The Macedonian campaign

by Luigi Villari

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.