Austrian counter-offensive in Albania

Early on the morning of 22 August 1918 the Austro-Hungarian forces in Albania launched a general attack on the positions of the Italian XVI Corps, which had taken Fier and Berat in July. The blow had been prepared by Colonel-General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin, since mid-July commander of all imperial and royal troops in Albania. The previous night twelve Austro-Hungarian and German aircraft had carried out the first large bombing raid on Vlorë, the Italians’ main base. According to the Austrian official history (Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg) the raids were repeated on the next two nights.

The attack was the second stage of the response to the Italian and French offensive of July. As early as 24 July the Austrians had cut the road from Vlorë through Fier to Berat in the bend of the Seman, and on the night of 30–31 July General Giacinto Ferrero had withdrawn the main body of the corps by an average of about 15 km to the south, to the area of Berat. At the beginning of August the French also fell back to the Devoll. From 8 August the whole Albanian front was quiet. Both sides were exhausted: according to the Austrian official history XIX Corps had lost about 6,000 men in July, most of them prisoners and malaria cases, and the Italians a third of their fighting strength. The High Command at Baden regarded Albania as a secondary theatre and did not want to send more troops there. Pflanzer-Baltin, however, judged that the line he held, without rivers or commanding heights, was unsuited to a long defence. On 18 August he gathered the commanders who were to lead the attack at Kuçi and explained the plan to them orally, to keep it secret. Even the headquarters of the 47th Infantry Division learned only at the last moment that it was to be ready by 21 August.

The plan relied on surprise, because the Austrians had fewer troops than the enemy. The main blow was delivered by Feldmarschalleutnant Weiss-Tihanyi’s 47th Infantry Division, and its spearhead was Lieutenant-Colonel Duić’s group, that is the reinforced Eastern Corps (Orientkorps), a four-battalion force originally formed to fight in the Middle East, mostly from Bosnian-Herzegovinian battalions, and sent to Albania from the Italian front in July. It struck the weakly held centre of the Italian 38th Division south of Kalmi, broke through the front at Ljuari and by evening had taken the heights north of the Buvalica valley. According to the Austrian historian Schachinger, panic broke out among the Italians, and the Orientkorps took some 1,600 prisoners and 6 guns that day at incredibly small cost to itself. In the neighbouring sectors things went less well. On the right flank the attack stalled before the Italian bridgehead on the lower Seman, which covered Fier, and north of Berat before a strongly fortified position between Orjana and Vrioni. The brigades of the 47th Division nevertheless advanced in heavy fighting to the Alambreci–Veteriku line and took the heights north-east of Malibarza. On the eastern flank, facing the French, the 81st Infantry Division did not attack that day. It joined the attack only on the following day.

The British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls) writes that the Italians held their positions in most sectors. Even so, after two days of fighting, on 24 August, Ferrero, according to Falls probably on the orders of the Comando Supremo, decided to give up almost all the July gains and fall back to the Mallakastër range north of the Vjosa. The Italians thus did not return to the river line itself, from which they had set out in July, but halted on the hills in front of it. The French had to bend back their left flank in their wake. The Austrians recovered Fier and Berat over the next few days.