Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Drina runs out of steam

The British chronology of the war records the end of the battle on the Drina under 17 September 1914. Its authors, however, noted at once that this was a conventional date. Roughly at that time the force of the main Austro-Hungarian attack was spent, but the battle did not end in any clear decision. It turned into a series of fierce local battles for the heights south of the Drina, which did not cease until the Serbian retreat at the beginning of November.

An attack that stalled

General Oskar Potiorek’s second offensive began on 8 September with crossings of the border river. In the north, in the lowland Mačva, the Fifth Army suffered heavy losses and held only small bridgeheads on the Serbian bank. In the south the Sixth Army forced its way onto the mountain ridges along the river: Gučevo, Boranja and Jagodnja. Beyond them, towards Valjevo and the Kolubara valley, it did not break through.

In mid-September the situation began to change in the Serbs’ favour. From the Sava, after the expedition into Syrmia had been broken off, the First Army of General Petar Bojović arrived by forced marches and went straight over to counter-attacks on the Austro-Hungarian positions in the mountains. At the same time Serbian and Montenegrin units entered eastern Bosnia and on 14 September took Višegrad, threatening the rear of the Sixth Army. Potiorek’s attack lost its momentum. Instead of advancing, his troops had to defend the heights they had captured.

Fighting that went on

The end of the offensive did not mean the end of the bloodshed. The heaviest clashes were still to come. The Serbs tried at all costs to push the enemy back across the Drina. On 20–22 September a series of assaults and bayonet counter-attacks was fought for the summit of Mačkov Kamen in the Jagodnja range, in which both sides suffered terrible losses. According to various estimates the two Serbian divisions engaged there lost about 11,000 men between them, and Austro-Hungarian losses were similar. On the evening of 22 September the Serbs came down from the summit.

After this fighting the front froze on the mountain ridges. On Gučevo, Boranja and Jagodnja the opponents dug in a few dozen metres, and in places a few metres, from each other. They fought with grenades and tunnelled under the enemy’s positions to lay mines. The end of the Battle of the Drina is usually put at 4 October, when the last major attacks ceased. Positional warfare in these mountains, however, continued until the beginning of November.

What came next

Serbia held out, but it was exhausted. It was short of artillery ammunition, boots and uniforms, and its losses in men were enormous. When Potiorek began his third offensive at the beginning of November, the weakened army of Vojvoda Radomir Putnik could no longer hold its positions on the Drina and began falling back into the interior. Only in the Battle of Kolubara in December 1914 did the Serbs go over to a counter-offensive and drive out the invaders.