With the French in France and Salonika

by Richard Harding Davis

The next day we walked along the bank of the Vardar River to Gravec, about five miles north of Strumnitza station. Five miles farther was Demir-Kapu, the Gate of Iron, and between these two towns is a high and narrow pass famous for its wild and magnificent beauty. Fifteen miles beyond that was Krivolak, the most advanced French position. On the hills above Gravec were many guns, but in the town itself only a few infantrymen. It was a town entirely of mud; the houses, the roads, and the people were covered with it. Gravec is proud only of its church, on the walls of which in colors still rich are painted many devils with pitchforks driving the wicked ones into the flames.

One of the poilus put his finger on the mass of wicked ones.

“Les Boches,” he explained.

Whether the devils were the French or the English he did not say, possibly because at the moment they were more driven against than driving.

Major Merse, the commanding officer, invited us to his headquarters. They were in a house of stone and mud, from which projected a wooden platform. When any one appeared upon it he had the look of being about to make a speech. The major asked us to take photographs of Gravec and send them to his wife. He wanted her to see in what sort of a place he was condemned to exist during the winter. He did not wish her to think of him as sitting in front of a café on the sidewalk, and the snap-shots would show her that Gravec has no cafés, no sidewalks and no streets.

But he was not condemned to spend the winter in Gravec.

Within the week great stores of ammunition and supplies began to pour into it from Krivolak, and the Gate of Iron became the advanced position, and Gravec suddenly found herself of importance as the French base.

To understand this withdrawal, find on the map Krivolak, and follow the railroad and River Vardar southeast to Gravec.

The cause of the retreat was the inability of the Serbians to hold Monastir and their withdrawal west, which left a gap in the former line of Serbians, French, and British. The enemy thus was south and west of Sarrail, and his left flank was exposed.

On December 3, finding the advanced position at Krivolak threatened by four divisions, 100,000 men, General Sarrail began the withdrawal, sending south by rail without loss all ammunition and stores. He destroyed the tunnel at Krivolak and all the bridges across the Vardar, and on his left at the Cerna River. The fighting was heavy at Prevedo and Biserence, but the French losses were small. He withdrew slowly, twenty miles in one week. The British also withdrew from their first line to their second line of defense.