BULGARIAN ADVANCE--SERBIAN RESISTANCE
On November 7, 1915, the Bulgarians captured Alexinatz in the north.
The Serbian army of the Timok, retiring from Zaitchar, barely
succeeded in crossing the bridge over the river in time to avoid
complete disaster. In the south, and on that same day, the Serbians
were compelled to abandon Leskovatz. With the capture of these two
towns, and several other minor points along the line, the enemy
secured complete possession of the main line of railroad from Belgrade
through Nish to Sofia and Constantinople, and of the Nish-Saloniki
railroad as far south as the French intrenchments at Krivolak. This
was to them a very material triumph, for hitherto they had been
transporting munitions to the Turks by the water route, along the
Danube to Rustchuk in northern Bulgaria. This route was not only more
direct, but much quicker. Their main object had now been accomplished
in full. Thus Germany was now in direct railroad communication with
Asia, and again the German and Austrian papers made frequent
references to a possible Egyptian campaign in the future. Another
great advantage resulting to both Bulgaria and the two Teutonic
empires from the capture of the railroad was the fact that Bulgaria,
whose cereal crops had been accumulating in big stores because they
could not be exported, could now send them into Germany and Austria,
where they were badly needed, thus defeating in some measure the
object of the British blockade.
From Alexinatz the hard-pressed army of the Timok had only a single
line of retreat, which was by the road to Prokuplie and Kurshumlia,
and, in danger of being cut off by the Germans in the west, it began a
hurried march, though fighting rear-guard actions all the while, and
was thus able to make a junction with the Serbians retiring from
Krushevatz. Prokuplie did not fall into the hands of the Bulgarians
until November 16, 1915. Northwest of Leskovatz, where the pressure
was not quite so extreme, the Serbians under Stepanovitch made a
determined stand on November 11-12, 1915. Charging the Bulgarian
center suddenly, they broke through their lines and threw them back in
great confusion and took some guns and a number of prisoners. But as
usual, the Serbians were not strong enough to follow up their
advantage, and presently strong reserves came up to reenforce the
Bulgarian forces. Two days later the fight was renewed and the
Serbians were compelled to retire down the road toward Tulare and
Pristina.
Meanwhile the Bulgarians in Uskub were sending forces north toward
Pristina, and this sector of the campaign was to witness the battle of
Katshanik Pass, in which the Serbians were yet to put up a fight as
heroic as any of the whole campaign.
It has now become quite obvious to the Serbians that they were not to
receive from the Allies the assistance that was necessary to save
their main armies. At this time there were reports of a Russian
invasion of Bulgaria to be led by General Kuropatkin, and it was even
said that the czar had himself sent a telegram to the Serbian Premier,
M. Pachitch, promising him such aid if only he could hold out until
the end of November, 1915. How much of these rumors reached the
Serbians is not known, but at any rate they did not materially affect
their plan of action. There was only one plan now possible, and that
was to effect an orderly retreat to some territory where their enemies
could not follow, and thus keep the army intact. The way behind them,
into the mountains of Montenegro or Albania, lay open. But without
railroads, without even one good wagon road, it was impossible for an
army to pass this way in a body. It would have to break into small
bands, each taking a separate trail by itself. Aside from that there
was no food supply; the soldiers would starve to death. It was true
that the ships of the Allies controlled the Adriatic, but without
roads no adequate food supply could be forwarded to the retreating
armies. Nor did those barren regions offer any local supply; the
poverty-stricken natives could barely maintain themselves. The only
alternative to a retreat through this wilderness was to escape south
over the Greek frontier, where they could join the French and British
forces outside Saloniki.
But this was just the alternative which the Austro-Germans and the
Bulgarians were determined to deny them. The Serbian forces still
numbered somewhere around 200,000; this body, combined with the allied
troops, who would presently be numbering another 100,000, would form a
military force, its rear protected by the British and French ships,
which the Teutons and Bulgarians would never dare to attack, even
though the Greeks still continued neutral. Moreover, there was no
doubt that the Greeks would interfere should the Bulgars cross their
frontier.
This force, then, would continue a constant threat to the lines of
communication and transportation which had just been opened up between
the Central Powers and Turkey, and along which they would soon be
sending large quantities of war munitions to the Turkish forces at
Gallipoli. At any moment the enemy at Saloniki might strike, and to
guard against such a possibility, the Austro-Germans would have to
maintain larger forces along the railroad than they could spare. At
all costs the Serbians must be prevented from joining the Allies. And
this was the object of the powerful effort made by the Bulgarians to
hurl their forces through the gap between Sarrail and the Serbians in
the Babuna Pass.
However, the Serbians decided on a determined effort to break through
the net that was being drawn around them. This meant, first of all,
that the Katshanik Pass, which in the second week of November, 1915,
was still in the hands of the Serbians but was being attacked from the
south by the Bulgarians, had to be first cleared of the enemy, who
must then be driven out of Uskub, whence the Serbians would then be
able to force their way west to Tetovo, and then south by the main
highway through Gostivar and Kitchevo, to Monastir. Once at Monastir
the road would be comparatively easy to Saloniki, by way of the short
branch of railroad whose terminus was at Monastir.
In the effort to carry out this plan one of the most desperate battles
of the whole Serbian campaign was fought, quite as bloody and as
heroic as any of the large engagements that were fought in the
beginning of the invasion. It failed, but it was a failure of which no
army need to have been ashamed.
On about November 10, 1915, Bojovitch's army with which he had been
holding the pass against overwhelming numbers of Bulgarians, had
dwindled to 5,000. At about that time he was reenforced by three
regiments, including one from the famous Shumadia Division and one
from the Morava Division, which were sent to him along the railroad,
the only bit of railroad remaining to the Serbians, leading from
Pristina to Ferizovitch, the latter point being some ten miles distant
from the Katshanik Pass. The weather had begun getting cold and raw by
this time, and the roads were in a miserable condition. The Serbians,
though exhausted by their many hardships, and weak from the want of
proper food, set out from the terminus of the railroad and pressed on
toward the pass. As soon as they arrived Bojovitch prepared to deliver
his final attack on the Bulgarians.
The Serbian general had now about one hundred field pieces, mostly of
the French 75 and 155 type; 3 inches and 6 inches. With these he began
a vigorous bombardment of the Bulgarian trenches, raining a continuous
shower of shrapnel and high explosive shells on them. Under this
terrible fire the Bulgarians were compelled to retire from their
defensive works and retreat south for four miles, out of range of the
Serbian artillery.
Then the Serbian infantry charged, pouring volley after volley into
the ranks of the retreating Bulgarians. The latter began fleeing in
disorder, but presently they came up against their reserves, whereupon
they rallied. On came the Serbians with cries of "Na nosh! Na nosh!"
and "Cus schtick! Cus schtick!" ("With the knife!" and "With the
bayonet!")
Those were cries that the Bulgarians knew well, and they too set up
the same shouts. The rifle firing died down. The two lines charged
each other silently, like warriors of old, with points of glittering
steel before them. Then came the merging clash, and the rows of
running men broke into turbulent melees, knots of struggling, writhing
bodies. Shouts and hideous curses sounded up and down the lines like
the snarls of savage animals. Wounded men reeled, panting and sobbing,
sometimes in their savage agony springing on their friends and rending
them with their hands and teeth before they finally collapsed into
inert heaps, dead. Others, throwing down their unloaded rifles, picked
up jagged rocks and hurled them into knots of struggling men,
regardless of whether they smashed in the skulls of friends or foes.
There had been greater battles in that campaign, but never had the
fighting been so savage, so bitter; even the battle of Timok, the
first encounter between Bulgar and Serb, was far outdone.
For a while it seemed as if the Serbians would actually batter their
way through. One Serbian regiment charged seven times and each time
captured three guns, only to have them wrested out of its hands again.
Once the Bulgarians' center was pierced by a tremendous effort on the
part of the Shumadians and the Morava troops. The Bulgarians sagged
back, and some broke and fled.
But again reserves came on the scene, whereas the Serbians were, every
last man of them, on the front line of the fighting. Fresh forces of
Bulgarians, being shipped up from Uskub by rail, were constantly
arriving on the field, and in the end they were enough to turn the
balance.
For three days the battle had raged, one continuous series of sharp,
hand-to-hand encounters, by night as well as by day. But finally, on
November 15, 1915, the Serbians had reached the limit of their
strength; the battle was going against them. And then they retired
from the pass by way of the Jatzovitza Hills toward Prisrend.
Thus the plans of the Serbians to cut their path south to their Allies
on the Greek frontier were defeated, and they were forced back into
the north again. The effect of the collapse of this effort was
immediately seen in the withdrawal from Mitrovitza of the Serbian
staff, such members of the Serbian Government as had remained there
and the diplomatic representatives of the Entente nations.
The Bulgarians had been perfectly well aware of the plans that lay
behind the tremendous effort made by the Serbians at Katshanik Pass
and they had sought to forestall part of it by attacking Kalkandelen,
a point which had been taken and retaken more than once. On November
15, 1915, they took it again, and finally, driving the small Serbian
force that had occupied it before them, they took Gostivar on the
following day, the Serbians retiring to Kichivo, on the road to
Monastir. On about the same day, or a little later, Boyadjieff, after
a stiff fight, stormed the heights near Gilan, northwest of Kutshanik
Pass, and, after occupying Gilan itself, advanced toward Pristina,
reaching its vicinity by November 22, 1915.
The invaders had succeeded in their main object, which was to round up
and if possible corner the main Serbian forces; they were now rolled
back on to the great Kossovo Plain, where they were united, but
considerably confused and hampered by the vast crowds of fugitives
fleeing from all parts of the north, center and east of the country.
Near Mitrovitza, on the north of the plain, near Pristina on the east
of it, and at Katshanik at its southern extremity, the Austro-Germans
and the Bulgarians had, by the beginning of the fourth week of
November, 1915, absolutely rounded up and hemmed in all the larger
forces of the Serbians. Here they must either surrender, engage in one
last desperate battle that meant certain destruction, or retire
backward into the mountains of Montenegro and Albania, which by this
time were covered with deep snow.
It was finally decided to give the enemy one more battle and if that
failed, as seemed inevitable, to retreat into the wilderness, thus
defeating the main hope of Mackensen, which was to eliminate the
Serbians entirely as a factor in the war, either by capturing the
whole army or destroying it. King Peter himself was present, hoping by
his presence to revive the spirits of his soldiers to such a pitch
that they would make a hard fight, for by this time they had
undoubtedly lost a good deal of their morale.
Von Gallwitz had passed through Nish and was now driving back the
Serbian advance posts in the Toplitza Valley, while the Austrians, on
his right, were pressing on toward Novi Bazar. As will be seen by a
glance at the map, the Serbians were therefore bearing the
concentrated attack of four armies; that which operated from
Vishegrad, the mixed forces under Koevess, Gallwitz's army and the main
Bulgarian forces. The pressure was incessant. Reenforcements had been
hurried through from Germany to make good the heavy losses which had
been sustained during the campaign. Communication between the main
Serbian armies and the Serbians in the south had now been cut
completely and only Prisrend and Monastir remained to be taken before
the whole of Serbia and Serbian Macedonia would be cleared of the
Serbian fighting forces.
The fight in the region of Pristina was to be the last grand battle of
the retreat. Here what remained of the Serbian main forces took battle
formation, finally to dispute the enemy's advance. To this end the
remaining stock of gun ammunition and rifle cartridges had been
carefully saved and a store of war material gathered at Mitrovitza in
readiness for such a stand. The weary bullocks were turned loose from
the gun carriages they hauled, for there could be no taking them along
up among the crags of the mountain country. The guns themselves were
brought into position on the surrounding hills, trenches were dug
wherever possible. Machine guns were located to cover the mountain
paths and valley roads, and strong redoubts, which had been thrown up
with civilian labor before the army had arrived, were manned. And then
there remained a brief period during which the weary soldiers could
take some much needed rest.
There was something tragically significant that this last stand should
be made on the plains of Kossovo, or the "Field of the Ravens," as it
is sometimes called by the natives, on account of the great flocks of
those birds that frequent it. For on this same field it was that
Lazar, the last of the ancient Serbian czars, whose empire included
the whole of Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, northern Greece, and
Bulgaria, had fought just such a last desperate battle against the
Turks in 1389, and had gone down before the Moslem hordes, and with
him the Serbian nation. Each year the Serbians had commemorated the
anniversary of this event by mourning.
Kossovo Plain is a high plateau, forty miles long and ten wide; from
its rolling fields the forbidding crags of Montenegro and Albania are
plainly visible, black in summer and white with snow in winter.
The gray dawn of a November day brought the first mutterings of the
storm that was presently to break in fury up and down the whole front.
The ragged, mud-stained cavalry of Serbia came trotting wearily
through the infantry lines, bearing signs of the many skirmishes they
had taken part in. The outlying posts were exchanging rifle fire with
the advance guards of the enemy and now, through his powerful field
glasses, the Serbian commander could see great masses of the invading
troops deploying against his front.
"You have come to see the death of a nation," he remarked to an
American correspondent who was present.
"It is sad that a stranger's eyes should see us die," said another
officer in high command.
Soon the crackling and sputtering fire of the Mannlicher rifles was
rippling up and down the lines; the whole front from Pristina to
south of Marcovitza blazed flame, and the last big battle of Serbia's
resistance was on. Two lines of men, the one thick and heavily
equipped, the other attenuated and half-starved, were locked together
in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle.
As though to afford a proper setting for the scene, nature herself
broke into a wild fury; overhead the sky darkened, then the black
clouds burst into a howling storm, full of cold sleet and rain. Amidst
the black, stark hills, in a ceaseless downpour, men trampled and
slipped through the clay mud, dripping wet from head to foot,
stabbing, shooting, hurling hand bombs, until this peaceful valley
echoed to the shouts and roar of combating armies.
And as the first day's fighting increased in intensity, the fury of
the elements overhead intensified, and presently it was impossible to
distinguish the roar of the big cannon from the deep crash of thunder;
intermingling with the shouts and cries of men roared the blast of the
gale as it whipped over rocky eminences.
Here again was raised that dreaded battle cry: "Na nosh! Na nosh!"
With such a shout a whole regiment of the fierce Shumadians leaped out
of its trenches and tore across the intervening ground between its
trenches and the rocks of a near-by eminence which a force of Magyars
had made into a position. Haggard from pain and starvation, their hair
long and matted, some still in ragged uniforms, but most of them in
the sheepskin coats of peasants, their eyes bloodshot with rage, they
formed not a pleasant picture to the intrenched Huns. The rifle fire
from the eminence leaped to a climax; the Hungarians knew they were
fighting for their lives. In the horde rushing up the steep slope lay
an appalling danger. Up they surged, without firing a shot, the
bayonets gleaming in the lightning flashes. Among the rocks appeared
white faces behind black rifle barrels. And then, with one fierce
yell, the men in the shaggy sheepskin coats were hurling themselves in
among the men in blue-gray uniforms. For a few brief moments there was
a wild melee; then the men in blue-gray broke and ran.
Such scenes were common throughout the three or four days of the
battle.
What made the resistance of the Serbian soldiers so fierce was the
knowledge possessed by each that there was no alternative to victory
but a retreat into those white, bleak wilds behind him. And there was
not a Serbian boy in those ranks who did not realize what a winter's
march through that country would mean.
From the fall of Nish, in fact, the Serbians had been fighting with
their backs to a wall, and grim and bloody were the struggles between
Serb and German in the wild tangle of hills that surrounded the Plain
of Kossovo. Quarter was neither given nor asked, and unlucky was the
too venturesome Austrian regiment that penetrated the Serbian lines
the first few days without sufficient support.
"The 184th Regiment," said one of the soldiers' letters, which were
published in the Austrian papers, "went into a valley and was never
seen again." One Serbian regiment, stationed to hold the mouth to a
small valley, to cover the retirement of another Serbian regiment,
remained at its post for four days, fighting off the greater part of
an Austro-German division, until, of the 1,200 men of the original
detachment, only sixty-three remained on their feet, and most of those
wounded.
To his credit be it said that the aged King of Serbia remained with
his battling men to the end. While the guns were thundering against
Pristina and the thin line of the last resistance was frenziedly
holding back the German and Bulgarian lines, there came to an ancient
church, which was under fire, a mud-stained old man in a field service
uniform. The few foreign correspondents who saw him pass into the
church did not recognize in this old man, bent, haggard and unshaven,
the king who had sat on the throne of Kara-Georgevitch--the grandson
of that famous swineherd.
Before the high altar the old man knelt in prayer while a group of
staff officers stood at a distance, watching him in silence. The crash
of bursting shrapnel came to them from outside and once a window was
shattered and the little church was filled with splinters of flying
glass and still the King of Serbia knelt at his devotions, praying
that at the last moment his kingdom might be saved from destruction.
But in spite of his appeals the end came.