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.