|
The Story of the Salonica
Army
Excerpts:
"WHAT is the Salonica Army doing?"
is a question which hundreds of thousands of Englishmen have asked
at one time or another, and one which this book is an attempt,
however inadequate, to answer. But the spirit of the question really
goes beyond the letter, and the average man by this enquiry means,
"Why has the Salonica Army not done more?"
The aims for which an Allied
expedition to the Balkans was warmly advocated, especially in
France, in the autumn of 1915, have fallen a great way short of the
fulfilment then expected for them. The rescue of invaded Serbia and
the erection of a barrier across Germany's direct road to Turkey
were the ends to which the public looked at the time of the landing
at Salonica, and the feeling of disappointment that no such striking
and decisive goals have been achieved has bred a mood of
dissatisfaction with the Allied Army in the Balkans which it by no
means deserves, when its quite inadequate numbers and equipment for
tasks of such magnitude are taken into consideration. First of all
the Allies arrived in the Balkans too late to do anything big there.
Had they come a little earlier, ---in July, 1915, for instance. to
reinforce the Serbian Army, which was then still in existence as a
fighting force, it might possibly have been a different story. But
in October, when our troops began to land, Serbia was already lost,
outnumbered and overwhelmed by the Austrians from the north and the
Bulgars from the east. In consequence of this, the Balkan Army,
after a bold but ineffective attempt to join up with the retreating
Serbs, to save at any rate the southern part of the country from the
invader, was thrown solely upon its own resources to achieve what it
might. Nor did any of the help which had been half counted upon when
the expedition was first decided come from the Greek Army. Instead,
the Greeks, after Venizelos had been driven from office by King
Constantine, constituted themselves, in our rear and all around us,
a virtual enemy all the more dangerous for being unavowed.
Starting from this stone-cold
beginning then, with the Bulgars and their German allies in full
possession of Serbia and ourselves having no more than a precarious
footing upon the somewhat dubiously neutral soil of Greece, let us
consider some of the obstacles which the Allied Army of the Orient
has since had to overcome.
First and fundamental among these
obstacles has been the necessity of creating, importing and
improvising, in a mother-naked land, the whole of the elaborate
organisation which a modern army requires as a foundation to work
upon. When you step out of Salonica you step into a virtual desert,
roadless, treeless, uncultivated, populated only by scattered
villages of the most primitive kind, inhabited by a low-grade
peasantry. We found here none of the materials which modern armies
need for their use, none of that machinery of civilisation which in
France, for instance, lies ready-made to the hand. Two roads, in a
condition quite inadequate to support heavy traffic, and three
single lines of railway ran, at the most divergent angles possible,
from Salonica towards the enemy's territory. Apart from these there
was hardly even a track which in winter was possible for wheeled
traffic. So that from the very beginning the Allied Forces have had
to build up slowly, laboriously, the whole of the system of
locomotion necessary for themselves and their supplies,---piers,
roads, bridges, railways,---all have had to be created where nothing
of the kind previously existed. The army, in fact, has only been
able to move upcountry at all on condition of dragging with it a
slowspun network of means of communication.
A handicap that has weighed
heavily upon the Balkan Army is a climate most unpropitious for
soldiering, cold and wet in winter, hot and feverish in summer. In
fact the campaigning season in the Balkans may be said to be limited
by weather conditions to a few weeks of the spring and autumn of
each year. Winter, right up to the beginning of April, is a season
of snow, rain, and, above all, mud. Tracks dissolve into quagmires;
main roads break up into holes and ridges impassable for
motor-traffic, and transport becomes a matter of the very greatest
difficulty, testing almost to breaking-point any organisation of the
service of supply.
It has not, moreover, been
entirely an element of strength to the Balkan campaign that our army
there is made up of contingents of all the Allies. With the best
will in the world a mixed force will not work together so well as a
homogeneous one. There are differences of language, differences of
method, differences of character. Each of the Allied contingents has
its own Staff, whose ideas have to be co-ordinated with those of the
French General Staff, under General Sarrail, the Commander-in-Chief.
Coalitions never yet did work without a certain amount of friction
now and then. The Allied Governments themselves have to hold
constant Councils to keep their views in harmony. Perhaps the
creation of an Allied General Staff at Salonica would obviate the
little misunderstandings that at present inevitably arise sometimes
between the contingents of six nationalities that make up our force
in the Balkans.
Under the restrictions that I have
detailed above, what has the Allied Army in the Balkans achieved
since October, 1915? Certain facts may be claimed to stand clearly
to its credit:
1. If the Allies had not come
to Salonica the Germans would have overrun and mastered the whole of
the Balkan Peninsula.
This may be regarded as sure. The
Greek king was already their man. His people have certainly always
been against fighting anybody, for the Germans or against them, but
the Germans would have known how to change all that.
2. Germany would have
established a submarine base at Salonica, and even made of it a
Mediterranean Kiel, if we had not occupied it.
This is also likely. On the other
hand the Allied Fleets in that case could have blockaded Salonica as
they blockade the Austrian ports, and the Germans have so many
submarine bases in the Mediterranean already that they do not
urgently need any more.
3. Our forces in the Balkans
have held up a relatively greater number of the enemy.
The superiority in number of
Germans, Austrians, Bulgars and Turks against us has sometimes been
as great as 40,000-50,000 men. The Balkan Army has more than pulled
its weight. But if it had never been sent to the Balkans it would
have been pulling just as much weight on some other front, and
probably at much less cost, for the great argument against
maintaining a merely holding-front at the other end of Europe is its
terrible costliness, especially in sea-transport.
4. It has given the Serbs back
Monastir and kept them together and in heart as a nation.
This is indisputable. The Serbs
must have lost their spirit long ago if it were not that they have
been able to fight their way back on to a narrow fringe of Serbian
soil.
But in trying to form an opinion
as to whether the Salonica expedition was or was not a wise
enterprise to undertake, it must not be forgotten how greatly and
unexpectedly the general conditions of the war have changed since
our landing there was made. In 1915 there was apparently good reason
for hoping that effective co-operation might be possible between a
force based on Salonica and the Russians. We did not then know to
what extent pro-German internal forces were at work in Russia,
deliberately restricting her military action. If Russia had been
knocking at the Bulgarian door on the other side our fortunes in the
Balkans might have been far otherwise. The entry of Roumania into
the war was the event to which the Allied Governments looked forward
as the great opportunity for the Salonica force to begin an
offensive against Bulgaria, henceforth threatened from two sides.
But the misguided strategy which sent the greater part of the
Roumanian Army on a badly organised invasion of Transylvania, in
pursuit of an immediate territorial objective instead of using it to
co-operate with the Allies at Salonica, defeated this hope, which in
any case could hardly have been realised, in view of the treachery
with which the Russian Government then in power deliberately
abandoned Roumania to the enemy in pursuit of its policy of pro-Germanism
and a separate peace . . .
I HAVE related in the last chapter
how, a few days after the landing at Salonica, it had been agreed
between the French and British commanders that the British
contingent of the Balkan Expeditionary Force should act in support
of the French. Accordingly, the 30th Brigade of the 10th Division,
in the last week of October, moved up from Salonica to Guevgheli, on
the Vardar at the Greco-Serbian frontier, and marched through
Bogdanci by the Chenali river to Dedeli. After concentrating there
this brigade took up a position facing north between the villages of
Tatarli and Robrovo, with the French holding the range of hills just
in front of them, while they were encamped at its foot in second
line. The two other brigades of the 10th Division shortly afterwards
followed the 30th and encamped on the Doiran-Dedeli road.
On November 20th-21st, however, the 10th Division took. over the
line in front of them which the French had hitherto held, and thus
British troops came for the first time face to face with the
Bulgars. The position which these Irishmen were now holding formed
the right of the Allied Balkan front, of which the left wing,
composed entirely of French, was thrown much in advance, having for
a month past been pushed far up the Vardar, and become heavily
engaged with the Bulgars on the Cerna.
The sector for which we thus became responsible lay in the heart of
a steep, confused, rocky mass of mountains between Kostorina and
Lake Doiran. From Kostorina, where we linked up with the French, to
just west of Memisli, our line was held by the 30th Brigade, which
consisted of the 6th and 7th Dublins and the 6th and 7th Munster
Fusiliers. Memish village, including an important advanced position
800 yards north of it, known as Rocky Peak (Piton Rocheux) , which
was later to be the fulcrum of the Bulgar attack against us here,
was held by the 31st Brigade, who had the 5th and 6th Inniskillings
and the 5th and 6th Irish Fusiliers. Their line ran as far as Prstan.
The 29th Brigade on the extreme right (10th Hampshires, 5th
Connaught Rangers, Irish Rifles, Leinsters), had detached two
battalions to reinforce the 30th Brigade. The rest of it was
echeloned in the rear of the two forward brigades on the ridge above
Humzali and Jumaabasi.
Comparatively peaceful conditions prevailed on the front of this new
British position until the end of November. The Bulgars seemed to be
content to mask us with a skeleton force. To reach our lines from
Salonica you took the train and arrived at Doiran four hours later.
Nineteen miles of good motoring-road led on from the station to
Dedeli, where Divisional Headquarters were. You passed through
Doiran town, skirting the edge of the broad, shining lake, and then
gradually climbed up the wide valley north-westwards,---how often
since one has sat on the hills east of Doiran and watched the
enemy's transport coming down that same road.
Dedeli itself is a characteristic Turkish village of unpaved lanes
and alleys filled with loose boulders. The low, two-storied houses,
each in a little compound of its own, are the kind of dwelling you
find all over Macedonia. The lower rooms are dank, earth-floored
stables or storehouses, where the winter's supply of Indian corn is
kept. A ramshackle outside wooden staircase leads up to a broad
verandah on the upper floor. You need to walk gingerly, for half the
planks are loose. Off this open the two or three rooms that make up
the dwelling. These, when they have been cleaned with the vigour
which the British soldier puts into such operations, when years'-old
accumulation of filth has been scraped off the floor and burnt, and
when walls and ceilings have been whitewashed, become quite
tolerably habitable. The half-dome fireplace, indeed, reminds one
rather of modern villa architecture at home. The furniture, if any,
is of the roughest, but the roofs of these cottages are generally
sound and the soldier asks no more. It is always astonishing to
observe the resourcefulness and zeal with which army batmen will
manufacture tables, chairs, washstands, bookcases, for their
officers. They "scrounge" the material somehow under the most
improbable circumstances, and are amply rewarded for hours of labour
in what might have been their own spare time by a casual remark of
their "boss." "Oh, by the way, Jenkins, the Colonel liked that
armchair you knocked together for me, when he was in here to-day. He
wants to know if you can't make one like it for him." And yet all
their labour is of no more than temporary service. When the
battalion moves on these products of ingenious carpentry must be
left behind. With four officers' kits to go in one half-limber there
is no room for chairs. But where would you find such energy in peace
time? If a castor came off a sofa would your butler, at thirty
shillings a week all found, put it on again for you? If he noticed
you had nowhere to keep your smoking things, would he sit up at
night in his pantry carving you a pipe-rack? Yet your batman, at
half-a-sovereign a month, will improvise you a bed or a bath-tub as
cheerfully as he brings your morning tea. War is a great energiser.
As soon as British troops on campaign arrive in a new place they
start improving it. I suppose the dry torrent-beds of Macedonia have
been used as roads by its inhabitants for thousands of years, yet
until the British came in 1915, not a man of all the dozen races
that have lived there thought of moving a single boulder out of the
way to give pack-horses easier passage. If it is the right season
our men plant gardens. If it is winter-time they lay out neat little
paths all up and down the mountain sides with a regular edging of
white stones. They make the wilderness look almost ridiculously
tidy, like a wild man of the woods with his hair brushed back and
parted.
10th Divisional Headquarters at Dedeli overlooked the half-mile
broad valley of the Bojimia river, whose bed, however, was a dry
waste of sand and rocks. Cotton, hemp, mulberry trees, withered
vestiges of the inevitable Indian corn, witnessed to the fertility
of the district whose inhabitants had been driven away by the
approach of hostilities,---a kind of migration to which, as
Macedonians, they were thoroughly accustomed. On the ridge on the
far side of the Bojimia valley our entrenched positions lay, and a
short walk eastwards along the river bed took you to Tatarli, where
the General commanding the 31st Brigade had his headquarters. The
Bulgarians were understood to hold a line of trenches, blockhouses
and sangars along the ridge parallel to ours. It was estimated that
there were about 10,000 of them spread out between the Greek
frontier and Strumnitza, and believed to belong to the 2nd
Philipopolis Division. Deserters would come in voluntarily in little
bodies. They complained of shortage of food in the enemy lines. One
sheep had to be divided between 250 men. They were generally men
between twenty-five and thirty-five and seemed to be townspeople.
One drew a good contour-map to explain how he had come; another
mended the watches of the Divisional Headquarters Staff. They were
eager to show that they had not fired their rifles. One deserter had
taken off his tunic to make him less likely to be shot at.
A rough ride of four miles took you from Dedeli to the headquarters
of the 30th Brigade at Cadjali. The French, on November 3rd, had
driven the Bulgars up the broad dry Cadjali ravine along which one
passed, and through the village above. It had been a stiff action
and the Bulgars lost out of one battalion alone 350 men. The French
then had occupied the crest above Cadjali and the Bulgars the next
one across a valley about 1,400 yards broad, where their main
position was on Hill 850. While the French were laboriously building
up their new line and had still only prised elementary trenches a
few feet deep out of the rocky ground, with no wire in front of them
at all, the Bulgars attacked on the night of November 16th with an
energy which was a foreshadowing of that which they displayed a
month later against ourselves. Creeping down the gullies on their
side of the valley, wearing their opinskis, a native sandal of
untanned leather, and climbing noiselessly the rough variegated
slopes which led up to the French positions, they made a determined
effort to rush them, and failing in the first onslaught, flung
themselves down, a bare forty yards from their adversaries, where
from behind the meagre protection of "scrapes" of earth hurriedly
thrown up, they poured in a point-blank rifle fire, to the violence
of which the piles of empty cartridge-cases lying by each individual
position were evidence that still remained when we got there. But
the attack failed and the Bulgars left 300 dead behind them.
The line which the 30th Brigade set themselves to dig on taking over
this position lay along the ridge just below the crest. The ground
was of unrelenting rock, so hard to work that the French had chiefly
relied on sangars or stone redoubts, but these being liable to
splinter under shell fire the 30th Brigade did not occupy them,
leaving them empty to draw the enemy's artillery. On this brigade
front as on that of its neighbour, there was no action at all during
November, the only losses being caused by an unlucky Bulgar shell
which fell in a group of Dublin Fusiliers, killing nine and wounding
a dozen.
But while these Irish brigades were still imperfectly installed on
the barren, inhospitable Dedeli ridge, they were savagely smitten by
that cruel three-day blizzard which caused bitter suffering to our
troops not only in the Balkans but at the Dardanelles. It began on
November 27th with torrents of rain which soon turned to snow. Then
it froze so quickly that the drenched skirts of greatcoats would
stand out stiff like a ballet-dancer's dress. Even down at
Strumnitza Station in the valley, 7.6° below zero Fahrenheit was
registered, and up on that exposed knife-edge ridge where our
trenches were, the biting wind made the cold more piercing still.
The men had no shelter but waterproof sheets pegged across the top
of the open trench and the weight of accumulated snow soon broke
those in. They had had no time to make dugouts in the rocky mountain
side; and if they had had time they had no materials.
In that terrible weather our patrols and those of the Bulgars which
used both to visit the unoccupied village of Ormanli would be driven
to shelter and light fires in houses so close together that each
could hear the other talking, and each by tacit agreement left the
other undisturbed. It was too cold to fight.
There were 750 cases of frostbite in one brigade alone during those
three fierce days, when it seemed as if the Balkan winter were
showing the worst of which it was capable. Men frozen stiff were
carried in scores from the trenches to the first-aid posts to be
rubbed back to life again. Warm underclothing reached the division
in the very middle of the snowstorm, but the cold was too bitter for
the men to undress to put it on, and it was added anyhow to the
sacks and blankets and other additional garments that each did his
best to accumulate, a pair of drawers being used as a muffler or
tied round the middle.
It must be remembered, too, that the men of the 10th Division were
already in poor physical condition when this severe ordeal came upon
them. They looked worse indeed than they had at Suvla. The faces of
most of them were yellow and wizened and their bodies thin. The
trying climate of the Gallipoli Peninsula had sapped their strength.
On December 1st the 6th Munsters and 6th Dublin Fusiliers of the
30th Brigade had suffered so much by cold that they were relieved in
the front line by the 5th Connaught Rangers and the 10th Hampshires
of the 29th Brigade.
It was on December 4th that the Bulgars' artilleryfire began to be
better directed and concentrated; and the fact became evident that
they had received reinforcements. On December 5th they started an
attack on the French upon our left to the west of the
Doiran-Strumnitza road. Meanwhile their activity against us
increased and small parties of Bulgars began to creep up the little
nullahs towards our front line and open rifle fire. The weather
since December 2nd had become extremely foggy.
To meet the increased Bulgar artillery activity, two batteries of
field guns had been man-handled with great difficulty to a position
1,000 yards south of Memisli. These were the guns that had later to
be abandoned in the retreat. It was only by the hardest labour that
wheeled guns were ever got up to such a position at all, but we had
no mountain artillery, and unless this step had been taken we should
have been without reply to the enemy's shelling. There was a working
party of 100 men told off to get the guns away had there been time,
but to move some of them it was necessary to go out in front of the
position, and even then it was calculated that two days' careful
work would have been required to withdraw them.
At length, on the afternoon of December 6th, the Bulgar attack on
the 10th Division began. Eight hundred yards north of Memisli was
the advanced post known as Rocky Peak. The effect of our occupying
this had been to deny to the enemy artillery access to the right
flank of the 30th Brigade. The hill had originally been held by a
battalion of Irish Fusiliers. But there was no cover there; it was
nothing but a treeless, shelterless, boulder-strewn height, and the
battalion had suffered so severely during the blizzard in that
isolated position that it was withdrawn and only one company and one
machine-gun were left to hold it. In their first attack on Rocky
Peak in the afternoon of December 6th the Bulgars captured a small
trench, but later were driven out and off the hill again.
During the same night, however, they crept along the ravines that
surrounded the isolated peak and carried it by storm at 5.30 on the
morning of December 7th. About thirty of our troops holding it were
captured; the rest got away. This loss gave the enemy a serious
footing in our line, for the Bulgars brought up mountain artillery
and machine-guns onto Rocky Peak and began to enfilade the front of
the 30th Brigade, which was also bombarded from the other side by
field-gun batteries at Cepelli. The 30th Brigade had a line which
made a salient, and was thus considerably exposed, and it became
clear that they were to be the object of the main Bulgar attack.
During the night of December 6th-7th two attacks were also made on
the trenches of the Connaughts on Kostorino ridge by largely
superior forces of Germans and Bulgars, but these were driven off,
and all night long the artillery bombardment, strangely muffled by
the fog, continued with enough severity to hinder supplies from
reaching the trenches.
Only gradually was it realised that the hitherto passive Bulgars
were about to make an attack in force upon our right. General Mahon,
who was at 30th Brigade Headquarters on the morning of the 7th, had
asked General Sarrail to expedite as much as possible the retreat
which was now in full progress under most difficult conditions of
the French contingent down the Vardar. An air-reconnaissance had
reported no signs of Bulgar reinforcements arriving on our front,
but this was due no doubt to the prevailing fog. The converging
artillery fire upon the 30th Brigade front was now becoming very
severe and causing heavy losses to the 10th Hampshires and 5th
Connaughts. The Connaughts were holding a salient which was in fact
too big for them, and the Bulgars began massing for an attack in
some dead ground 600 yards in advance of their trenches, where our
artillery could not reach them. At 2.40 P.M. this attack was
launched in mass on 600 yards of front, at a place where the ground
gave cover close up to our line. The Bulgars had about four
battalions to our two, but the Connaughts had already lost so
heavily that having come up into the line 960 strong they could only
muster 350 after this day's fighting. The 10th Hampshires retired to
the prepared second position a mile behind, losing about 200 killed
and wounded. The Connaughts, who had been badly cut up by the heavy
artillery-fire, fell back too. The commander of the 31st. Brigade,
having the impression that his right flank was being surrounded,
retired also about the same time. This new position to which the
30th Brigade withdrew lay between Cadjali and Tatarli on Crête
Simonet with an advanced position on Crête Rivet. The Bulgars pushed
on after us, but were held back from continuing the pursuit by the
fire of our field-artillery which prevented them from crossing the
Kostorino ridge. Their advance to that point was witnessed at close
range by a young subaltern of the 7th Munsters who had been on the
left flank of the Connaughts, and was left behind with his platoon
in a wood. He was never found by the enemy and got safely away with
his men at night. The Bulgars came on, he said, with their rifles
slung on their backs, shouting and singing. He saw many Germans
among them. They entered Kajali, 30th Brigade's old headquarters,
and a British army doctor who had arrived in the middle of all these
events and wanted to report at Brigade Headquarters, straying
innocently into the village that night, stumbled to his astonishment
upon Bulgars rejoicing round their bivouac fires. He was fired at,
but got away in the fog.
December 8th was a day of heavy artillery and machine-gun fire upon
our new position. During the night we had been reinforced by three
French companies and a mountain-battery. The fog grew constantly
denser, and in this broken country of steep, twisting ravines and
pathless hill-sides, it was difficult to know whether the enemy
might not be pushing on upon the flanks to surround us.
At 5 P.M. on December 8th the 30th Brigade were ordered to withdraw
to a new line across the Dedeli pass, while the 31st was to take up
a position in alignment with them along the Karabail ridge, behind
which runs the road back to Doiran, where two battalions of the 29th
Brigade were already established. The 30th Brigade started retiring
at 5.30 P.M. and as the last battalion left the position the Bulgars
rushed up the hill with cheers, firing flares as they came. The
gallant rearguard of two companies which had held on to Crête Rivet,
the advanced position 800 yards in front, throughout the whole day,
under very heavy shelling, gave them a final burst of rapid fire as
they came. It was thanks to these two companies that the main
position of Crête Simonet was only attacked as we left it. The
costly retirement from the original line, where the advanced
position on Rocky Peak was lost, contrasts in this respect with the
safety with which Crête Simonet was evacuated. In these two
companies which held off the Bulgars, however, all the officers were
killed and wounded, and one came away only twenty-nine, the other
fifty-nine strong. Meanwhile the French on our left, being now
exposed to the danger of outflanking, retired southwards on December
8th to Cestovo, their line facing north-west and later to Kizil-Doganli.
On December 9th the 31st Brigade on Karabail was replaced by a
brigade of another division which began to arrive, the 31st going
into reserve. The general commanding this division came up at the
same time and took charge of the operations. The dense fog made it
difficult for the new brigade to orient itself, and for the 30th to
get in touch with them, so that a proper liaison was not made before
the 10th. On that day the French were heavily attacked on their new
line at Cestovo while their left again was being rapidly driven back
down the Vardar on Guevgheli. By the afternoon of the next day the
Bulgars were pressing so hard upon the French that they had fallen
back to a front stretching from Furka through Bogdanci to Guevgheli,
and it was the 10th Division's turn for its flank to be left in the
air. The Bulgars furthermore were now also trying to get round our
right flank and so down to Lake Doiran to cut our only road of
retreat where it reaches the north-west end of the Lake. Fortunately
the pathlessness of the mountains prevented that attempt from
succeeding.
But Dedeli had to be evacuated hastily on the night of the 11th or
it would be too late. Accordingly a general order was given for the
10th Division to retire across the Greek frontier. It was not, of
course, sure whether the Bulgar pursuit would stop at this political
obstacle, and there was further a strong report that the Greeks were
coming in against us, and that the communications of the division
with Salonica were anything but safe. The 31st Brigade, already
concentrated, marched back first, then the 30th Brigade was
withdrawn south of Doiran and bivouacked near the lake.
A good deal of confusion inevitably attended these rapid movements
of retreat. Thus at 1 A.M. on the morning of the 12th when the 30th
Brigade received orders at Dedeli to retire on Doiran, one battalion
had all its company cooks (about fifteen men) sleeping together in a
house. Dedeli, like all Macedonian villages, is a straggling place,
and when the order was being circulated, the cooks' house was
overlooked. So, huddled round their comfortable fire, they slept on
undisturbed till daylight, when on going to the door, they were
horrified to find the street full of Bulgars. The cooks seized their
rifles, and the Bulgars at this sign of what looked like hostile
action, took cover and opened a characteristically ill-aimed fire,
of which the cooks took advantage to make a bolt for it as hard as
they could go down the road to Doiran under cover of the fog, and
all rejoined their battalion safely.
The Bulgars advancing down the Strumnitza road stopped just short of
the Greek frontier stone on the outskirts of Doiran town, the 30th
Brigade Headquarters only leaving Doiran about ten minutes before
their arrival.
|
|