March offensive in Macedonia

The March offensive in Macedonia was a series of French attacks with which the Allied commander-in-chief in the Balkans, General Maurice Sarrail, sought to push the enemy back from Bitola before the great spring offensive. The town, taken in November 1916, lay just behind the front and was shelled daily from the mountains to the west and the hills to the north. The plan was to outflank the enemy wing between Lakes Ohrid and Prespa and to attack the hills overlooking Bitola. The attack between the lakes bogged down in the snow, but north of the town the French took the important Hill 1248 and several lines of trenches. German counter-attacks won back part of these gains, and Bitola remained under fire.

Name and dates

These battles have no established name. The British official history of operations in Macedonia (Falls) describes them briefly as “minor operations” around Bitola, a prelude to the spring offensive, which the French called as a whole the Battle of the Vardar. French accounts speak of the Battle of Monastir (the old name of Bitola) or of its parts: the battle of Lake Prespa and the battle for Hill 1248. The Bulgarians call it the Battle of the Red Wall (Chervena stena), after a rocky ridge in the Baba range that was fought over until May. This page uses the descriptive name “March offensive”.

We date the start of the fighting to 11 March 1917, as do the Italian historian Luigi Villari, the British war correspondent George Ward Price and French accounts. Sarrail himself writes in his memoirs that the operations were under way on 12 March, and the Austrian official history states that the attacks between the lakes began on 12 March. The offensive had no clear end. On 19 March Sarrail ordered the attack at Lake Prespa to be halted, the fighting for Hill 1248 died down around 22 March, and according to the Austrian official history the attacks between the lakes were still very strong on 23 March. We take 23 March as the end. Isolated clashes and counter-attacks continued until the end of the month.

Background

After the capture of Bitola in the Battle of the Crna the Bulgarians and Germans halted only a few kilometres from the town. Their artillery stood on the slopes of the Baba range, whose highest peak is Pelister (PL), to the west, and on Hill 1248 to the north. The Allies could not make full use of the town, which had become at the same time a seat of headquarters and a battery position. The sector at Bitola was held by the German 11th Army of General Arnold von Winckler with German and Bulgarian troops, subordinate to the army group of General Otto von Below. The isthmus between Lake Ohrid and Prespa was closed by the mixed group of the German Colonel Thierry: a Bulgarian cavalry brigade, an Austro-Hungarian Landsturm battalion and two Austro-Hungarian mountain batteries.

Sarrail planned a great offensive for the spring, but not before the end of March: he was waiting for heavy artillery and for the situation in Greece to be settled, and the flooded plains and snow-covered mountains were unsuitable for large operations. The new commander of the French Armée d’Orient, General Paul Grossetti, proposed to “gain some breathing space” around Bitola beforehand. On 8 February Sarrail presented to the Minister of War a plan in which a secondary attack between the lakes towards Resen (Resna) was to relieve Bitola and cover the army’s left wing. The Allies had no great hopes of the Salonika front. At the Calais conference at the end of February it was confirmed that the final defeat of the Bulgarian army was not a realistic aim for the time being, and that the troops in Macedonia were to pin down the enemy and exploit any opportunities that arose. The French government nevertheless approved Sarrail’s plan.

Sarrail assigned five French divisions to the attack: the 76th, which was to strike between the lakes, the 156th in the mountains west of Bitola, the 57th north of the town, and the 11th and 16th Colonial. The plan provided for an attack in echelon, from west to east. General de Vassart’s 76th Division was to break through the front between the lakes, wheel to the right and come out on the plain near Resen, in the rear of the positions at Bitola. Five cavalry squadrons stood ready to dash for the bridge at Resen. Once the 156th Division had taken Pelister and the 76th had reached Resen, the 156th was to attack the Red Wall and the 57th Hill 1248. The 76th Division’s supplies went along a single road from Florina round the southern end of Prespa towards Korçë, over the Pisoderi pass, which in winter only pack animals could cross.

Course

Between the lakes (11–23 March)

On 11 March, after a heavy artillery preparation, the 76th Division attacked the positions of the Thierry group. From the first day the attack made very slow progress. On 13 March Sarrail reported that because of the terrain and the snow progress was minimal, although two machine guns and 22 Saxon riflemen had fallen into French hands. Meanwhile the Austrians and Albanian volunteers were attacking further west, between Prespa and Lake Maliq. According to French accounts the fighting centred on Hill 1675 and the Couronnés ridge, which the French climbed several times but could not hold. The enemy had time to bring up reinforcements, including, according to the Austrian official history, several Turkish battalions and a mountain battery. Then came a blizzard, which Ward Price considered one of the worst of that winter. The soldiers fought in snow more than a metre deep, and many had to be evacuated with frostbite.

Sarrail blamed the division commander. He wrote that, contrary to his instructions, de Vassart had merely sketched the outflanking manoeuvre, had fed the infantry into the fighting “drop by drop” and did not know how to wage mountain warfare, and that on 14 March he had withdrawn four battalions from the fighting because of the weather. On 19 March Sarrail ordered the attack to be halted. According to the Austrian official history, however, the attacks on the isthmus reached their greatest strength on 18 and 23 March, and Thierry held his entire position.

Pelister and the Red Wall (13–23 March)

On 13 March the 156th Division tried to surprise the weak Bulgarian garrison of Pelister. The French, preceded by scouts on skis, took several peaks, but machine-gun fire stopped them short of the summit itself. Despite the failure between the lakes and on Pelister, on 15 March the division attacked the Red Wall and took the trenches the French called “Posen”, capturing, according to French accounts, about 200 prisoners. The Bulgarians quickly brought up reinforcements and did not allow the success to be exploited. Until the end of March the French took a few more individual trenches here, but there was no breakthrough.

Hill 1248 (14–22 March)

After the capture of “Posen” the 57th Division went into the attack. According to Villari the attack on Hill 1248 began on 14 March; according to French accounts the main assault started on the afternoon of 16 March. The enemy front broke, and a Bulgarian regiment preparing to counter-attack was shattered by a blow from the flank. On 18 March the French took the summit of the hill and the fortified village of Krklino, as well as the neighbouring village of Snegovo. Villari writes of 1,200 prisoners taken that day, Ward Price of 400 prisoners on Hill 1248 and 1,400 in other fighting that week.

The French command then formed a detachment which, with the support of the 11th Colonial Division, was to descend towards the village of Kukurečani and onto the plain, to force the enemy to abandon the whole massif. On 19 March artillery fire stopped the advance, and on 20 March the Germans launched a strong counter-attack. The detachment fell back in disorder, and the summit of Hill 1248 was lost. On 21 March the 57th Division retook the summit, but the shelling was so violent that it was not occupied. French accounts state that on 22 March the 16th Colonial Division, sent to help, occupied the summit without a fight. The British official history, Villari and Ward Price write, however, that the summit could not be held: the French and Bulgarians clung to the opposite slopes, and the top remained no man’s land. The Austrian official history mentions that the fighting north of Bitola was ended on 27 March by a successful counter-attack of German battalions, although the Germans did not manage to recover Hill 1248 itself.

Secondary operations

In the bend of the Crna the Italians, who in February had lost part of their positions on Hill 1050 to a German attack, carried out a small action on 13 March. Troops of the 63rd Infantry Regiment of the “Cagliari” Brigade took trenches that formed an awkward salient in their line. On 25 March they repulsed an enemy attack on these positions. General George Milne’s British, preparing for the April offensive at Lake Doiran, carried out raids along their whole front. On 15 March troops of the 83rd Brigade stormed Poroj station and held it for almost 20 hours, but a night raid by the Scottish Camerons on the fortifications near Serres failed. On 17 March the Bulgarians, usually sparing with ammunition, deluged with fire the British sector between Doiran and the Vardar and the French sector on the right bank of the river, using gas shells for the first time on this front. The British did not yet have the new masks everywhere. One brigade lost 164 men, 103 of them gassed.

Losses

There are no exact figures for the losses. According to some French accounts the French lost about 5,000 killed, wounded and missing in March, and the Bulgarian and German losses were similar. The frequently cited figure of 14,000 killed, wounded and sick refers to the whole fighting at Bitola from March to May 1917. More is known about prisoners. On 19 March Sarrail reported 1,450 prisoners, on 27 March 2,104. The British official history gives a round 2,000, most of them taken on Hill 1248. In the 76th Division frostbite put many soldiers out of action.

Significance

The offensive brought only a local success. The Allies improved their position north of Bitola, took part of the enemy’s first line and captured a good many prisoners, but they did not move the front far enough to free the town from shelling. The attack on Resen, which was to have been the key to the whole plan, failed. Sarrail himself admitted that the aim, the “relief of Monastir”, had not been achieved, and that further attacks would use up troops needed for the main offensive. Bitola remained under fire until September 1918. According to Villari about 20,700 shells fell on it, destroying more than half the town, killing about 500 inhabitants and wounding 650.

In April Sarrail shifted the weight of the fighting to Lake Doiran, where the British attacked on the night of 24–25 April, and in May he attacked again in the Crna bend and at Bitola. These attacks also ended in failure. On 18 May the Bulgarians retook the Red Wall, and the defence of this ridge became a symbol in Bulgaria, compared to the defence of the Shipka Pass in 1877. For the Central Powers the successful defence in the spring of 1917 was proof that Bulgarian–German cooperation on the Macedonian front worked.