Battle of Florina

The Battle of Florina was the first great clash between the rebuilt Serbian army and the Bulgarians, ten months after the defeat of autumn 1915. In mid-August 1916 General Maurice Sarrail, commander-in-chief of the Allied forces at Salonika, was completing preparations for an offensive intended to pin down the Bulgarians when Romania entered the war. The Bulgarians forestalled him. During the night of 16/17 August their 1st Army advanced on the western wing of the front, took the Greek town of Florina that same day, and in the following days pushed the weak Serbian detachments back as far as Lake Ostrovo. There, however, on a fortified line of hills, the Serbs stood firm. The Bulgarian attacks went on for more than another week but brought no breakthrough, and on 27 August the Bulgarian staff called them off.

Name and dates

The Bulgarians call this engagement the Lerin operation (from Lerin, the Bulgarian name for Florina) or the Chegan operation, after the village of Chegan west of Lake Ostrovo, which was one of its objectives. In Bulgarian studies it lasts from 17 to 27 August 1916, while the English Wikipedia gives the dates 17–28 August. The Serbs describe this fighting as the defence at Lake Ostrovo, which preceded their September victory at Gornichevo.

On this page we use the name and dates from the British chronology of the war, which, following the German list of battles, records the “Battle of Florina” from 17 to 19 August. These three days cover the most important part of the operation: the Bulgarian attack, the capture of Florina, the failed Serbian counter-attack at Banitsa and the Serbian retreat to the ridge above Lake Ostrovo. The further fighting, up to the halting of the attack on 27 August, is described below as its continuation. The Austrian official history gives 18 August as the start of the offensive, but the British official history of the operations in Macedonia, Bulgarian studies and Serbian accounts agree on 17 August. Bulgaria went over to the Gregorian calendar in the spring of 1916, so its August dates need no conversion.

Background

Since the winter of 1915/1916 the front in Macedonia had hardly moved. The Central Powers, after the conquest of Serbia, had halted at the Greek border, because the Germans did not want to push neutral Greece into the Entente camp. From the beginning of 1916 the Bulgarians had been demanding permission for an attack that would give them a better defensive line in the west and the port of Kavala in the east. According to the Austrian official history, the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, agreed only once the Entente had forced Athens into the demobilisation of the Greek army and the risk of an accidental clash with the Greeks had diminished. Earlier, in May, the Bulgarians and Germans had occupied Fort Rupel on the Struma without Greek resistance.

Meanwhile the Allied forces were growing. In the summer the Serbian army rebuilt on Corfu arrived in Macedonia, some 120,000 men in three armies, followed at the end of July by the first Russians. Sarrail wanted the Serbs to deliver the main blow west of the Vardar. Their concentration, however, proceeded slowly over poor mountain roads. The long sector from Lake Ostrovo to Lake Prespa, with Florina and the railway from Salonika to Bitola, was covered only by small forces: according to Serbian studies, the Danube Division of the Serbian 3rd Army under General Pavle Jurišić Šturm and a volunteer (Chetnik) detachment of about 1,500 men under Lieutenant-Colonel Vojin Popović, known as Vojvoda Vuk.

The Bulgarian 1st Army of General Kliment Boyadzhiev, with its headquarters at Bitola, numbered about 117,000 men according to Bulgarian studies, but it was stretched in a cordon over 130–150 kilometres of mountains, from Lake Ohrid to the Kožuf range. It lacked mountain and heavy artillery. According to Bulgarian studies, the order to attack arrived on 14 August from the headquarters of the German army group of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, to which the Macedonian front was subordinate. The main blow was to be delivered by the reinforced 8th Tundzha Infantry Division of Major-General Todor Mitov: to take Florina, defeat the Serbs west of Lake Ostrovo and seize the passage between the lake and the mountains. The 3rd Balkan Infantry Division was to make a demonstration in the east, in the mountains above the Moglena (PL) basin, and pin down the divisions of the Serbian 2nd Army stationed there. At the same time, on the eastern wing of the front, the Bulgarian 2nd Army of General Georgi Todorov was to enter Greek Eastern Macedonia as far as the Struma.

Course of the battle

17 August. During the night of 16/17 August the Bulgarian columns went over to the attack. According to Bulgarian studies, Mitov’s troops drove the Serbs from the village of Gorno Kleštino and from several further positions, and at about 4.30 p.m. soldiers of the 30th Sheynovo Infantry Regiment entered Florina. The Bulgarian 3rd Cavalry Brigade surprised a Serbian company in one of the villages and almost destroyed it. According to Serbian studies, Vojvoda Vuk’s volunteers, without artillery, could not withstand the blow of an enemy many times stronger and scattered into the mountains. The British official history recorded briefly that the Bulgarian 1st Army advanced rapidly along the Bitola–Salonika railway and drove in the Serbian outposts. On the right wing a separate brigade under Colonel Ivan Pashinov descended between Lakes Ohrid and Prespa towards Korçë. In the east the Bulgarian 3rd Division attacked the slopes of the Nidže range, but there the Serbian Šumadija Division repulsed the attack. The Bulgarian 19th Yambol Regiment took several hills but had to give them up after a Serbian counter-attack, losing nearly 700 men according to Bulgarian figures.

18 August. The commander of the Serbian Danube Division, not knowing how strong the enemy was, counter-attacked in the area of Banitsa and Florina railway station. The British official history writes that part of the division ran into much larger Bulgarian forces and was thrown back. According to Serbian studies, the Serbian line broke up and a Bulgarian cavalry squadron seized a whole battery of field guns, which the infantry managed to recapture, but that day the Serbs lost nine guns. Sarrail, who had just learned of the signing in Bucharest of the military convention with Romania, sent the Serbian Vardar Division to the threatened sector, and according to Serbian sources also a brigade of the Timok Division and French heavy artillery.

19 August. The Bulgarians reached the foot of the Malka Nidže range and after heavy fighting took the Kirli Derven pass. In the afternoon, as the British official history writes, the Danube Division was heavily attacked at Banitsa, and by the evening of the following day it had fallen back to the ridge west of Lake Ostrovo. According to Bulgarian studies, three Serbian divisions, the Drina, Vardar and Danube Divisions, now stood on a fortified line 500–1,000 metres in front of the 8th Division. The Serbs were ordered to defend themselves to the last man until reinforcements arrived.

Fighting at Lake Ostrovo

After 19 August the battle changed its character. The Bulgarians kept attacking, but no longer in open country, rather on bare, rocky and waterless slopes, in the August heat. The Serbs were supplied by the railway, which ran almost to the battlefield, and they constantly received new guns and fresh units. The Bulgarians began to run short of ammunition. On 20 August Sarrail changed his plan: he would stand on the defensive on the right wing and on the Vardar, and strike on the left, at Florina. The Italian 35th Division was to relieve the French 57th Division, which, together with a Russian brigade, was to go to the aid of the Serbs. The commander of the Serbian 3rd Army, the nearly seventy-year-old Jurišić Šturm, who in 1870 had still fought on the Prussian side, was recalled.

The heaviest fighting took place from 22 to 25 August. The Bulgarian 12th Regiment took the highest point on the Malka Nidže ridge, and the 10th Rhodope and 30th Sheynovo Regiments occupied two of the three lines of trenches by the road along the western shore of Lake Ostrovo. An attack on the positions near the monastery of St Spyridon on 24 August, however, broke down under the fire of Serbian artillery shooting from the other shore of the lake. On the eastern wing the Serbs went over to counter-attacks. The British journalist Gordon Gordon-Smith, who accompanied the Serbian army, wrote that by 21 August they had driven the Bulgarians almost entirely out of the Vetrenik and Kukuruz mountains. Bulgarian studies record that on 22 and 23 August the Šumadija Division made 18 attacks on the Kovil and Kukuruz heights, without success but pinning down the Bulgarian 3rd Division. On 27 August, the day Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary, the staff of the Bulgarian field army concluded that a breakthrough was impossible without fresh preparations, and ordered the attacks to stop and the troops to dig in on the line they had gained.

Losses

Figures for the losses differ considerably. According to Bulgarian studies cited by the American historian Richard C. Hall, by 25 August the 1st Army had lost 1,079 killed and 4,399 wounded, 5,478 men in all, and the Serbs 657 killed, 2,555 wounded and 706 missing, or 3,918 men. The Bulgarians reported that by 22 August the 8th Division alone had taken prisoner 7 officers and about 200 men and captured 5 guns and 4 machine guns. Gordon-Smith, relying on Serbian figures, estimated Bulgarian losses at 10,000–12,000 and Serbian losses at about 5,000 men.

Significance

The Bulgarians took Florina and, by their own reckoning, about 2,500 square kilometres, driving in to a depth of up to 25 kilometres. The British official history calls the simultaneous attack on both wings of the front “a brilliant stroke”: in the east the 2nd Army, meeting no Greek resistance, reached the Struma, and in the west the Bulgarians shortened their front. News of a “great Bulgarian victory” spread across Europe and alarmed Bucharest. The Allied offensive, which under the convention with Romania was to begin on 20 August, was postponed by more than three weeks.

The Bulgarians did not, however, achieve the aim of the operation. They neither pushed the Serbs back beyond Lake Ostrovo nor cut the road and railway to Salonika, nor did they stop Romania from entering the war. The British official history stresses that Serbian morale proved sound, and as soon as they had enough infantry and artillery they calmly repulsed their old enemy. Bulgarian studies reproach their own command for the lack of a clear direction for the main blow and for the dispersal of forces. At Lake Ostrovo Sarrail assembled his troops for a counter-offensive. On 12 September the Serbs, French and Russians attacked at Gornichevo, in mid-September the French recaptured Florina, and at the end of the month the Serbs took the peak of Kaymakchalan, which dominated the whole front, opening the way to Bitola.