The Macedonian campaign

by Luigi Villari

Thus the National Defence Government came to an end, and Greece was once more united. In Italy, the Greek situation was never fully understood, nor the inner meaning of these events. For some time before the great war Italo-Greek relations had been unfriendly on account of the Dodecannese question and our interests in Albania. Italian public opinion had defended Albanian independence, whereas Greece aspired to annex the southern part of the country, including Argyrocastro and Koritza which Greeks described as “Northern Epirus.” During the Balkan War the Greeks had occupied Epirus and South Albania, but later they had had to evacuate the latter territory; on the outbreak of the Great War they invaded it again and devastated it. The feelings of Greece towards the Entente were uncertain; our intervention rendered her somewhat hostile because she did not, for the above-mentioned reasons, wish to find herself in alliance with Italy.[30] The insolent and petulant attitude of the Greek press intensified anti-Greek feeling in Italy. Greece’s failure to meet her engagements arising from the Serbo-Greek Alliance, and later her whole attitude towards the Allies in Macedonia, culminating in the surrender of Rupel and the IV Army Corps, convinced Italian public opinion that the great majority of the Greek people were pro-German. On the other hand we were suspicious of Venizelos because he represented the Imperialist spirit of unlimited Greek expansion, and Italians did not believe that Greek Imperialism had a sound basis, because they considered that the Greeks lacked the qualities required in a race destined to rule. But in Italy it was not perhaps understood that Venizelos himself was a much bigger man than the milieu in which his activity was displayed, and that he was in reality rendering services to the Entente and therefore to us. In Britain and France, on the other hand, public opinion wrongly believed that he had his people absolutely behind him and that that people was, as a whole, up to his standard.

The real reason why Britain and France, especially the latter, desired Greek intervention in the war and therefore supported Venizelos, was that a hostile Greece might prove fatal to the Macedonian expedition. If Greece were really neutral the Armée d’Orient might hold its own on its positions, but a new offensive could only be attempted with any hope of success if fresh reinforcements were forthcoming. These might have been drawn from the French front or from Italy; but the British, French and Italian G.H.Q.’s were irremovably opposed to the sending of more troops from what were regarded as the essential fronts to the East. The Serbs were not even able to fill up the gaps caused by battle and sickness. The only source of supply for man-power which could still be tapped was Greece. No one really wanted Greek assistance—neither the French nor the British, and still less the Italians and the Serbs. Everybody knew that the Greek Army was torn by political strife, disorganized, lacking in artillery and equipment, badly led and anything but friendly to the Entente, and that it could not therefore represent an important addition of strength to the Allies. There were, it is true, the three National Defence Divisions which included good material, and the officers at least were all volunteers. But they were only nine regiments in all, with a few mountain batteries. There was therefore nothing else to be done but to get the whole of Greece, nolens volens, into the war, and trust to the Allied military missions and to a vast cleansing operation to make something useful out of the Greek Army. It would certainly have been preferable if a few already war-trained divisions from France or Italy had been available. But the Government of the Great Powers were not friendly towards the Macedonian campaign, and would not realize that 3 or 4 divisions, withdrawn from the fronts of Italy or France would not have weakened those armies perceptibly, whereas in Macedonia they might have just tilted the balance in our favour. But as this course was rejected it was necessary to have recourse to Greece, a necessity which was not understood in Italy. We did not desire Greek intervention because we knew what enormous demands for compensation Greece would afterwards make, demands which were to some extent incompatible with our own interests. But on the other hand we were even more opposed than the French or the British to the sending of fresh troops to Macedonia. The only other solution was to withdraw the Armée d’Orient altogether, or let it be starved for men and remain in idleness, with the ever-present risk of being driven into the sea by the enemy. France and Britain, who attached a little more importance than we did—though not very much more—to the Macedonian expedition, finally decided to apply for Greek help, trusting in Venizelos. Italy, in her opposition to the vast aspirations of Venizelist Greece, had the appearance of supporting Constantine, and this did us a great deal of harm. We had, perhaps, interests to defend in the Near East which were to some extent in contrast with those of other Allies. But in order to defend them adequately we should have done nothing to make our policy appear in any way suspected of pro-Germanism—and at that time to be pro-Constantine was regarded as equivalent to being pro-German. Instead, Italian public opinion and the press, and some of our officers and diplomats assumed an attitude which made our Near Eastern policy suspect in the eyes of the French, and even of the British. We continued to suffer the great harm which these circumstances caused us for a long time afterwards, especially at the Peace Conference. Moreover, our pro-Constantine policy did not succeed. France and Britain brought about Constantine’s fall and the return of Venizelos. We limited ourselves to occupying Epirus for a short time, as a pendant to the French occupation of Thessaly; we made ourselves still more unpopular with the Venizelists, without gaining the sympathies of the Royalists. Our true policy should have been to send important reinforcements to the East. Had we done so we should have been, after the Armistice, in a far better position to defend our own aspirations and interests in the negotiations with our Allies.

Let us now see what the Greek Army really was. I have mentioned the National Defence Army Corps. This was the best that Greece could produce in the way of a military force, and subsequently, as we shall see, its regiments behaved well. But even their moral at first left something to be desired. Desertions were numerous, and when M. Jonnart arrived there had been no less than 700 of them in the Archipelago Division alone.[31] Up to that moment only a few Greek detachments had been sent to the front, and always incorporated in Allied units and on relatively quiet sectors. After the fall of Constantine, Greece entered into a state of war with the Central Empires, and the French set to work to reorganize the Greek Army so that it might co-operate effectively in Macedonia.

The task was no easy one. The first thing to be done was to proceed to the cleansing of the officers’ corps. This was indispensable, because nearly all the Staff officers had studied in Germany and, like the great majority of field officers, were imbued with pro-German sentiments. But the result of this process was that the Army was left with hardly any Staff officers at all, and very few officers of superior rank. It thus became necessary to promote large numbers of uneducated junior officers and of still more ignorant N.C.O.’s. A hasty and intensive course of military training had to be imparted to all. Even the troops of the National Defence Army had but scanty notions of modern warfare, trenches, barbed wire, the scientific use of machine guns, hand grenades, camouflage, signalling, etc. As for their supply and transport services, they were even more defective, so that at first everything had to be provided and transported by the Allies, and the latter, even at the end of the campaign, had to supply the Greeks with most of their services. The experience which the Greeks had gained in the Balkan Wars was of no use whatever, in fact they were a hindrance rather than a help; the former had been, so to speak, retail wars, whereas this was a wholesale one. In the former, the armies were small and could live on the country, in the latter, not only were the armies much larger, but the country had been so completely devastated that it could supply practically nothing. The troops of the National Defence Corps were now no longer lacking in military spirit, but it was necessary to infuse it into those of the old regular army. The men on the whole were not bad, but most of the officers were inadquately trained, and it was indispensable to instil into all of them the conviction that intervention in the war was necessary for the salvation of Greece.

The chief difficulties which the French Military Mission found itself up against were Oriental indolence, scanty love of hard work, and dislike of discipline. At the front, even when they had fought well and successfully, the Greek soldiers did not want to tire themselves by digging trenches and strengthening their positions, so that they could not have held out against vigorous counter-attacks; consequently, after every successful attack, when an enemy reaction was feared, the Greeks would be relieved by other troops. In the training courses the French instructors had to work themselves to death trying to persuade their pupils that discipline and military knowledge were indispensable. As one of these officers said to me: “Ils ne nous détestent pas, mais il nous trouvent trés gênant.” On the other hand sporadic cases of indiscipline and mutiny were less alarming than they would have been in a European army, although they were serious enough in themselves. Greek detachments, while travelling towards the Macedonian front, were apt to disperse en route, because, if the men happened to be passing near their own homes, they could not resist the temptation of going to visit their families. There were graver cases of mutiny proper, especially at Lamia and Larissa, provoked by Royalist propagandists who spread catastrophic and fantastic rumours or appealed to the Royalist and neutralist sentiments with which a part of the army was imbued; this is not surprising in view of the violent political passions by which the Army was torn and of the fact that the men realized the war very slightly. Cases of desertion to the enemy, although not infrequent, were far less numerous than was commonly believed at Salonica. On the whole it must be admitted that the French Mission carried out its task as well as it was possible for it to do with the material which it had to handle. But superhuman patience was necessary, and we must not be surprised if French officers at times indulged in the most bitter and often unjustified diatribes against the Greeks.

The troops of the National Defence Corps were scattered about the various sectors of the front to complete their training under the ægis of French units. As their training progressed, they were incorporated into ever larger units, so that whereas at first each Greek company was placed between companies belonging to other armies, later they were grouped in battalions, then in regiments, and finally in divisions. For a time there was one Greek division on the Monastir front, and one with the I Group of Divisions west of the Vardar; later on, two were grouped together, and early in 1918, all three were united in the latter sector, thus constituting a complete army corps. Until that moment the Greek Command was a Corps Command, under General Zimbrakakis, with its G.H.Q. at Salonica, and later at Boemitza, near front of the I Group. The latter, however, continued to be commanded by a French General—first General Gérome, and then General d’Anselme.

In the late autumn of 1917, detachments of the Greek Regular Army began to reach Salonica. Their training was divided into three periods—the first in Old Greece, the second at the training camp at Naresh, near Salonica, and the third in a quiet sector of the front. The last detachments did not reach Macedonia until the eve of the offensive of September, 1918. The 1st, 2nd and 13th Divisions composed the I Army Corps; the others were not embodied in corps until after the Armistice, but served under Allied units in different sectors. To the I Corps (Gen. Paraskevopoulo) was entrusted the lower Struma area in the summer of 1918, at first under the command of the British XVI Corps, and subsequently directly under the British G.H.Q.

After the revolution of June, 1917, General Danglis was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army. He was a good soldier, but rather old; when the bulk of the troops had been transferred to Macedonia he moved his own G.H.Q. from Athens to Salonica. Later on he was relieved of his Command, and succeeded by General Paraskevopoulo. But the Greek Chief Command never really operated, save as an administrative and disciplinary organ, because there never was a real Greek Army. There were divisions and even corps, but the effective Army Command was always French or British. The lines of communication, the commissariat, the intendance only existed in embryo. The mobilization had never been general from fear of provoking insurrections, and had to be effected gradually and partially; only the youngest classes were called to the colours, so that there was a lack of men for the rear services. The Greeks, like other Oriental peoples, were lacking in the sense of organization, and even as collaborators they were the despair of the British Q service which had to supply them. The Greek officers recognized it themselves openly, and said that everything with which the British undertook to supply them arrived regularly, whereas the supplies for which the Greek intendance was responsible arrived with considerable delay or remained on the road. Another difficulty was the inveterate habit of the Greek soldier of selling his kit to civilians. The temptation was considerable, as the prices paid for these articles were very high, and there was a regular secret organization for such purchases, besides private transactions between friends or relations. The result was that certain units had to be re-equipped two or three times before they had marched a kilometre. The same thing happened at Salonica even among other Allied armies, but to a much smaller extent, and such cases were always severely punished at once.

But with all their faults we must not forget that the Greeks did give a useful contribution to the Macedonian campaign. As we shall see later, the units that had occasion to fight behaved well, and the great sobriety and endurance of the men proved valuable assets in country as difficult and as poor in resources as Macedonia. If their losses in the war were trifling in comparison with those of the other Allies, and even as a percentage of the total numbers engaged, their utility lay in having, to some extent, solved the crisis of effectives from which the Armée d’Orient was suffering so grievously and which, in view of the reluctance of Great Powers to send reinforcements to Macedonia, had seemed well nigh insoluble. By entrusting to the Greeks, as was done in the summer of 1918, the whole of the Struma front, which, although it was not one of the very difficult sectors, required, nevertheless, a considerable number of troops to hold on account of its extension, the concentration of British troops elsewhere was rendered possible.

The Greek front on the Struma was nothing else than the old front of the British XVI Corps, and was now held by the three divisions of the Greek I Corps. Three more divisions were with the I Groupement between Nonte and the Vardar under French command, and another division was placed under another French General in the Cerna loop on the eve of the offensive. The rest of the Greek forces remained in reserve. The 9th Division, which was in Epirus, had originally been intended to co-operate with the Italian XVI Corps in Albania; but it was considered advisable to avoid contact between Italians and Greeks, and it was therefore sent to Macedonia in the summer of 1918, part of it being conveyed by sea via Salonica and the rest marching overland via Ersek and Koritza. During their passage through Albania the various units of that division were supplied, at General Franchet d’Espérey’s request, by the Italian military authorities, and the latter is said to have stated that the greatest success of his whole career was to have induced the Italians to feed the Greeks!