Battle of the Vardar begins

On 5 May 1917, west of the Vardar, the main part of the spring offensive that General Maurice Sarrail had been preparing since the winter began. The British chronology of the war recorded this day as the start of the “Battle of the Vardar”, although the most important fighting was to take place further west, in the bend of the Crna and in the mountains east of it. The infantry did not yet move that day. A bombardment lasting several days began, intended to destroy the wire and trenches before the assault.

The offensive was almost a month late. It was originally to have begun on 12 April, but snowstorms, avalanches and landslides in the mountains several times forced the date to be postponed. General George Milne’s British had already attacked at Doiran on 24 April, in the belief that they were anticipating the main attack by only two days, and paid for it with more than 3,000 men. By 2 May Milne knew from Sarrail that the French artillery would begin its preparation on 5 May and that the attack would follow a few days later. The British were to strike again at Doiran on the evening of 8 May.

In the Crna bend stood French colonial divisions, General Mikhail Diterikhs’s Russian brigade and the Italian 35th Division, which had just received a new commander, General Giuseppe Pennella. Facing them, on the hills where the front had come to a halt in autumn 1916 after the fighting for Bitola, the German 302nd Division with German and Bulgarian brigades was dug in. The strongest point of the defence was Hill 1050. According to the Bulgarian historian Petar Doshkinov, on 5 May 91 French and Italian batteries opened fire here, 372 guns and heavy mortars in all. The weather was warm and windless, so the whole line of the defenders soon disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust. In the afternoon the bombardment had to be interrupted for a time, because German fighters appeared over the front and shot down a French observation balloon. During the night the fire slackened, and the Bulgarians and Germans set about repairing the wire.

The results of the first day were uneven. A Bulgarian brigade defending a flat sector did not have enough dugouts for all its soldiers and suffered losses. The Germans on Hills 1020 and 1050 sat in dugouts cut into the rock, and the bombardment hardly harmed them. The defenders knew in any case what was coming, because the offensive was talked about all along the front. They decided to keep as many men as possible in the front line and to hold strong reserves ready for counter-attacks.

During the night of 5 May an attack also began on the Vardar itself. The French 122nd Division and the attached units of the army of Eleftherios Venizelos’s Greek government moved their line forward on the right bank of the river on a sector almost five kilometres long, in places by more than 800 metres. The British official history notes that the positions taken were mostly only advanced posts. It is not known exactly which Greek units took part. The British official history names the Serres Division, and the Italian historian Luigi Villari two regiments of the Archipelago Division. The bombardment in the bend went on for another three days, and the infantry assault went in at dawn on 9 May.