Battle of Dobro Pole begins

On 15 September 1918 at 5.30 a.m., in the half-light before sunrise, French and Serbian divisions left their trenches on the mountain ridge above the Moglena (PL) basin and advanced on the Bulgarian positions on the peaks of Vetrenik, Dobro Pole and Sokol. So began the great Allied offensive on the Salonika front, prepared since June by General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey. By evening the crest had been taken, and during the night Serbian divisions were already moving north through the breach. The next day the Serbs took the second Bulgarian position on the Kozjak massif. The British chronology of the war records the start of the battle under 15 September and its end under 16 September. Following French historians, however, we take it that the breakthrough lasted until the evening of 17 September.

Before the assault

The choice of place came as a surprise to both sides. The ridge, along which the old Greek–Serbian border ran here, rose in places to nearly 1,900 metres, and the Bulgarian soldiers sat on it in shelters cut into the rock. It was precisely for this reason that the Bulgarians regarded the position as impregnable. According to Serbian and Bulgarian accounts they had observed the preparations since August and expected an attack in this area, but they did not strengthen the defences in depth: their second and third lines had barely been begun. The commander of the German-Bulgarian army group, General Friedrich von Scholtz, according to Falls expected the main blow somewhat further west, on the Crna Reka. The plan to attack in the mountains had been prepared by the Serbian command, and Franchet d’Espèrey adopted it immediately after taking command. In these same mountains the Serbs had taken Kajmakčalan in 1916, and in May 1917 they had attacked without success.

All summer heavy guns were hauled up onto the peaks, and roads and narrow-gauge railways were built that came to within a few kilometres of the front. On the eve of the offensive Vojvoda Živojin Mišić, chief of staff of the Serbian army, issued an order from which Serbian accounts often quote the words: “We must push boldly forward, without respite, to the last limits of the strength of men and horses.” Franchet d’Espèrey left it to him to decide when to begin. Mišić spent the night of 13–14 September with the Regent Alexander at an observation post in the mountains. At dawn the valley was covered in fog, but it lifted, and according to Serbian accounts at a quarter past six Mišić sent the armies the agreed signal. According to Cyril Falls’s British official history it read “send fourteen officers and eight men” and meant that the bombardment would begin on 14 September at eight o’clock.

On 14 September the artillery thundered all day, not only in the mountains but along the whole front from the Vardar to Bitola, to conceal the point of attack. On the Serbian Second Army’s sector there was one gun to every 30 metres of front. Only in the afternoon did the fire stop for half an hour so that French aircraft could photograph the damage, which, in a strong wind, was not very successful. Serbian and French squadrons bombed camps in the rear and kept enemy aircraft away from the front. After dark patrols reported that there were gaps in the wire and that the first trenches had been destroyed in many places. The Bulgarians replied weakly in the morning, but before evening their artillery began to shell the Serbian and French rear. Scholtz’s headquarters was still not sure where the main blow would fall, and that same day it moved some of its reserves to Bitola.

15 September

The assault was led by the Serbian Second Army of Vojvoda Stepa Stepanović, and in its first line stood the French 17th Colonial Division, the French 122nd Infantry Division and the Serbian Šumadija Division. The Bulgarian artillery barrage at 5.30 a.m. was strong, which showed that most of the batteries had survived the bombardment. On the right wing the Šumadija men climbed the western slope of Vetrenik and at once took Hill 1570, capturing 300 prisoners and six guns. On the eastern slope the fighting went on until the afternoon. General Pruneau’s French 17th Colonial Division took the Kravica plateau at eight o’clock and then for two hours beat off counter-attacks: the Bulgarians came on five times and once retook Kravica. At about 3.45 p.m. a battalion of the 54th Colonial Regiment, again supported by the Serbs, took the summit of Kravički Kamen.

On the left wing General Topart’s 122nd Division stormed Dobro Pole and Sokol. The Bulgarians stood up on the parapets and pelted the French with grenades, and one machine-gun nest was destroyed with a flamethrower. Behind a barrage moving forward 100 metres every four minutes, the French broke onto the summit of Dobro Pole after seven o’clock. The further Bulgarian fortifications behind it had to be taken, as a French account put it, “man by man, from rock to rock”, with the help of Serbian field artillery, which drove out onto the open slopes just behind the infantry. They fell only at two in the afternoon. Sokol held out until evening. A French battalion was held up 150 metres below the summit, but after dark the Bulgarians began to withdraw their machine guns and the summit was taken by storm in the darkness.

By evening the French had taken almost 3,000 prisoners and 33 guns. At six in the evening the Serbian Yugoslav and Timok Divisions began to pass through the French lines. The ridge the French had taken was the old border of Serbia, so the Serbs entered the breach onto their own soil, almost three years after the retreat through Albania. According to Falls the soldiers ran out of the ranks to embrace the French, and the columns marched on singing the Marseillaise. Mišić ordered them to march through the night. Things went worse for the Serbian First Army of General Petar Bojović on the left wing: it tried to advance in the afternoon but was repulsed.

On the Bulgarian side it emerged in the evening that the inner wings of the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, which had held almost all their forces in the first line, had been shattered. Scholtz considered the situation serious but not hopeless: he reckoned that if he could close the breach for even a day, the attack would peter out in the mountains like many before it. He committed his last reserves, and the commander of the German 11th Army, General Kuno von Steuben, had already ordered a withdrawal in the afternoon to the second position, which ran across the Kozjak massif. The remnants of both divisions and the reinforcements were to be commanded by the German General von Reuter.

16 September

At dawn the Yugoslav Division, made up largely of volunteers from the South Slav lands of the Habsburg monarchy, was ready to assault Kozjak, a few kilometres north of the captured crest. Accounts of this day conflict. According to French and Serbian sources, the Serbs took two summits of Kozjak in the morning and at noon, were driven off them by a counter-attack in the afternoon and recovered them for good before dusk. According to the German official history all attacks were repulsed until seven in the evening, when the Bulgarians on Kozjak suddenly collapsed, and further flight was stopped only by a Saxon Jäger battalion. During the night the whole second position as far as the Crna Reka was in Serbian hands.

That day the breach also widened. The Serbian First Army, which had passed through the abandoned trenches during the night, had the Drina Division across the river Gradešnica before noon, and the Morava Division made contact with the Yugoslav Division in front of the enemy’s second line. Scholtz for the first time asked the German Supreme Army Command for reinforcements. That evening the commander of the Bulgarian 2nd Division, without consulting his neighbours, ordered a withdrawal to the third position. The next day, by retreating without orders behind the Crna Reka, he opened the way to the Vardar for the Serbs.

Among the Bulgarian soldiers a rumour reportedly circulated that the Germans had concluded a “three-year contract” with Bulgaria which expired on 15 September, and that after that day the army would go home. German and British sources tell this story, but Falls suspects that the date was later fitted to the day of the attack. There is no doubt, however, that the Bulgarians were weary of the war. Discontent with the German commanders and food shortages had brought down Radoslavov’s government in June, and the new government of Aleksandar Malinov was looking for a way out of the war. The defeat at Dobro Pole was soon to force one on it.