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.
