by Peter Hart
Any stranger seeing a soldier dressed up in anti-mosquito garb would for the first time imagine himself face to face with a scarecrow. The face and arms are thoroughly smeared with an anti-mosquito preparation called ‘parakit’, an excellent thing whilst it lasts; but its tendency is, of course, to get absorbed into the skin after an hour or two, and one often had to smear on a second coating. The mosquitoes didn’t like it, though, and always kept very clear of a ‘parakit’ face. I can recommend it to any young lady worried by an over-zealous admirer! After this, shorts were turned down and tucked up into the top of the puttees, thus safeguarding the knee. Thick gloves were worn, attached by a piece of tape running through the arms and under the tunic over the back. Over the tin hat was worn a mosquito net veil, which, like that apparatus worn by a bee-keeper, rendered the face and neck immune from danger.3
Second Lieutenant Richard Skilbeck-Smith, 1st Leinster Regiment
Despite all these preventative measures the British would suffer over 162,000 cases of malaria during the campaign. Outbreaks of dysentery also weakened the troops, especially those who had already suffered at Gallipoli. Morale was a problem throughout the entire army, indeed many of the units were not of the highest quality and the overall situation in Salonika did little to inspire any great élan.
Sarrail was also forced to grapple with a complex political situation as Constantine maintained what might be called unfriendly neutrality after the fall of the Venizelos government. This was not unnatural as the French were very high-handed, first bringing the whole Salonika region under military control and then instituting a naval blockade to force the Greek government to adopt a less pro-German aspect. The position of the Allies was undoubtedly morally suspect in their treatment of a supposedly independent neutral country.
There was a further complication in that the success of the Russian offensive directed against Austria-Hungary in June 1916 had triggered the ambitions of Rumania to share in any spoils of war. This was very welcome to the Allies, for the Rumanian Army was some 400,000 strong and so obviously a valuable addition to the Allied forces. But one condition of Rumanian participation was a Salonikan offensive to pin down the Bulgarian Army. As the British, under the sway of the Westerner CIGS General Sir William Robertson, were still markedly unenthusiastic, Sarrail planned an attack mainly by Serbian and French troops on the left and centre, which entailed the British taking over the front line covering the Serbian border between the Vardar River and Lake Doiran. Despite the complication of a Bulgarian offensive which had to be countered in August, the French and Serbian assault began in mid-September. Although some gains were made – including a tiny symbolic corner of Serbia at Monastir – the onset of the Balkan winter brought the offensive to an inconclusive end in December. Meanwhile the chimera of a pan-Balkan alliance to sweep away Austria-Hungary was exposed by the humiliating defeat of the Rumanian forces by a combined German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian army. And so once again the Allied Salonika forces were left busy doing nothing.
In early 1917, Sarrail was given the role of ‘fixing’ as many Central Powers resources as possible while Nivelle won the war with his much-vaunted offensive on the Western Front in April. But Sarrail, perhaps recognising that his forces were achieving little of substance, resolved to launch his own major offensive that April. In this ambitious attack, the British Salonika Force, now commanded by Lieutenant General Sir George Milne, would for the first time play a major role, by attacking in the Struma Valley. Milne demurred, fearing that the low-lying valley, which was riddled with mosquitoes, was not a suitable arena for a major battle and instead suggested an attack on Bulgarian positions in the hill country west of Lake Doiran, thereby threatening the tactically significant Kosturino Pass. The terrain was tortuous, with deep ravines, steep-sided ridges and hills rising to 2,000 feet. The hills had been converted into a fortress by a series of trench lines carved out of the rock creating a defensive barrier some two miles deep. Although the aim of the British attack was initially only to take the Bulgarian first line, this was still an extremely tough proposition. After a sadly inadequate three-day barrage, the 22nd and 26th Divisions made a night attack with Zero Hour at 21.45 on 24 April. When the attack came it was certainly no surprise to the Bulgarian artillery, who laid down an effective barrage on the British front lines before shrapnel fizzed across the torn ground of No Man’s Land. The experiences of the men of the 10th Devonshire Regiment, given the thankless task of assaulting the imposing mass of the Petit Couronné, were not untypical.
Our guns had been blasting away all day blowing up the barbed wire and the front line trenches. As soon as it got dark we moved out of our trenches and down one side of the hill to get in the lower end of Jumeaux Ravine, ‘Johnny’ knew we were on the move and our route – they gave us a right pasting. We soon had many casualties. They seemed to know our every move. We got so far in the ravine and then it was hell let loose. Our lads were being knocked over like ninepins. We that were able, got about halfway, the noise of the explosions was terrific. Suddenly I found myself alone. We had to walk behind each other as it was not very wide. My mates behind and in front were knocked out, one poor chap was calling out for his mother, I was nearly choked with cordite fumes, but I was unhurt, not even blown over and my bag of bombs was untouched. I had to go on. I picked my way over the bodies, I could only see by the flash of the explosions.4
Private Francis Mullins, 10th Devonshire Regiment
Despite it all, the Devons managed to over-run some Bulgarian trenches on the lower slopes of Petit Couronné. While the British tried to get forward reinforcements across the precipitous wasteland, the Bulgarians launched a series of increasingly furious counter-attacks. The Petit Couronné was the key to their positions and they were determined to eject the interlopers.
They came up blowing their bugles and shouting, I suppose they thought they were going to frighten us. It was the biggest mistake they made as we knew they were there, if they had crept up quietly in the dark they would have got us quite easy, as there was not many of us left. Well, they came up, I had used up all my bombs bar one, and this one saved my life: it seems unbelievable, the pin of this bomb would not come out – if it had I would have been blown up by my own bomb – as at that moment they pitched one of their bombs in with us and knocked us all out. When I came round I knew I had to get out. I then found that I couldn’t use my right leg very well, it seemed paralysed. However, there was another chap there who was hit in the fingers and he helped to drag me up over the trench as it was every man for himself. We left about three lying in the trench, we could do nothing to help them as the Bulgars were right on top of us. I do not think that I should have got back if it had not been for this lad sticking to me, and I haven’t seen him from that day to this. I have thought many a time how I would like to thank him. Going back over Petit Couronné was no joke, we fell into the barbed wire as it was not quite daylight. There were bodies everywhere.5
Private Francis Mullins, 10th Devonshire Regiment
He would find that the bomb fragments had cut his sciatic nerve as well as inflicted some twenty minor wounds to his buttocks and legs. The attack was a dismal failure, with over 3,100 casualties in sharp contrast to just 835 lost by the successful defenders. A repeat attack ordered for a fortnight later, at 21.50 on 8 May, in a further attempt to pin the Bulgarians while the French and Serbs attacked to the west, met with no more success and the loss of over 1,800 casualties. The Serbian and French forces did no better, with any insignificant gains soon abandoned in the face of trenchant Bulgarian counter-attacks.
The failure of these offensives provoked a final crisis with the resolutely neutral Greek government. In June 1917 the Allies forced the abdication of Constantine and replaced him with his son, Alexander, who was far more malleable to their point of view. Almost immediately Venizelos, who had been running a pro-Allied government in exile on Crete, was reinstated as Prime Minister. He promptly declared war on the Central Powers on 27 Jun
e 1917. Most of the Balkans were now embroiled in the Great War. But still nothing much seemed to change. Certainly, the Greek Army seemed to lack any enthusiasm for the fray. As the Salonika campaign staggered. on, Sarrail himself would be replaced after a change in government in France brought in the distinctly unsympathetic Georges Clemenceau as premier in November 1917. Sarrail’s replacement was first General Marie-Louis Guillaumat and then, on his recall to France in June 1918, the highly regarded General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey.
In d’Espèrey the Armée d’Orient had a commander committed to an ‘Easterner’ strategy; indeed, he had proposed a Balkan offensive as long ago as 1914. Now he managed to gain permission to launch an offensive as long as he did not require extra troops. The main attack was to be made by the Serbs and French through mountainous terrain to the west of the Vardar Valley. This was even more treacherous than the Doiran sector, but d’Espèrey had managed to assemble covertly superior forces that outnumbered the Bulgarians by some three to one. He had also amassed sufficient guns to deliver a bombardment that was extremely heavy by the standards of the campaign when the offensive opened on 14 September. This time the French were successful and, after hard fighting, managed to take the mountain peaks. In front of them lay the valleys which would channel behind the Bulgarian lines. On 18 September Milne was required to launch a pinning attack alongside the Greeks to prevent the Bulgarians rushing troops to the threatened sector. The result was disaster and the Second Battle of Doiran would cost some 7,100 British and Greek casualties. But this time the French broke through and, on 20 September, fearing encirclement, the Bulgarians finally abandoned their mountain fastness and began to retreat all along the line. There was considerable elation among the British once they realised that the Bulgarians had gone.
We really are on the move after the Bulgar who stole away in the night. Our patrols were in their line by 9 last night and now we have followed them up and infantry and guns are well inside. It was a very hurried flitting as two deserters told us they got the order to move at 8 at 7.30. I visited a bit of their line this afternoon. They have blown up a lot, but there are still some wonderful dugouts. The wire is tremendous everywhere.6
Captain Robert Townsend, 10th Devonshire Regiment
Soon they were in hot pursuit.
It has been a tremendous day. We started off on sudden orders about 9 and have marched hard over two tremendous passes and down to a village called Strumnica which is at the head of the Struma Valley and we are well into Bulgaria at last. It is a pretty country, but the dust on the road has been simply awful. The Bulgar has gone quickly but it has been a fearfully hard march and I didn’t get in until 10 o’clock absolutely beat. However it is all part of a day’s work and we are finishing off the Bulgar in great style.7
Captain Robert Townsend, 10th Devonshire Regiment
As the Allied aircraft and cavalry tore into the retreating Bulgarian columns, they soon became a rabble. Their morale was not helped by the unavoidable realisation that they had been following the wrong lodestar: the news from the Western Front made it clear that Germany was defeated and the Central Powers were doomed.
On 29 September the Bulgarian forces occupying Skopje, the Serbian capital, surrendered and a day later Bulgaria formally surrendered. It was a bitter-sweet moment for the British Salonika Force. It had been on the winning team; but the excitement of victory had belonged to its allies. It had battled for the best part of three years but then had to be content with nothing more than a secondary role in the ultimate dénouement. Salonika proved a truly forgettable campaign – and with good reason. Little was achieved here that victory on the Western Front would not have secured in good time. And the cost, for the British, had been horrendous, for although they lost only 23,787 casualties in the actual fighting they suffered far more casualties from the pernicious effects of disease. At the height of the British deployment over 182,500 British troops were kicking their heels, left vulnerable to the depradations of the mosquito and malaria. There could be few more depressing fronts than Salonika.
9
THE WESTERN FRONT, 1916
‘There is some very strong leaning at home towards easy victories in unimportant theatres, with small casualties and no real results. How on earth one can hope to beat Germany by killing Turks or Bulgars passes comprehension. It is like a prize-fighter leaving the ring to trounce his opponent’s seconds.’1
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, BEF
THE NEW YEAR SAW A NEW TEAM at the heart of the British military effort. In London, General Sir William Robertson had been appointed as Chief of Imperial General Staff on 23 December 1915. Just a few days earlier, on 19 December, General Sir Douglas Haig had been promoted to command the BEF. The two would work in harmony, united in their belief that the prevailing strategic situation meant that the bulk of British resources should be devoted to fighting the main enemy – Germany – in the deciding theatre of war – the Western Front. The balance of power on the Western Front was changing, for although the Germans had strengthened their forces in the west after their successful campaigns on the Eastern Front, the BEF too was expanding. It now had around a million men under arms – a total of thirty-eight infantry divisions and still growing. Nevertheless the French remained the dominant ally, with some ninety-six divisions under the command of General Joseph Joffre in January 1916. There was no denying that the French had borne the brunt of the war on the Western Front since August 1914. By comparison, the British contribution had been negligible: those battles in which they had been involved, such as Neuve Chapelle or Loos, barely registered as skirmishes when compared to the titanic clashes in the Artois and Champagne.
The French had been waiting impatiently for some time for their maritime ally to pull its weight on land as well. In 1916 that time had come. At the Allied co-ordinating conference held at Chantilly in December 1915 it had been decided that there would be a huge Anglo-French offensive on the Western Front to coincide with simultaneous offensives by the Russians and the Italians. Joffre had selected the Somme area where the British and French would fight side by side and he could exert control to ensure that the British did not slacken their efforts. This was alliance warfare and Haig was left with no option but to comply if the union was to survive and prosper. Yet neither Joffre nor Haig would have the chance to dictate what was about to happen on the Western Front. For the first half of 1916, it was another general, the German Chief of General Staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn, who would control the agenda.
Falkenhayn had been encouraged by the series of successes on the Eastern Front in 1915 and believed that, although total defeat of Russia was an unlikely prospect, his armies had achieved enough to render her at least quiescent during 1916. Serbia, too, had been reduced to a shadow, while the position of Austria-Hungary had undoubtedly improved. Yet for all that, the overall strategic situation remained the same: Russia obstinately refused to make a separate peace and hence Germany was still doomed to fight on two fronts. In these circumstances Falkenhayn was convinced that the war would have to be ended before 1916 drew to a close, or Germany – but even more likely Austria-Hungary and Turkey – would simply collapse under the weight of the immense burdens of war. And so, the Central Powers were forced on to the offensive. If they stood back and waited, the Allies would only get stronger, mobilising ever more of their industrial and military strength behind the wheel of war. Indeed, in some ways Falkenhayn had been fortunate that the French and British had largely failed to gain any concrete advantage on the Western Front in 1915, making only trivial gains without taking any really important objectives.
With Russia apparently tamed, Falkenhayn was intent on seeking a decision in the west, while Austria-Hungary turned on the Italians. But who to attack: the French or the British? In making his decision Falkenhayn weighed up many factors. He still considered Britain the main enemy, but how to seriously harm the British war effort remained problematical. Eventually, he resolved to attack
the French, reasoning that they would knock ‘England’s best sword out of its hand – France!’2 The French had already been drained by the combination of horrendous losses in the Battle of the Frontiers in 1914 and the failed offensives of 1915. French manpower was not a bottomless well and she could not afford that rate of loss for long. In the assessment of their military opponents German intelligence suggested that Britain’s new ‘Kitchener Armies’ were not militarily competent, although they seem to have respected both the reconstituted Regular divisions and the Territorial divisions. They were also aware of the generally good morale still prevailing in the British units. In contrast, the Germans looked down on the French divisions, considering them both unskilled in the military arts and low in morale. This view may have been wrong, but it was widespread in the German High Command, which did not lack in self-confidence, assessing their own troops as both highly skilled and well motivated in action. Finally Falkenhayn and his staff believed that the French nation and her democratically elected politicians were not strong enough to withstand the terrible rigours of war for much longer. They would put the matter to the test in 1916.
The Battle of Verdun
During the long-drawn-out planning process for what would be the Battle of Verdun, Falkenhayn developed a new concept of warfare. In the final version he would launch an assault on the salient that protruded around the fortress town of Verdun on both banks of the River Meuse, where a potent mixture of tactical necessity and national pride would force the French to launch counter-attacks that would in effect bleed their army to death, grinding down reserves division by division through the ‘mincing machine’ of the strong German artillery – in all, 1,220 guns would be moved up, of which a large number were either heavy or super-heavy. Whether the French counter-attacked at Verdun or attempted to relieve the pressure with a major attack elsewhere, the Germans believed that the effect would be the same – huge losses unsustainable for the French nation in the third year of the war. A British intervention was not particularly feared, as Falkenhayn doubted that the BEF was ready for serious fighting on a continental scale. When the Allies had worn themselves out, a final German offensive would sweep the remnants of the French Army from the field of battle. With France knocked out of the war, the BEF could be dealt with unceremoniously.