might have seemed well-nigh unbearable. Yet our men held on there for nearly two years, in the face of an enemy stronger in numbers and in material means, as well as in more favourable positions. Nor should we forget the deadly grey monotony of life amid those rocks, varied only by bombardments and raids—ours or the enemy’s—and more rarely by attacks on a large scale, sometimes with poison gas. But the men knew that they were holding one of the keystones of the whole Macedonian defensive system, that if they gave way everything would collapse, and that the Allied armies would risk being driven into the sea. They were moreover kept up by a sense of pride and a desire to cut a good figure before the other Allies. It was considered absolutely indispensable that the Italian line should hold; and although theoretically the position was untenable, it was held without wavering, until the final victory.

There were of course long periods in which there was no fighting. On some days not a shot was heard. But it sufficed for one man to discharge his rifle to provoke a hurricane of fire from the other side. Certain visitors to our front were not at all welcome because, wishing to make themselves conspicuous, they insisted on firing a few shots or throwing a hand grenade just for the fun of the thing. The enemy replied, and a quiet day was converted into one of lively but quite useless exchange of rifle fire and shelling. This of course happened when the importunate visitor had already left for some more sheltered spot.

When the Italian troops took over this sector from the Serbs in December, 1916, it was almost completely unprotected. The Serbs had not had time to carry out important defensive works, and had limited themselves to digging those small holes in the earth or rock which I have already described. General Petitti at once set to work to fortify the area, and his work was continued, completed and extended by General Mombelli. During the period of our occupation, over 100 km. of trenches and communication trenches, two metres deep, were dug, 500 caverns cut out of the rock as shelters, and 120 km. of wire entanglements laid down. All this vast labour was accomplished by troops who were supposed to be at rest, for while two of the brigades were in the line the third was employed in preparing these defences.

During the early days of the campaign there was a tendency, as on all other fronts, to concentrate the largest possible number of men in the front line defences, but later the opposite tendency prevailed, viz. that the first lines should be held by an indispensable minimum of troops only, the rest of the forces being kept in reserve in well-protected shelters, ready to hasten forward at the moment of attack, and that powerful second and third lines of main resistance should be constructed. In this way the constant drain of small losses when there was no real fighting going on was avoided, and at the same time the consequences of a possible break-through in the first line were guarded against, as the enemy, in attacking the second lines would have been exposed to the fire of batteries which could easily find their range on ground perfectly well known to them. It was General Mombelli who reconstructed and reinforced the second line and created the third, which was the most powerful of the three, ex novo. The enemy knew very little about these defences behind the first line, and, in fact, on a German Staff map found on a prisoner, whereas the first line is represented with a fair amount of accurate detail, the second is barely sketched and in an inaccurate manner, while the third is merely hinted at with the indication “old Bulgarian trenches.” This is one of the signs that the enemy was less well-informed about the Allied armies than was generally supposed.

The Italian front in Macedonia had, as we have seen, an extension of 15 km., afterwards reduced, with the diminution of strengths, to about 12. Several times, especially during Sarrail’s régime, the C.A.A. tried to induce the Italian Command to extend the line towards the right, but all the three generals who successively commanded the Italian expeditionary force refused to do so, there being no reason for making the 35th Division occupy a sector wholly out of proportion to its strength as compared with those held by other Allied forces; the fact that the sector in question was one of the hardest and had the most difficult communications, so that all movements from one point to another were anything but simple, had also to be considered. The C.A.A., in fact, ended by dropping the matter.[20] It was not until the summer of 1918 that we again somewhat extended our front in view of the coming offensive. As compared with conditions in Italy the Italian front in Macedonia was certainly less deadly, but in some respects it was one of the most objectionable. Unlike the troops in Italy, those in Macedonia were to a very large extent precluded from leave, and at the time of the Armistice there were no less than 30,000 men, out of a total of 50,000, who, although entitled to leave, were unable to avail themselves of the privilege; among them there were 6,000 who had been at the front for twenty-five months on end without leave. When General Mombelli took command, eleven months after the arrival of the force, no one had been on leave at all from Macedonia, and many had been at the front for many months in Italy before crossing the sea. It was at that time believed that leave for the troops in Macedonia was impossible, because they must not be exposed to the risks of the long sea-crossing when it was not absolutely indispensable, while even the journey via Santi Quaranta by lorry (which involved a shorter crossing) seemed too complicated and difficult. But General Mombelli realized the enormous importance of leave, even if comparatively few men had a chance of enjoying it; the mere thought of not being cut off from all hope of leave exercised a very great and beneficial effect on the moral of the troops. He therefore succeeded in overcoming the thousand obstacles in his way and organized the transport of leave parties by lorry via Santi Quaranta. This was one of his services to the 35th Division, and one which made him particularly popular with the men.

Yet in spite of the moral and material suffering, the unhealthy climate, malaria, the constant small losses, and the long enervating inaction, whenever there was something to be done, the men went to the attack with the most admirable dash. Their moral always remained high, and there was never among the Italian soldiers any movement of revolt or even an outward expression of discontent such as occurred among certain French units, not to speak of the Greeks and Russians, among whom mutinies were frequent.

CHAPTER VII
OPERATIONS IN THE WINTER AND SPRING OF 1917

From the capture of Monastir to the great offensive of September 1918, there were no notable changes in the situation of the two opposing armies. This does not mean that there were no military operations; there were indeed quite a number of them, some fairly important, but they produced no practical results of great moment, and the line which was stabilized in November, 1916, changed but slightly during the next twenty-two months. The Germans declared themselves satisfied with this state of things, because they considered that the Allied troops in Macedonia were immobile and therefore prevented from being sent to other fronts. Events were to prove the Germans in the wrong, but even in the Entente countries, there were persons who continued to insist, ever more strongly, on the uselessness of the Eastern campaign.

The autumn operations came to an end with the capture of Monastir, after which the enemy was not vigorously pursued, partly owing to the wish of General Sarrail himself, who was always more influenced by political considerations regarding Greece than by military conditions, and partly on account of the exhaustion of the troops. The Armée d’Orient had thus conquered the important positions on the Cerna only by half. The town of Monastir was in the hands of the French, but the heights immediately to the N.W., N. and N.E., which dominated it, were still held by the enemy. In the Cerna loop, we occupied part of Hill 1050, but as we have seen, the enemy held the topmost ridge which dominated our positions, and many of our trenches could be enfiladed. The same conditions obtained in the eastern half of the loop held by the French. The Serbs, too, especially the units of the II Army, were dominated by the enemy, and so also were the British to the west and east of Lake Doiran. The situation was certainly not satisfactory for the Allies, and the events in Roumania, where the Austrians, Germans and Bulgarians had proved completely victorious, might at any moment be followed by the arrival of enemy reinforcements on the Macedonian front and consequently by a general attack. General Sarrail, in his memoirs, attributes the suspension of the operations to the losses suffered by all the Allies, particularly by the French and Serbs, to the inorganic plans of the British and to their small desire to risk fresh operations, to the want of energy of the Italians, due to orders from Rome to General Petitti not to act but to limit himself to being present, and to a divergence of views between the two Russian generals. In reality, the primary cause was, as usual, the want of confidence in General Sarrail on the part of the Allied commanders subordinate to him, and even on the part of some of the French commanders, and to his own want of energy in not seizing the opportune moment, after the fall of Monastir, when the enemy was in full retreat and demoralized. He might then have occupied the heights dominating the town and constituted a far better defensive line, whence it would have been possible, later on, to launch a fresh offensive in more favourable conditions. But he let the occasion slip by, and the enemy, who had been beaten but not crushed, had time to reorganize and reinforce themselves in their positions, rendering them practically impregnable.

We have seen what was the distribution of the Armée d’Orient after the fall of Monastir. Some units of the Army were not yet available—the 16th French Colonial Division, which had been sent out from France, had not yet all landed—the 60th British Division was at Ekaterini to watch the Greeks, and a Serbian division was performing a similar duty at Grevena. At this time (December, 1916) the conditions of the Serbian Army were causing anxiety. General Boyovich had requested that it should all be brought into the second line, as it was thoroughly exhausted. General Sarrail was unable to satisfy his wish, save in the case of three divisions. The most serious aspect of the situation was the internal political crisis through which the Serbian officers were passing. General Sarrail himself telegraphed to Paris on January 3, 1917: “Influential partisans of Black Hand have been sent to Bizerta. Commander Morava Division, several Brigade Commanders, Chief of Staff Shumadia Division, Assistant Chief of Staff III Army have been relieved of their positions.”[21] Soon after he telegraphed that, according to a Serbian order: “In consequence of plot some officers have been cashiered and will be replaced by officers friendly to present régime.” He also mentioned that several regicide officers to whom the present Dynasty owed the throne had been punished. “Movement among officers seems to continue—colonel who ripped open Queen Draga’s corpse has been imprisoned.” In March he telegraphed that there had been a new plot against the Prince Regent, and that he believed that shots had been fired at him. Later this statement was confirmed. It was a conspiracy on the part of officers affiliated to the secret societies, and who wished to murder the Prince Regent and to accept the Austrian peace proposals. The movement was crushed, and several officers condemned to death or imprisonment.

In Albania, the situation was still insecure and chaotic. The Italian XVI Corps was spread over the area from the mouth of the Voyussa to the neighbourhood of Liaskoviki. Along the lower Voyussa there were regular defensive lines, but beyond there were only isolated posts and mobile detachments composed largely of Albanian irregulars. Opposite the Italians was the XIX Austro-Hungarian Corps composed of the 47th Division and the 1/19th Gruppenkommando, which extended to the neighbourhood of Lake Ochrida. There was not yet any liaison between our XVI Corps and the Armée d’Orient.

North of Koritza towards Pogradetz on Lake Ochrida, there were some Austrian forces, about a brigade, and some Bulgarian detachments; it was always feared that these troops might menace the left flank of the French. The latter therefore wished to extend their occupation so as to establish a connexion with our troops in Albania, who, throughout the autumn of 1916, had been advancing from the coast towards the interior. Besides the Austrians and Hungarians, there were several Albanian bands enrolled by the celebrated Salih Butka between Koritza and Tchafa Kiarit, and those of Hussein Nikolitza between Koritza and Ersek. General Sarrail thought it advisable to reinforce the garrison at Koritza, where he sent the 76th Division, recently arrived from France, so as to ward off any danger on the part of the Albanian bands and the Austro-Bulgarian detachments, and also to menace the right flank of the enemy’s forces in Macedonia. He communicated with General Ferrero, Commander of our troops in Albania by wireless and by means of flying officers, and thus a common Franco-Italian operation was arranged to commence on February 17th, with the object of freeing the road between Koritza and Ersek. But General Sarrail also wished to extend his own operation area in Albania, perhaps with a view to having something with which to negotiate in his dealings with M. Venizelos, and therefore, in spite of the agreement with General Ferrero, he commenced operations before the date established, and began his advance from Koritza on the 15th. After a small skirmish with the Albanian bands he occupied Kamenitza, Hill 907, to the right and to the left of the Ersek road, on the 16th Tchafa Kiarit, Helmiz, and Lubonia, sending reconnaissances as far as Ersek, and on the 17th the French infantry, under General de Vassart, met our troops under Colonel Rossi at Ersek. General Sarrail wished Ersek to remain in possession of the French troops, and had tried to obtain this result by means of the little trick of anticipating the date for commencing operations. In his memoirs he states that he had asked General Ferrero’s permission to occupy Ersek and that the latter refused, saying: “Ersek must be left for the Italians.” In reality it had always been agreed that Ersek was to be included in our area, and General Sarrail knew it. Otherwise he would not have made the above-mentioned attempt. He ended by recognizing his error, or rather, he threw the blame on the commander of the detachment operating towards Tchafa Kiarit, who, according to the General, had acted on his own initiative.

A definite connexion between the French and Italians across Albania was thus established, and the whole road from Santi Quaranta to Florina was opened up for communications between the Allies, and closed to Greece and the Central Empires.

As we have seen, the Allies in Macedonia, at the beginning of 1917, were not in a position to attempt an offensive on a large scale. On the other hand, even the enemy did not seem to be very anxious to attack. In Roumania, Germany and Austria had lost many men, and all their available reinforcements, in spite of the progressive weakening of Russia, were absorbed on the French or Italian fronts. The Bulgarians might perhaps have done more, but they were not enthusiastic over the idea of throwing themselves headlong into an offensive, the result of which might have been the conquest of Salonica, while they knew that that city was reserved for Austria and not for them. Consequently, except for the town of Monastir, for which they had a special sentiment, all the territorial aims to which they might reasonably aspire were in their own hands, so that they had no strong inducement to face fresh risks. These are the reasons why the enemy did not then attempt a great offensive in the Mackensen style, when the Allies were weak and divided, and when their Governments refused to send large reinforcements to the East. This does not mean that they remained passive. In February they attempted operations which might have had dangerous results for the whole of the Armée d’Orient, if it had not been held up by the gallant defence of the 35th Division.

CAMP NEAR THE PARALOVO MONASTERY.

HEADQUARTERS OF AN INFANTRY REGIMENT ON HILL 1050.

To face p. 122.

On the evening of February 12th, at 18.45 hours the trenches occupied by two companies of the 162nd Infantry (Ivrea Brigade) in the west sector of Hill 1050, were subjected to a tremendous bombardment by artillery, hand grenades, trench mortars and flame-throwers. It was the first time that the latter terrible weapon was employed on the Balkan front, so that its effects came as a complete surprise. Our first lines were smashed up by the explosions, about 600 m. of trench were wrested from their gallant defenders, and half a company was destroyed in a horrible manner by the flames. The survivors, strengthened by another company under the command of Captain Odello, were able to hold up the enemy advance along a lower line in the rear, and immediately afterwards a counter-attack was launched. Fighting continued throughout the night and the next day. In the evening, Colonel Basso, Commander of the regiment, personally took command of the troops destined for the counter-attack. He reorganized the battalions, re-established the communications which had been cut and, after a bombardment by our artillery, the infantry moved to attack at 15 hours on the 15th. Two of the lost trenches were then recaptured, although the enemy reacted vigorously by means of artillery, trench-mortar and machine-gun fire, our infantry continued slowly to advance during the whole of the day. After a short halt in the afternoon, rendered necessary by the visibility, the attack was resumed and several more trenches recaptured.

About a fortnight later our Command decided to make another attack. On the evening of February 27th, we opened a violent bombardment on the enemy positions with 150 guns, which fired some 20,000 rounds on the enemy defences on Hill 1050 on the Piton Brûlé, east of the latter. After about two hours’ fire with good results, the infantry attack to recapture the remaining positions which had been lost on February 11th was launched. The enemy kept up a very hot fire on our positions on Hill 1050 and on the lines of approach. At about 18 hours the scout section and the 11th Company of the 162nd Infantry, followed by the 9th and 2nd Companies issued from the trenches, and hurled themselves with splendid dash on the enemy positions, recapturing them and reaching the enemy dug-outs, where they captured about 70 prisoners. The 11th Company was able to hold the captured ground for some time, but while the scouts were trying to strengthen themselves in the conquered positions, a mine, prepared by the enemy, exploded and blew up the trench, killing nearly the whole of the detachment. The few survivors, supported by part of the 9th Company, clung desperately to the captured ground; two of the three scout officers and four of those of the 9th Company (including the captain) and many other ranks had fallen. A violent machine-gun fire and a furious enemy counter-attack obliged these gallant survivors to fall back on their original positions. Two more companies were sent to reinforce them, with Major Negro commanding the attacking troops, together with the remnants of the company already so hardly hit, returned to the charge; but the machine-guns on Hill 1050 rendered even this new attack fruitless. The 11th Company, now reduced to its captain and a few men, and reinforced by part of the 2nd Company, continued to hold the conquered position, although it was isolated and subjected to a heavy enfilading fire from the enemy artillery, which ours was not able to silence, because the range of the enemy’s emplacements had not been found. The brave detachment consequently had to be recalled.

We had thus recaptured all the lost positions except a small hummock on the crest of Hill 1050 which remained abandoned by both sides. It was the object of vigorous shelling and neither we nor the enemy were able to occupy it definitely. Its form was altered by the bombardment.

Our losses in this engagement amounted to about 400 men; those of the enemy were probably equally numerous. The episode is interesting inasmuch as this was the first time in which Italian troops were engaged in a hand-to-hand encounter with the Germans, and the 74 prisoners captured by our men were all Germans, belonging to the 9th and 10th Jäger Battalions, and to the 205th Company of Engineers. All our detachments which took part in the action behaved admirably. If the attack did not succeed in driving the enemy from the crest of Hill 1050, it served to prove that that position could not be taken by a frontal attack unless the Piton Rocheux on the right had been first captured, because it was the batteries behind the latter that dominated Hill 1050, so that even though the latter had been captured, the troops who occupied it would have been exposed to the enfilading fire of the said batteries. The Piton Rocheux was the chief protection of the enemy artillery, which could not be identified nor silenced on account of the deep gullies with steep sides in which they were hidden, and also because of the insufficiency of our air force. If the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies had learnt the lesson from this episode he would have avoided the failure and heavy losses which he suffered in subsequent attacks, but General Sarrail does not appear to have known exactly how this action had taken place nor its result. At least that is what we must conclude from what he writes in his memoirs,[22] in which he says that we had lost Hill 1050 on February 12th, and that in the operations of February 28th we had not been able to recapture it, though losing 400 men. In fact, he says “malgré, parait-il, 400 hommes hors de combat,” as though he doubted that we had had such losses. It is easy to see how many inaccuracies, not to use a cruder expression, this statement contains. We did not lose Hill 1050 on the 12th of February for the good reason that we had never occupied it. It was, as we have seen, the Serbs who had lost it some months before, immediately after capturing it; of the trenches which we had actually lost on February 12th we recaptured nearly all, partly in the attack on February 13th, and the others in that on the 27th. There only remained the very small bit which I have mentioned, and even the enemy could not hold this permanently.

These operations, and others on other sectors of the front, were only a prelude to a wider action which General Sarrail intended to conduct in the spring in order to try to break through the enemy line. As regards our own sector, General Petitti had proposed a very promising and well thought out plan of operations. The enemy positions on Hill 1050 were to be outflanked and only a demonstrative frontal action was to be developed against them, whereas the line was to be broken at the salient of Vlaklar, and the Piton Rocheux occupied in order to destroy the artillery behind it. But in the month of March our sector of front was shortened and part of the positions on the Piton Rocheux were given over to the French, so that this area remained divided between the Italians and the French.

The first phase of the offensive, according to Sarrail’s plan, was to consist of a flanking movement with the object of breaking the enemy line between the Lakes of Ochrida and Presba; Allied forces were then to march round the latter, occupy Resna, and thence threaten the enemy’s communications behind the Monastir front. At the same time a frontal attack from Monastir was to be delivered against Hill 1248 so as to give the town, which was always under enemy fire, a wider breathing space. On March 11th, the operations between the two lakes began with an attack by the 76th French Division. Important preparations had been made for transport along the difficult Pisoderi road between Florina and Koritza, but the enemy’s resistance proved more vigorous than was expected, and this fact, together with the extremely bad weather which set in just then, caused the flanking movement to fail, and it was soon abandoned. On the 13th a small operation was carried out by detachments of the 63rd Italian Infantry Regiment on Hill 1050 and certain enemy trenches, which formed a troublesome salient within our lines, were captured. The French attack on Hill 1248, which was to have been delivered at the same time, did not commence until the 14th. After an intense bombardment, the French attacked the Tzrvena-Stena west of Monastir, and captured some strong entrenchments; others were captured on Hill 1248. On the 18th, after other lively engagements, the French captured the whole of Hill 1248 as well as the fortified village of Krklina, taking 1,200 prisoners. But the enemy succeeded, by a counter-attack, in recapturing part of Hill 1248, whose summit remained abandoned by both sides. Monastir was somewhat relieved, but the town continued to remain under fire until the Armistice, and more than half of it was destroyed. It cannot be said that the bombardment was unjustified because, besides various Commands, the French had placed a number of batteries there.

HELIOGRAPH IN A CAVERN ON HILL 1050.

ROCK-PERFORATING MACHINE ON HILL 1050.

To face p. 126.

On March 25th, the enemy again attacked the positions of the 63rd Infantry Regiment on Hill 1050, but were repulsed. After another quiet period the offensive was to be resumed in April, and this time the British were to deliver the attack. General Sarrail wanted them to advance simultaneously on Serres and Doiran, but General Milne replied that with his weak effectives he could not attempt an offensive on both sectors, and he decided to limit himself to the Doiran front. He probably realized that General Sarrail wanted him to attack Serres solely for political reasons, because Serres, being a place which even the ordinary public had heard of, its capture would have been a good advertisement for the Armée d’Orient, but if the capture of the town appeared fairly easy, it would have been very difficult to hold it, as it was dominated by formidable Bulgarian positions on the hills behind it.

On April 25th the British attack was launched. The immediate objective was the capture of the Grand and Petit Couronné, extremely strong positions defending the passage between Lake Doiran and the Vardar. Their capture would have opened two roads, that of the Vardar Valley with the railway along the river, and that of the Kosturino Pass towards Strumitza and the interior of Bulgaria. This sector of the front was, like that of the Cerna loop and that of Hill 1248, similar to the fronts of Italy and France, inasmuch as it was provided with all the defensive systems known to modern warfare, and the lines of the two adversaries were very close together, but it differed from the European fronts as all the sectors of Macedonia differed from them, owing to the far greater difficulties of supply and communications. Between Lake Doiran and the Vardar the 22nd and 26th Divisions were distributed (XII Corps), and they had held that sector for almost a year. The ground was extremely broken, and if the mountains occupied by the enemy were not very high, they dominated the British positions and were very well adapted for a strenuous defence. The most conspicuous point of the British position was a long hill like a hump, which the French had named La Tortue, on account of its resemblance to the back of a tortoise. The British trenches lay along the ridge on La Tortue, beside which rose the Petit Couronné of about the same height, which was the principal bastion of the first line defences of the Bulgarians. Between the two heights there was a deep gully, known as the Ravin des Jumeaux. Behind La Tortue were other hills, all dominated by the two formidable positions of the Grand Couronné near the lake, and the P ridges, the former 600 m. above the sea, and the highest point of the latter (P 2), 700 m.

On April 22nd the British artillery opened a heavy preparatory bombardment which lasted throughout the 24th, so that the Bulgarians had no difficulty in knowing that an attack was imminent, and they took the necessary precautions. On the night of the 24th-25th the attack was delivered—the 65th and 66th Brigades of the 22nd Division to the left, and the 78th and 79th Brigades of the 26th Division to the right, took part in it. Various trenches in the enemy line were occupied, both on the Petit Couronné near the lake, and further to the left. The losses were heavy, especially in the Jumeaux Ravine, and the Bulgarian defences proved stronger than had been anticipated. The enemy, moreover, was able to bring up reinforcements more rapidly than the British could do, both on account of the shorter distance that they had to traverse and the fact that the ground was less broken on their side. The British were violently counter-attacked and mown down by machine-gun fire, and consequently had to withdraw to their original positions, except on the extreme left of the sector of attack where they were able to hold some of the captured trenches in the Dolzeli-Krastali sector. The Bulgarian counter-offensive against these positions, between the 26th and 28th, was driven back with heavy losses; the total British losses amounted to about 3,000. The troops had all behaved with conspicuous gallantry, the battalions of the Devonshire and Berkshire Regiments being specially mentioned.

AREA OF THE BRITISH XII CORPS.

To face p. 129.

Early in May, General Petitti di Roreto was recalled to Italy to take up an important Command; he was succeeded in Macedonia by General Pennella, who arrived at Tepavci on the eve of the important offensive of that month. This attack was to have been delivered simultaneously in the Cerna loop by the Italians and the French, on the Dobropolje by the Serbs, and in the Vardar-Doiran sector by the British. But General Sarrail was anxious about other matters besides military considerations. In Greece the political situation was becoming ever more critical, and while he was preparing for the offensive on the Macedonian front, an offensive which everybody knew about, including of course, the enemy, he was already contemplating an expedition to Greece, which prevented him from concentrating all his efforts against the Bulgarians and Germans. He even told an Italian field officer that he did not hope to obtain more than a partial success on the front and perhaps reach Prilep, and that, as soon as he had achieved some advantage, he would send 3 divisions to Thessaly to obtain possession of the harvest. This was important both for the supplies of the Armée d’Orient and to prevent the Greeks, then under the rule of King Constantine, from getting supplies. Greece would thus have been placed at the mercy of the Entente. But he was already meditating, as we shall see, a broader offensive against King Constantine, and his chief error was to have attempted the offensive against the Bulgarians and Germans whilst his attention was being attracted towards the south.

On May 6th, the British resumed their bombardment of the Bulgarian positions west of Lake Doiran, and on the night of the 8th-9th, the infantry attacked. The 60th, 22nd and 26th Divisions took part in the operations, but the principal effort was made by the latter between the Ravin des Jumeaux and the lake; to the left only demonstrative actions were to take place. The positions to the right and left of the Petit Couronné were captured at the cost of heavy losses, a battalion of the Argyll and Sutherlands greatly distinguishing itself. Two detachments of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry and the Berkshire Regiment assaulted the eastern end of the hill and ascended its slopes, but the violent machine-gun and trench-mortar fire and the counter-attacks of the enemy rendered these positions untenable and they had to be evacuated. The British were unable to hold the captured trenches except in one or two sectors to the west of Krastali, where the enemy had offered no serious resistance. Their conduct throughout this action, as in that of the Ravin des Jumeaux, was admirable, but the losses were very heavy—from 4,000 to 5,000 men—and no advantage was gained.

On May 9th, the attack was also delivered in the Cerna loop. The plan of operations proposed by our Command was not, as we have seen, accepted by General Sarrail, who, after having studied the ground on which the action was to take place for one hour only, an inspection which he made from the summit of Mount Tchuka, he decided to deliver a frontal attack on the whole of Hill 1050 from point “A” to the Piton Rocheux. None of the Commanders who were to carry out this operation, Italian or French, had any confidence in its success. The attack was planned in order to make it coincide with that of the Serbs, but actually it did not do so. This fact, and the preliminary bombardment to destroy the wire entanglements and other defences of the enemy, which lasted for several days, gave the enemy ample warning as to the points at which the attack was to be delivered. The troops detailed for the operation were the 61st, 161st, and 162nd Italian Infantry detachments, with the 62nd in support, the 16th French Colonial Division and a Russian brigade. The artillery consisted of three French batteries of short 155-mm. guns, 7 French batteries of old naval guns of 120 mm. (long), 9 French field batteries of 75 mm., the 32 Italian mountain guns of 65 mm., and two groups (16 pieces) of 240 mm. Italian trench-mortars. But all this was insufficient to destroy the enemy defences. The destructive barrage was resumed with greater vigour, and at 6.30 the infantry attack began. On the left, the 1st Battalion of the 61st Regiment reached and passed beyond the enemy lines on the crest of Hill 1050 between points “A” and “A 2,” but there it was met by very heavy rifle and machine-gun fire, suffered serious losses and had to fall back on point “A 1,” where it remained until evening. The 3rd Battalion recaptured the old trenches, lost by the Serbs after the fall of Monastir, to the south and south-east of point “A” and went beyond them, but were attacked in the flank as well as in front by the enemy fire; they had to fall back after having suffered heavy losses, including the Battalion Commander, who was mortally wounded. In the centre, a detachment of the 161st succeeded in getting round Hill 1050 on the right, whilst others in the centre and on the left reached points “A 2” and “A 3.” These troops were also subjected to very heavy artillery, trench-mortar and machine-gun fire, were counter-attacked by strong detachments of the enemy, and suffered serious losses. One company was almost completely destroyed by the explosion of a mine which had been laid in the trench from which the enemy had been driven. Nevertheless the few survivors advanced with great energy and surprised the enemy in their dug-outs, capturing many German prisoners and killing others. But the fire from the battery positions which our artillery could not silence, rendered their position untenable, and they, too, had to fall back on their original trenches, which in the meanwhile had been wrecked by the enemy bombardment. On the right, the attack by the 162nd Regiment encountered the same fate as the others. Our men succeeded in their first dash in occupying the whole of the enemy’s first line on the Piton Brûlé, on to which they also carried their machine-guns. Then perhaps they might have been able to hold their ground, but support failed them on the right, because even the troops of the 16th French Colonial Division had been unable to maintain themselves on the Piton Rocheux which they had at first captured, so that the Italians were met by a very heavy artillery, machine-gun and hand-grenade fire from behind, and by machine-gun fire on their right coming from the Piton Rocheux. They were thus obliged to fall back, partly on their own trenches and partly on positions between the old and the new trenches. At 9.45, the attack was resumed, but conditions not having improved in our favour, no better success was achieved, whereas fresh heavy losses were suffered. About midday the order to suspend the attack was given. Altogether we had lost about 2,700 men killed and wounded. The troops had behaved splendidly, and perhaps they might have broken through on the right if, as I have said, the support from the Rocheux sector, where the French had been unable to reach the ridge, had not failed them.

On the following day a new attack was ordered. As the French Command had realized that the artillery at its disposal was not sufficient for a general attack along the whole line, a fact which the Italians had known for some time, it was decided to concentrate the whole of it on the Piton Brûlé and the Piton Rocheux. At 5 a.m. a demonstrative bombardment was commenced on Hill 1050, and a concentrated fire on the Brûlé and Rocheux from the Italian and French batteries further east. At 8 a.m. the range was lengthened, and the infantry (161st Regiment) began the attack, but they were met by the usual hurricane of enemy fire which held up the advance. As early as 7.30, our Command had noticed a diminution in the intensity of the artillery fire against the Rocheux, and in answer to a question by telephone, the French Command replied that the bombardment was merely a feint because the attack had been adjourned to the following day. The explanation was afterwards given that, as everybody at the French H.Q. knew of this adjournment, nobody had thought of communicating it to our Command. The batteries were immediately ordered to cease fire and the two attacking battalions to remain in their trenches; the battalion on the right suspended its advance, but the one on the left, the telephone having been destroyed by the enemy bombardment, could not be warned in time, and attacked impetuously, reached the enemy trenches and occupied them, but found itself without support, because the battalion on the right and the French had not moved, and consequently it had to retire with heavy losses.

On the 11th the attack was repeated in identical conditions, but the enemy fire made any advance impossible, and the troops fell back on the trenches whence they had started. A detachment of Italian infantry which had pushed further forward remained under a rocky ridge the whole day, the men shamming dead because they could not raise their heads, and re-entered our lines after nightfall. The French attack was no more successful. Our total losses were 3,000 men—those of the French about the same.

In the meanwhile, the II Serbian Army had attacked Hill 1824, south of the Dobropolje on May 9th, capturing it with small losses, and prepared to attack Vetrenik. But after some operations of slight importance, in which a little progress was made, the Serbs too, on account of the enemy resistance and the bad weather, were held up, having lost about 1,000 men, and the Serbian Command asked the C.A.A. to suspend the offensive. General Sarrail attributes this request to various causes, among which was the fear of the Prince Regent of a movement among the Serbs similar to that which was taking place among the Russians, to the reaction of events on the Western front, and to the failure and losses on other sectors of the Macedonian front, but chiefly to the crisis in the internal political situation of the Serbs, and to the intrigues of the French General Lebouc, commanding the French troops in the Cerna loop, who, being unable to aspire to the post of Commander-in-Chief on account of his inferior rank, had tried, according to General Sarrail, to get the Prince Regent of Serbia appointed to that post in the place of General Sarrail in order to become his “Major Général.” There was some truth in all this, but the chief cause of the reluctance of the Prince Regent to continue the offensive was, as usual, lack of confidence on the part of the Serbs in the strategic qualities of Sarrail, and the fear of incurring useless losses which could not be made good.

Further to the right, the I Group of Divisions, commanded by General Régnault, and composed of the 122nd French Division, the Greek Archipelago Division (2 Regiments), and a Russian brigade commanded by General Dietrich, had begun to explore the ground as early as May 5th, and on the 10th it advanced a little. On the Struma the British attacked on the 15th and captured a few prisoners, and on the 16th and 18th they repulsed Bulgarian counter-attacks, inflicting losses on the enemy. A few sporadic actions were conducted on various sectors of the front, and on the 21st General Sarrail ordered the French and British battalions to suspend all attacks, and on the 23rd he extended the same order to the Serbs. The final result of these and other operations, the losses in which were about 13,000 to 14,000, was absolutely nil. A few enemy trenches had been captured, but no positions which could in any way improve the situation of the Allies. The moral situation of the latter had suffered considerably, both on account of the depression caused by the unsuccessful attacks and of the heavy losses, and above all, owing to the encouragement of the Bulgarians and Germans. Until that moment the enemy moral had been declining as a consequence of the long period of inaction after their defeat in the autumn of 1916, the pressure of the Allies, and the conviction that, whatever was the outcome of the war, the Bulgarians would obtain but slight advantages besides those already achieved, even if the latter could be preserved in their entirety. The possibility of a separate peace was not excluded. Now, however, victory—the unsuccessful offensive of the Allies appeared a victory to them—strengthened their determination to carry on the war to the bitter end.

CAMP UNDER THE PITON BRÛLÉ.

ITALIAN NATIONAL FESTIVAL (THE STATUTO) AT SAKULEVO. HIGH MASS.

To face p. 134.

The reasons for the failure are various. In the first place, the enemy, with their successive lines of trenches, well defended by barbed wire, with dug-outs excavated in the rock, and their great abundance of artillery and machine guns, occupied everywhere the dominating positions. Their artillery was more numerous and included heavier calibres than that of the Allies. On the other hand, the Allied effectives, weakened by sickness, the gaps not being filled up by adequate reinforcements, were inferior to those of the enemy. The Allied Air Force was also inferior, as it was not provided with machines capable of facing the swift and powerful German Gothas. But the chief cause of the failure must be set down to the absolute deficiency of the Chief Command. General Sarrail was peculiarly unsuited to hold a command over troops of different nationalities on account of his lack of tact and consideration in dealing with the various commanders, nor did he possess the true qualities of a commander of a large unit. He lacked clearness of vision and genius in his strategic ideas, and firmness in carrying them out. He always affected great contempt for the enemy forces, he acted on sudden decisions taken almost at haphazard and without sufficient knowledge of the topographical and military situation. As we have seen, he had decided on the plan of operations in the Cerna loop after a flying visit to Mount Tchuka, and adopted one very different from that elaborated by our Command after a residence of nearly six months in that sector. Nor would he listen to Voivod Michich, who knew more about Balkan mountain warfare than most generals. He had no idea of the methods of liaison, and instead of carrying out the operations in the various sectors simultaneously, or else concentrating all his efforts on one sector, he ordered a series of disconnected actions, carried out at different moments; he began the attack between Lakes Ochrida and Presba and that opposite Monastir in the month of March, he attacked with the British west on Lake Doiran on April 25th, and in May he conducted four attacks on as many sectors—with the French and Italians in the Cerna loop, with the Serbs east of the Cerna, with the French, Russians and Greeks west of the Vardar, and with the French and British east of the Vardar, dispersing the artillery so that in no sector was there a sufficiency of heavy and medium calibres to make an impression on the extremely strong defensive lines of the enemy or silence their batteries. He allowed each contingent to act on its own account, without ever letting the guiding hand of the Commander-in-Chief be felt, save occasionally in exceptional circumstances, and at moments when it was out of place. Apart from all this, while the Allied effectives were too weak for a serious offensive, he would not concentrate them all at the front, but withdrew 3 divisions to keep themselves ready to operate in Greece. The lack of confidence on the part of the Allies, and even of a considerable section of the French, in his military qualities was thus very much enhanced, because he was seen to be always preoccupied by political questions, and those not of inter-Allied policy. If the Greek situation was such as to require the intervention of the Armée d’Orient, he should not have attempted an offensive against the Germans and Bulgarians at that moment.[23]

If the enemy had thought of conducting a counter-attack, after the unsuccessful attack by the Allies and the consequent reduction of their strengths, in addition to that occasioned by the withdrawal of troops to be sent to Greece, a disaster to the entire Armée d’Orient would not have been impossible. If it did not take place, this was certainly not due to the merits of the Commander-in-Chief.

CHAPTER VIII
GREEK AFFAIRS

We have already seen what difficulties and anxieties were inflicted on the Allied armies by the attitude of Greece. The surrender of Rupel and of the IV Greek Army Corps aroused a strong reaction in a part of Greek public opinion—that part which still supported Venizelos in his pro-Entente policy. As early as February, 1916, General Sarrail had gone to Athens to try to induce the King and the Government to alter their policy, at all events in the sense of a benevolent neutrality. He received the impression that the King wished to remain neutral at all costs, that the Premier, M. Skouloudis, and the General Staff were frankly pro-German, and that Venizelos still hoped for the intervention of Greece on the side of the Allies; Venizelos, however, stated that it would be necessary to reconstitute and re-equip the whole army before it could take the field. After the treachery of Rupel, the situation became more critical, and a sort of Committee of Public Safety was created at Salonica for the defence of the nation’s interests and honour. Sarrail did not interfere with the movement, but was sceptical as to its success.