British take Dojran

The British chronology of the war records under 22 September 1918 that British troops took Dojran. The small town on the lake, which the Bulgarians had taken in December 1915, had for three years lain within their defensive line, depopulated and ruined by shellfire. It was not, however, taken by assault. Three days earlier the British and Greeks had once again been thrown back from the Bulgarian defences on the heights west of the lake, losing more than 7,000 men. Now the Bulgarians left of their own accord, because further west the front had already been broken.

The Bulgarian retreat

The breach that the Serbs and French had made on 15 September in the Moglena mountains widened every day. On 20 September the headquarters of the Bulgarian 1st Army received orders to prepare a retreat to a new line in the Belasica range, and General Vladimir Vazov’s 9th Pleven Division, undefeated in three battles at Dojran, had to abandon its positions. Under cover of a strong rearguard the artillery and transport moved off by night along the road through Kosturino towards Strumica. On 21 September, between 8.00 and 8.30 a.m., the British heard loud explosions of dumps being blown up, and airmen spotted columns moving north on both banks of the Vardar. From the afternoon aircraft of the Royal Air Force bombed the crowded roads in relays, at times coming down to a dozen or so metres above the ground to machine-gun the columns. At the crossroads near Rabrovo the transport piled up in a disorderly mass.

22 September

During the night of 21–22 September the British 26th Division occupied without a fight the Bulgarian trenches in the salient at Machukovo, on the Vardar, and before dawn reports came in from the whole front of XII Corps that patrols were finding no enemy or meeting only weak rearguards. The Greek Serres Division, which had fought by the lake itself on 18 and 19 September, was ordered to occupy the summit of the Grand Couronné, and French Zouaves climbed P Ridge, on which British battalions had bled themselves white a few days earlier. From the ridge it could be seen that the Bulgarians had fallen back as far as the Blaga range, north of the lake. During the day units of the 22nd Division occupied the villages of Kara Ullar and Hamzali without resistance, and engineers began preparing a road for the guns across the shell-torn battlefield. At noon a triumphant telegram arrived from General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey: the enemy was retreating along the whole front from Bitola to Lake Dojran, and a relentless pursuit was to turn the retreat into a rout. The British official history does not say which unit was first to enter the town itself; it lay just behind the front line, which the Greeks had already taken on 18 September.

The moment awaited for three years found the British Salonika Army in poor shape. General George Milne was just withdrawing the most badly mauled units to rest, and Spanish flu and malaria were eating away at more and more units. Milne therefore regrouped his forces: XVI Corps was to advance west of the lake towards Kosturino and the Strumica valley, and XII Corps was to clear the Blaga range. On 23 and 24 September the British and Greeks advanced in the heat, meeting only isolated riflemen and rearguards, and to their astonishment found huge Bulgarian supply dumps. On 24 September the British chronology closes the “Battle of Monastir-Doiran”, that is the British and French part in the first phase of the offensive. The date is a convention: the pursuit went on until the armistice with Bulgaria.