The Macedonian campaign

by Luigi Villari

GRÆCO-BULGARIAN FRONTIER.

To face p. 242.

The British now continued their pursuit of the enemy in their desperate retreat towards Strumitza, and soon occupied the whole of the area to the west and north of Lake Doiran. On the 25th the troops of the XVI Corps advanced to the right and left of the Doiran-Strumitza road, and penetrated into Bulgaria by the Kosturino pass; on the 26th they occupied Strumitza itself.[43] These were the first Allied detachments to penetrate into enemy territory in the Balkans; actually the first to enter were the Derbyshire Yeomanry. The XII Corps had, in the meanwhile, pushed towards the right of the XVIth, and on the 25th commenced the attack on the Beles to the east and the right. On the same day General Milne transferred his G.H.Q. from Salonica to Janesh in order to be nearer the scene of operations. On the 26th, detachments of the British 22nd and 20th Divisions and the Cretan Division, and of the 2nd bis Zouaves regiment attacked the Bulgarians entrenched on the Beles, that vast mountain wall from 1,100 m. to 1,600 m. high, which for two years has seemed an absolutely impregnable barrier. The enemy offered but slight resistance, because they were already beaten, and the heights were occupied one after the other. On the 28th a regiment of the Cretan Division pushed along the ridge from west to east, another, together with the British 228th Brigade, advanced along the valley below towards Lake Butkova, and a third column of the XVI Corps followed the parallel valley to the north, down the course of the River Strumitza. The object of this triple advance was to reach the Struma towards the Rupel and Kresna gorges, and thus cut off the retreat of the forces of the II Army, which had remained until then on the lower Struma.

Thus the enemy armies were cut in two. The rapid advance of the French and Serbs had driven a deep wedge in between the XI German Army and the rest of the hostile forces. The XI Army was partly on the mountains to the north of the Monastir-Prilep plain, and partly in the Kalkandelen area; the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 13th Divisions of the I Bulgarian Army were echeloned between the Uskub-Kumanovo road and the valley of the Strumitza, but they had lost a large part of their artillery; the II Army was still on the lower Struma, and its retreat towards Bulgaria was seriously threatened by the Anglo-Greek advance. Bulgaria was invaded by the British in the Strumitza Valley, the Serbians were watching on the Bulgarian-Macedonian frontier between Tzarevo Selo and Pehtzevo, ready to descend on the territory of the hated enemy and take vengeance for their past sufferings. The I Greek Corps, which until then had remained inactive, was now ready to cross the valley of the Struma and launch an attack on Serres and Demir Hissar.

General Mombelli was making his preparations for a general attack on Sop, where large Bulgarian forces were concentrated. The attack was to take place on the morning of the 30th in order to compel the enemy to surrender. The German Commands of the XI Army, of the LXI and LXII Corps, and of the 302nd Division, as well as the artillery, machine-gun companies and German specialist detachments, realizing that the Bulgarian defeat was now inevitable, fled in the night, after having cut all the telegraph and telephone wires, so that for several days the Bulgarian Army had no communication with the rest of the army or with their country. It had to improvise new Commands and Staffs for its units, which had been abandoned by their erstwhile omnipotent Allies. The attack on Sop was to have been launched from the north and north-east by the Sicilia Brigade, and contemporaneously from the south and south-west by the Ivrea and Cagliari Brigades, but at 5.30 General Mombelli received a wireless message announcing the conclusion of the Armistice, which was to come into force on that very day. The attack was therefore suspended, and the Bulgarian Commander invited to surrender. But as the communications with their G.H.Q. and with the Sofia Government had been cut, he refused at first to believe the news, and it took two days of discussion, conducted on the Italian side by General Freri, Commander of the Cagliari Brigade, to convince the Bulgarians, and it was only on October 3rd that the surrender took place. The capitulation was unconditional, the officers alone being allowed to retain their swords and revolvers. The prisoners comprised a Divisional Commander, two Brigadiers, 16 field officers, 224 junior officers, and 7,727 men; 8 guns and 70 machine guns, and a large quantity of other booty were captured. At the same time, the rest of the troops who had been fighting against us on the Stramol and Baba mountains—over 10,000 men and many batteries—surrendered to the 11th French Colonial Division near Kichevo, because it was easier of access. It was thus against a total of nearly 18,000 men with a large number of batteries and machine guns that the troops of the 35th Division, inferior in numbers and material, had fought for three days and won. Except for the fighting of the British at Lake Doiran, it had been the bitterest struggle of the great battle of the Balkans.

For several days the Bulgarians had realized that they had lost the war. After the fall of Gradsko, which Marshal von Hindenburg attributes to “pusillanimity or worse,” there was no longer any hope, because the vital centre of communications had been cut. The great bulk of the Bulgarian soldiers had had enough of fighting, and desertions en masse from the divisions at the centre towards the interior began. The German Command, not having succeeded, in spite of the reserves which had been drawn from the right and the left, in saving Gradsko, decided to retreat. As Marshal von Hindenburg rightly observes, the great natural defensive positions in the Balkan peninsula extend one behind the other, so that an army which retires in good order has always fresh lines on which to fall back; the Bulgarian generals, however, were of the opinion that the army could hold out only on condition that it remained where it was, but that it would go to pieces if the order for a general retreat were given. In fact, as soon as the withdrawal of the troops on the Doiran sector began, it soon degenerated into a rout. According to the German Field Marshal, all the Staffs failed in their duty, especially those of the I Bulgarian Army. The only man who did not lose his head was the German Commander-in-Chief, General von Scholtz. The Bulgarian Government made desperate appeals for help to Germany and Austria, but to these “S.O.S.” signals the Central Powers were no longer in a position to reply adequately. The armies of Germany had been seriously beaten in France, and were falling back, fighting a desperate and hopeless battle; the Austrians were pinned down on the Piave and in the Seven Communes in front of the Italian Army, which was preparing to launch the final attack. A few divisions collected here and there were hurried forward; the Alpen Corps from France, two infantry divisions from the Crimea, and some other units. Then there was in Roumania a fairly large army, although not in a fit condition to go into the first line. A mixed brigade destined for the Caucasus, and already half-way across the Black Sea, was recalled by wireless, landed at Varna and Constanza, and hurried off to Macedonia. The German troops who arrived in Sofia found everything quiet, but parties of Bulgarian soldiers were constantly pouring in, having abandoned the front lines. They did not molest their officers, nor oblige them to desert if they wished to remain; they were even ready to help the Germans who were going towards the front; but they were fed up and wished to return to their fields and their families. They had ceased to take any further interest in Macedonia. Even an Army Commander telegraphed to the Tzar insisting that an armistice should be asked for, but received the reply: “Go and get killed in your present lines.” The assurances given by the Imperial Chancellor to the Reichstag that help for Bulgaria had been provided for, and that powerful reinforcements were being hurried up, no longer deceived anybody.

CRASHED ITALIAN AEROPLANE.

COMMUNICATION TRENCHES IN THE MEGLENTZI VALLEY.