THE FALL OF NISH--DEFENSE OF BABUNA PASS
At a small village called Svrlig, six miles outside the city, the
Serbians began a fight which presently assumed the character of some
of the bloody battles they had fought earlier in the campaign. Again
and again the Bulgarian attacks were hurled back; thus the battle
lasted for three days, from November 2 to 5, 1915. The Serbians
retired only when the Bulgarians began bringing up their big guns, and
the shells were already dropping into Nish. On November 5, 1915, the
Bulgarians entered the city and took possession, where even yet the
British and French flags were flying, raised by the Serbians when they
still thought that only a few days intervened until they would be
welcoming the allied troops. A hundred guns were taken with Nish,
though the Serbians claimed that they were old and obsolete.
The fall of Nish, from a political point of view, at least, was the
worst blow that the Serbians had suffered since the capture of
Belgrade. The German and Austrian papers made the most of it, and
indeed all Europe now realized that the last days of the Serbian
resistance were at hand.
In Macedonia the Bulgarians under Todoroff were not having an easy
success. They were being held up still at Katshanik Pass, where the
Serbians under Colonel Bojovitch were daily beating back the Bulgarian
assaults and thus keeping open the retreat of the main Serbian army.
Down in the Babuna Pass the Serbians were making a similar stubborn
defense, hoping against hope that the French would come to their
relief. And possibly, had it not been for the defeats that the
Bulgarians were receiving from the French at Strumitza, they would
have been able to take the pass long before. For in that direction
Todoroff had been suffering great loss; so severely was he pressed
that he was, for the time being, unable to press his advance into the
heart of Macedonia. To this extent, at least, the Allies, and
especially the French, did help the Serbians.
The Bulgarians were in exactly the same position, and trying to
accomplish exactly the same thing, as in the Second Balkan War. At
that time they were endeavoring to drive a wedge in between the
Serbians and the Greeks. Now the situation was the same, except that
the French were in the place of the Greeks.
From Katshanik to Krivolak the railroad was in Bulgarian hands. From
Krivolak south to Doiran it was in the hands of the Allies, though
parts of it were at times under the fire of the Bulgarian artillery.
South of Katshanik the Bulgarians had crossed the road and had pushed
westward until they were held up at the Babuna Pass. Should the pass
be forced the Serbian line was in immediate danger of being flanked
and the French, too, would be in a similar danger, for by striking
south the Bulgarians could make a move around toward the French rear.
Hence the almost superhuman efforts both Serbians and French were
making to close this gap.
The stand that the Serbians made in Babuna Pass was one of those feats
which will remain inscribed on the pages of history through the ages
and will excite the admiration of all people, regardless of how their
sympathies may lie toward the main issues of the war. During the first
week of November Colonel Vassitch had only 5,000 men with which to
dispute the right of way against 20,000 Bulgarians. And not only had
the Bulgarians a great advantage in the matter of numbers, but they
were well supplied with big guns. Day after day and night after night,
the little force of Serbians crouched among the deep shadows of the
defile, sometimes without food, always under a heavy fire, now and
again making the rock cliffs about them echo with bursts of their
plaintive, national folk songs. After November 4, 1915, the Bulgarian
attacks became more persistent, and their infantry would hurl itself
up into the pass; then the Serbians would spring up from behind rocks
and ledges and throw themselves at their hated kinsmen with naked
bayonets, shouting such words in their common language as send the
flush of rage burning through the cheeks of men and make things red
before their eyes. Again and again were these sanguinary hand-to-hand
struggles enacted under the towering rock walls of those forbidding
mountains, and again and again the Bulgarians were thrown back.
Meanwhile, the French, only ten miles away, were within sound of the
firing.
As a matter of fact, General Sarrail had already done wonders,
considering the shortness of the time he had had and the small forces
and few facilities at his disposal. It seemed, to those at a distance,
such a small gap to fill. And indeed, so nearly did Sarrail effect the
junction that nothing but the absence of reenforcements at a critical
moment caused him to fail.
As soon as he had landed at Saloniki he had sent every soldier under
his command along the railroad up the valley of Vardar, toward Veles.
Unfortunately, transportation facilities were poor; the road was only
single track; curving and twisting in and out among the rising
foothills and mountain spurs.
His first fighting had been at Strumitza station, where he defeated
the Bulgarians and so assured himself of possession of Demir Kapu
defile, a cleft in the mountains ten miles in length and from which,
had they held it, the Bulgarians could easily, with a comparatively
small force, have prevented any further advance. Having secured this
pass, Sarrail pushed through it to Krivolak, which was reached on
October 19, 1915. But here he was compelled to make a halt, to fortify
this advanced position and to await further reenforcements.
When news of the proximity of the French advance reached Vassitch, he
redoubled his efforts, and on October 22, 1915, he thrust his little
army forward and succeeded in recapturing Veles. This town lay along
the railroad, about thirty-five miles northwest of Krivolak.
Three miles north of Krivolak, on the road to Ishtip, rises a steep
and forbidding height, called Kara Hodjali (the Black Priest), which
the French were fortunate enough to take before the Bulgarians came up
in force. It was this height which enabled them, when the Bulgarians
did swarm down on them, some days later, to hold their position. From
October 30, 1915, until November 5, 1915, the fighting here was
furious, but finally the Bulgarians were driven back. Meanwhile,
however, the advance had been delayed and Vassitch, after holding
Veles a week, was forced to retire to Babuna Pass again.
From Krivolak to the pass was twenty-five miles, due east. For fifteen
miles the road lay across a rolling plain, to the River Tserna, as the
Macedonians and Serbians called it, or Tcherna, meaning "Black," in
Bulgarian. Beyond that rose steep and difficult mountain ridges, which
the Bulgarians had occupied and fortified. Yet Sarrail determined to
make an effort to force his way across.
By this time reenforcements had arrived from Saloniki, so he began
moving across the plain through Negotin and Kavadar to the Tcherna.
This stream, though narrow, was deep and unfordable. It could be
crossed only in one place, by a small plank bridge, at Vozartzi.
On November 5, 1915, the French troops began crossing this bridge and
scaling the heights before them, some of whose peaks towered fully a
thousand feet above the river. And here it was that they first heard
the booming of the Serbian guns, on the other side of the ridge.
Sarrail now advanced his men northward, along the west bank of the
Tcherna, and next day he delivered an assault on the Mount of the
Archangel, ten miles below Vozartzi. Here was the center of the
Bulgarian positions, and here their lines must be pierced, if Babuna
Pass was to be reached.
But not only was this position well fortified, but the Bulgarians were
in superior force to the French. Moreover, as soon as Todoroff heard
of what was going on, he hurried reenforcements to the Bulgarians on
Mount Archangel. And this Sarrail knew; yet, without hesitation, he
began the assault.
At the first attack the Bulgarian advance lines were driven out of the
villages at the base of the mountain. The French continued their
advance, and on November 10, 1915, they began a circling movement
which resulted in the Bulgarians being squeezed out of Sirkovo, a
village some distance up the mountain.
But by this time the Bulgarian reenforcements were beginning to
arrive, and by the end of the second week of the month they began to
take the offensive. They now had 60,000 men; against this force it was
obviously impossible for the French to make any further headway.
The Bulgarian commander now showed that it was his intention to circle
about the French, cut off their retreat by destroying the wooden
bridge over the Tcherna in their rear, then pin them up against the
mountain and pound them until they surrendered, all of which might
have been accomplished by a more skillful general.
For three days a violent battle raged, in which the fate of the French
army more than once hung in the balance, but superior military skill
counted in the end. Possibly, too, the hearts of the Bulgarian
soldiers were not in this fight, for the Bulgarian people have an
almost reverential respect for the French. At any rate, they did not
show here the same qualities that so distinguished them in the war
against the Turks. At the end of the third day their lines began
wavering, then broke. So completely were they routed that the French
were compelled to bury nearly 4,000 of the dead they left behind. So
close had the fighting been that at times the Bulgarian infantry
charged the French positions to within a dozen yards, but in the last
moment lacked the dash to carry them through the machine-gun fire and
into the French ranks. At such moments the French would countercharge,
whereupon the Bulgarians would turn and flee. Had the French been only
a few thousand men stronger, they could have followed up their
advantage, completely routed the Bulgarians, pushed their way across
the mountains to Babuna Pass and so relieved the Serbians, as well as
closing the gap through which the Bulgarians were yet to penetrate
into Macedonia.
The French completed their victory on November 14, 1915; until the
next day the Serbians held out, hearing the French guns, now loud and
clear, then receding, hoping every hour to see them come streaming
over the mountains to their aid. But the French could not do the
impossible. The Bulgarians had been thrown back, but not crushed.
Sarrail dared not leave that slender crossing over the Tcherna too far
behind.
On November 16, 1915, the Serbians finally fell back from the pass on
Prilep. The French, however, not knowing of the Serbian retirement at
the time, continued to hold their advanced position at Mount Archangel
until November 20, 1915, when the Bulgarians returned to give them
fresh battle. And again the French were able to repulse their attacks,
but further advance was now out of the question.
The situation of the Serbian armies up in the north was now truly
desperate. The combined Austro-German and Bulgarian lines, beginning
at Vishegrad, north of Montenegro, swept in a straight line across the
heart of Serbia to Nish, where it curved downward to Vranya, then
swept into Veles and down to where the French army prevented it from
reaching the Greek frontier. It was, in fact, like a great dragnet,
which had only to be contracted to sweep the Serbians inward, over
against the awful defiles of the Montenegrin and Albanian Mountains, a
country through which no organized army could pass in a body, and
through which only the strongest of the noncombatants could hope to
escape alive. And for a time it seemed as though the French would
prick a hole through this net, through which, by rending it into a
wide gap, the Serbians could have been saved. But with the retirement
of Colonel Vassitch from Babuna Pass that last chance was gone; Serbia
was left to her fate.
Meanwhile the pressure from the north continued irresistibly; steadily
the Serbian armies were being pushed back against the mountain ranges,
in comparison to which their own mountains were mere hills. And while
the Serbians were waxing weaker every day, their enemies were growing
stronger, not only because their long line was contracting, but
because now they were being constantly reenforced. Also, with the
cutting of the railroad, all means of supply were gone; the Serbians
must now continue the fight with their own resources. They were now
becoming woefully short, not only of ammunition, but of food as well.
Yet they continued the struggle, retreating before the enemy facing
them, step by step backward, taking advantage of every little natural
position to cause the invaders as much loss as possible.
During the two weeks following the fall of Nish the three commanders
of the invading armies began, and continued, a great converging
movement on the Kossovo Plain, their object being to completely
encircle the main Serbian armies. Koevess was advancing his forces
toward Mitrovitza on the north side of the plain from Kralievo up the
valley of the Ibar, branching out of the Western Morava. In the hills
north of Ivanitza the Serbian rear guards made a stubborn attempt to
hold him back, but finally they were dislodged and the Austrians
occupied Ivanitza on November 9, 1915. Four days later, after driving
the Serbians from their intrenchments in the Stolovi ranges, he
reached Rashka, which had been the seat of the Serbian Government
after its flight from Kralievo and which was situated on the Ibar,
some distance along the road to Mitrovitza and only a few miles from
Novi Bazar. This place he took on November 20, 1915, and with it a
small arsenal, in which were fifty large mortars and eight guns, which
even the German reports described as of "somewhat ancient pattern."
To the eastward the Austrians had taken possession of Sienitza and
Novi Varosh, up toward the Montenegrin frontier. Being expelled from
Zhochanitza, the Serbians retired to Mitrovitza. By November 22, 1915,
the Austrian lines had followed to within five miles of that point.
Gallwitz and his Germans, in the meanwhile, operating on the left
flank of the Austrians, was pushing southward, his object being to
take Pristina, on the east side of the Kossovo Plain and about twenty
miles southeast of Mitrovitza. But this was a task that could not be
accomplished without much difficulty, for before him towered the
backbone of Serbia's main mountain ridges, each ravine and each ledge
sheltering strong Serbian forces.
As usual, however, the big guns cleared the way before Gallwitz,
though at Jastrebatz the Serbians made him pay a heavy price in the
losses he suffered. On this front the Bulgars were now coming close
enough to the Germans to support them; against the two the Serbians
had not the slightest chance.
By November 8, 1915, Gallwitz was starting out from Krushevatz, after
which he followed the banks of a small branch of the Western Morava in
a southwesterly direction, toward Brus, with one part of his force,
another being sent due south across a range of high hills toward
Kurshumlia. He soon reached Ribari and Ribarska Bania, where the
retreating Serbians gave him what he himself described in his official
report as "very stiff fighting." Next he stormed the pass through the
mountains and thus gained an entrance to the valley of the Toplitza,
through which flows a river westward into the Morava, the main stream
by that name, though in this district it is known as the Southern
Morava.
A week's hard fighting and marching followed before Kurshumlia could
be taken, which the Serbians evacuated without resistance, though not
before they had stripped it of everything that might be of value to
the enemy. Here was located a Serbian hospital, full of wounded
soldiers, all of whom fell into the hands of the Germans.
Moving on from this town, which lay about halfway between Krushevatz
and Pristina, the Germans next pushed on to Prepolatz defile in the
eastern part of the Kopaonik Mountains, which they reached on November
20, 1915, then scaled the intervening ridges on their way southward.
The Serbians struggled on, but the same day on which Koevess came
within striking distance of Mitrovitza, Gallwitz was threatening
Pristina from the north end of the Lab Valley.
Thus the Serbians were finally driven out of the last corner of their
native land, on November 20, 1915. Only a week previously Mackensen
had communicated with the Serbian leaders, offering them terms that
certainly should have seemed alluring to them in their dire extremity.
This offer had been to the effect that if they would make peace they
should lose nothing but Macedonia and a strip of territory along the
Bulgarian frontier, including Pirot and Vranya.
The answer of the Serbian Premier, M. Pachitch, to this offer of
separate terms was:
"Our way is marked out. We will be true to the Entente and die
honorably."
After the evacuation of Nish the Serbians, under Marshal Stepanovitch,
retreated to the west bank of the Morava, blowing up the bridges as
soon as they were across. Here they held up the Bulgarians for some
time, the river acting as a screen. It will have been noted that the
Serbian forces always offered the most stubborn resistance to the
Bulgarians, often coming to close quarters with them, whereas the
Austro-Germans drove them on miles ahead of them. The reason was that
the Bulgarians were not so well provided with heavy artillery, such as
they had being more or less matched by the Serbian field pieces. The
Germans, however, could stand off several miles and shell a Serbian
position without the Serbians being able to reply with one effective
shot.
In this battle along the Morava, King Peter appeared, hobbling up and
down the lines under fire, talking to the men here and there and
uttering words of encouragement. This had the effect of reviving some
of the old enthusiasm which was somewhat dampened after such a
continuous series of reverses and retreats.