END OF GERMAN OPERATIONS--FLIGHT OF SERB PEOPLE--GREECE
With the fall of Pristina and Mitrovitza on November 23, 1915, ended
the operations against Serbia, so far as Mackensen and his Germans
were concerned. On November 28, 1915, German Headquarters issued an
extraordinary report in which it announced that with the flight of the
scanty remains of the Serbian army into the Albanian Mountains "our
great operations in the Balkans are brought to a close. Our object, to
effect communications with Bulgaria and the Turkish Empire, has been
accomplished." After briefly describing these operations and admitting
the "tough resistance" of the Serbians, who had "fought bravely," this
communique asserted that more than 100,000 of them, almost half their
original force, had been taken prisoners, while their losses from
killed and desertions could not be estimated. The impression left by
this document was that there were very few of the Serbian soldiers
left. On the other hand, the Allies claimed that on the date mentioned
Serbia still had 200,000 fighting men left.
At any rate, it was true that Germany had now opened railroad
communications with the Orient. Her engineers and military railroad
staff had repaired the damage the retreating Serbians had done to the
main trunk line, and early in December through trains were running
from Berlin to Constantinople. Having accomplished this, Germany
withdrew most of her troops from the Balkans, leaving the Bulgarians
to finish Macedonia, and Austria to deal with Montenegro.
It was a nation, rather than an army, that was in flight; not for many
hundreds of years has there been such an instance in history. When
Nish had fallen into the hands of the enemy, the population in general
had realized that the whole land was going to be overrun by the
invaders. Then almost the whole people had set out in flight for
Monastir, near the Greek frontier, where the Bulgarians had not yet
closed in. On its retreat from Kossovo Plain the Serbian army caught
up with the rear of this fleeing throng. Winter had set in unusually
early that year. Even at Saloniki on the shores of the tepid Aegean
and sheltered behind a ring of hills, where snow had not fallen in
November in ten years, a fierce northerly gale, known as the "Vardar
wind," had sprung up on November 26, 1915, and kept the air swirling
with snow-flakes, while up in the near-by hills the snow was already
two feet deep. Up in the Albanian Mountains the paths and trails were
already choked, while chilling blasts of sleet-laden winds howled
through the defiles.
The way from Upper Serbia to Monastir led across great, bleak slopes,
which were now being lashed by these terrible winter storms. Old women
and children fell by the wayside; young mothers, hugging their babies
to their breasts, sought shelter behind rocks and died there of
weakness and starvation. All along the road of retreat was marked by
the abandoned dead and dying. One of the very few descriptions of this
phase of the Serbian flight that has appeared was written by Mr.
William G. Shepherd, special correspondent of the American United
Press:
"The entire world must prepare to shudder," he writes from Monastir,
"when all that is happening on the Albanian refugee trails finally
comes to light. The horrors of the flight of the hapless Serbian
people are growing with the arrival here of each new contingent from
the devastated district.
"They say that nearly the whole route from Prisrend to Monastir,
ninety miles, is lined with human corpses and the carcasses of horses
and mules dead of starvation, while thousands of old men, women, and
children are lying on the rocks and in the thickets beside the trail,
hungry and exhausted, awaiting the end.
"At night the women and children, ill-clad and numbed with cold,
struggle pitifully around meager fires of mountain shrub, to resume in
the morning the weary march toward their supposed goal of
safety--Monastir. But by the time this dispatch is printed Monastir,
too, may be in the hands of the enemy. This will leave them to the
mercy of the inhospitable mountain fastnesses, where for the past two
days a terrific blizzard has been raging, or to the Bulgarians."
The chief of the Serbian General Staff, Field Marshal Putnik, old and
now very ill, was driven along the road in a carriage until his horses
fell dead of exhaustion. His escort of soldiers carried him for two
days in an ordinary chair to which poles had been tied for handles and
so brought him to safety. One account reported that the carriages of
the retreating Serbians literally passed over the dead who had fallen
in the road, for it was impossible either to spare the time to drag
them out of the way or to make a detour to avoid them.
King Peter himself had escaped from Prisrend by motor car, accompanied
by three officers and four men, arriving in Liuma over the Albanian
frontier. Thence the monarch and his remaining handful of followers
set out through the mountains, the king traveling part of the way on
horseback and partly in a litter slung between two mules, through mud
and a constant downpour of rain. During the evening of the second day
they lost the trail, which was only rediscovered after much wandering.
After two weeks' rest at Scutari, King Peter continued his journey to
San Giovanni di Medua, Durazzo, and Avlona, whence the party crossed
over the Adriatic to Brindisi in Italy, where the king remained
incognito for six days. After a two days' sea voyage from Brindisi the
old monarch finally arrived in Saloniki, where he was received with
all honors by the Greek authorities and the Allies.
It is estimated that the number of civilians in flight over these
terrible roads numbered fully 700,000. And of these fully 200,000
died.
"It seems so useless," writes a German officer, in a letter which was
published in a German paper, "for there is nowhere else for us to
reach except the sea and there is nothing but the smell of dead bodies
of horses, men, cattle--a discord of destruction that seems contrary
to all our civilization. Our own men are apathetic and weary, and have
no heart in the business. The Bulgarian soldiers are not very popular
with us. In the first place they are more like Russians than Germans,
and there is something about the Slav that makes one's hair bristle.
Their cruelty is terrible."
Meanwhile, Prisrend, on the extreme right of the Serbian main force,
did not fall till November 30, 1915. From Mitrovitza a part of the
Serbian army had retired and fought the Austrians again at Vutchitra,
but was beaten and driven across the Sitnitza, on the western bank of
which stream it continued fighting until finally it fled into the
mountains.
The main line of retreat was along the highway from Pristina to
Prisrend. The Bulgarians, pressing on after, took the heights west of
Ferizovitch and also advanced northward toward Ipek, against which
point Koevess had sent a detachment. The retreat to Prisrend was
covered by the Shumadians. On November 27, 1915, 80,000 Serbians stood
at bay in front of this town, but next day, after a few hours'
fighting, and having used up all their ammunition, they unbreeched
their guns and fled across the frontier into Albania, making along the
White Drin for Kula Liuma, while several thousands of them fell
prisoners into the hands of the enemy. Thus was the last shot of the
Serbian resistance in the northern section of the country fired.
[Illustration: Retreat of Serbians.]
The retreat of the Serbian armies through the mountains of Albania was
almost as heartrending as the flight of the civilian population. Day
by day, thousands of men, ill-clad and ill-shod, or with bare and
bleeding feet, so famished that they fed on the flesh of dead horses
by the wayside, stumbled painfully and wretchedly along, over trails
deep in snow, some going west toward Scutari, others attempting to
reach Greece through Elbassan and Dibra. All semblance of military
formation or order was lost; they were now nothing more than a fleeing
mob of disorganized peasants, some unarmed, others with guns but no
ammunition. Officers and men trudged on side by side, on equal
terms. Once an Austrian light mountain battery, following on the
heels of the retreat, had arrived at the mouth of a long defile
through which the last of the retreating Serbians were winding their
way into the mountains, in single file. The Austrian battery
immediately opened fire and swept the defile from end to end of all
human life.
While the main Serbian armies were being driven out of their native
land, the Bulgarians, after taking Babuna Pass and Kitchevo and
Kruchevo, on November 20, 1915, halted on their way to Monastir, now
only a few miles distant. Monastir itself is practically an
unfortified city; it lies on the edge of a broad level plain, offering
not the least advantage to a defending force. A few guns might easily
sweep the city into a heap of ruins. But above Monastir towers a lofty
mountain, so steep that even under peaceful conditions a strong man
finds it hard to climb. A few guns placed in position among the rocks
on top of this mountain could command the city and all of the
surrounding plain within range of their fire. Therefore, the problem
of an invading force is to take the mountain outside the city, rather
than the city itself.
Beyond this lofty eminence, to the westward, rise thickly wooded
ridges, rugged mountain fastnesses, through which, along the bottom of
a winding defile, runs the road to Resen and Ochrida and three large
lakes: Ochrida, Prespa, and Little Prespa. Below these lakes, which
almost join, is the Greek frontier; above them, and some distance
beyond, lies the Albanian frontier.
For some days Vassitch and his remaining force of a few thousand
footsore soldiers remained at Prilep, awaiting the Bulgarians. When
finally they took Brod, with the object of cutting off his retreat, he
quitted Prilep and fell back on Monastir, then retired over the
mountains to Resen. Here he was joined by two barefooted regiments
that had come down from the north with the refugees, but they were too
exhausted to be of much value for fighting. Altogether they numbered
about 7,000, while the pursuing Bulgarians were at least 30,000
strong. At Resen, where the roughness of the country enabled them to
make some resistance, they fought the last battle, or skirmish rather,
that was to take place between the Serbians and the invaders, then
retired down along the eastern shore of Lake Prespa and so over into
Greece. And now not one Serbian soldier remained either in Serbia
proper or Serbian Macedonia. Many of them were yet to do some more
fighting, against the Austrians at least, for Austria had yet to
invade and conquer that other little Serbian state, Montenegro. As yet
the Austrian right wing of Koevess's army had not entered Montenegro,
but maintained itself at Vishegrad, from which, using it as a pivot,
the center and left wing had swept over Serbia. From Vishegrad across
the northern boundary of Montenegro stretched another force of
Austrians, meant only to hold the Montenegrins back. Hitherto, the
Montenegrin army had been facing this line, without being able to
afford the Serbians much assistance. It was not until after the last
of the Serbians had been dealt with that the Austrians turned their
attention toward the Montenegrins and the conquest of their rugged
country. Nor did they seriously undertake this task until toward the
end of the year; the whole of this campaign is an episode by itself
and will be dealt with presently.
With the disappearance of the last of the Serbian armies into the
defiles of the Albanian Mountains, the French and British forces,
which had been vainly endeavoring to save Serbia, had no longer any
special object in holding their advanced positions in Macedonia,
especially as they were not strong enough to undertake an offensive
movement, even after the last Serbian defeat, though during November,
1915, large reenforcements had been arriving and disembarking in
Saloniki. As already stated, the rumors of military action on the part
of Russia against Bulgaria had proved unfounded and a second
bombardment of Varna had had no effect on the course of the campaign.
Italy had done nothing in the Balkans as yet, except to fire a few
shells into Dedeagatch on November 11, 1915. A month later she landed
an army on the Albanian coast, at Avlona and elsewhere, but, while
this facilitated the escape of many of the Serbian refugees, it was
too late to have any effect on the military situation.
Throughout the latter part of November, 1915, after the battle between
General Sarrail's army at Mt. Archangel, the British had sent up
considerable forces which were deployed on the French right and were
holding the mountain chain to the north of Lake Doiran, forming a
natural boundary between Greek and Bulgarian territory.
Though Sarrail had repulsed all the Bulgarian attacks, his position
was rendered embarrassing by the fact that the Greek Government had
decided to concentrate a large part of its army in that particular
corner of its frontiers. Obviously, the Greeks had a right to make
whatever movements they wished on their own territory, but the
consequences were singularly unfortunate, both for the French and the
British, for the Greek commander in chief found it necessary to move
troops and stores along the same line of railroad which the British
and the French were using. This meant a curtailment of supplies and
the checking of effective and continuous supports for the fighting
line.
Added to this was the sudden coming of an early winter. While snow was
falling even in Saloniki, up in the hills where the advanced lines
were deployed a furious blizzard was blowing, against which the
soldiers were only prepared with small tents of waterproof sheets for
shelters. Down in the base camps the gale swept down the tents so that
the men were practically unprotected from the fury of the freezing
blasts. At the front the enemy's positions were no longer visible, the
intervening valleys being full of swirling clouds of snow. On November
27, 1915, the French War Office issued an official communique, which
gave the first indication of what was about to happen:
"In view of the present situation of the Serbian armies our troops,
which have been occupying the left bank of the Tcherna, have been
removed to the right bank of the river, the movement being effected
without difficulty."