Bulgarians take Debar and Ohrid

The British chronology of the war records under 8 December 1915 that Bulgarian troops took Debar and Ohrid, two towns on the western edge of Serbian Macedonia, right by the Albanian border. According to Bulgarian accounts Ohrid was taken on 24 November by the Julian calendar, which Bulgaria was still using at the time, that is, on 7 December. The available sources do not give the exact date on which Debar was taken. A Bulgarian communiqué quoted by the British press on 9 December spoke of three columns. The first had taken Resen, the second had beaten the Serbs on the road to Ohrid and was advancing on the town, and the third already held Debar and was pursuing the Serbs southwards, towards Struga. Debar was therefore in Bulgarian hands by early December at the latest.

The last roads to Albania

The last Serbian units from Macedonia and southern Kosovo were passing through this region. According to the Austrian official history, the Serbian command assigned the Timok Army Group the road from Prizren through Kula Ljums and Debar to Elbasan and on to Durrës. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith wrote that it was the only one of the lines of retreat that was not a mere sheep track. The soldiers who took it at first hoped to get from Debar to Bitola and from there go by rail to Salonika. That hope, however, was dashed when the Bulgarians took Prilep in mid-November. The second group consisted of units that had left Bitola and, instead of heading for Salonika, went west through Resen and Ohrid.

The Bulgarians pursued them with several columns and quickly reached Lake Ohrid. Ohrid, once a centre of medieval Slavonic culture and the seat of an archbishopric, was for the Bulgarians one of the most important towns of Macedonia. It was associated with the names of Saint Clement and the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel. In the autumn of 1913, shortly after the region was annexed to Serbia, the inhabitants of the Ohrid and Debar area, Bulgarians and Albanians, rose in a revolt that the Serbs suppressed bloodily. Now Ohrid passed under the rule of Bulgaria, which had entered the war precisely in order to win Macedonia.

The fight for Struga

The last Serbian resistance in this area was put up at Struga, a small town where the Black Drin flows out of Lake Ohrid. According to Bulgarian accounts, the leading units, parts of the 22nd Infantry Regiment and the 4th Cavalry Regiment, reached it the day after Ohrid was taken and were met with fire. By Bulgarian estimates the town was defended by some 5,000 Serbs from various regiments. Under fire from the houses, Bulgarian sappers built a makeshift bridge of planks and beams across the river, over which 34 soldiers of the 23rd Infantry Regiment crossed to the other bank and took up the fight in the town. After heavy fighting the Bulgarians took Struga during the night, on 29 November by the Julian calendar, that is, 12 December.

According to the British historian Owen Pearson, on 10 and 11 December the Bulgarians crossed the Drin and entered Albania, and from the Debar side advanced into the valley of the Mat river. Later they moved on towards Elbasan. The Serbian units from this area meanwhile made their way down into central Albania, where the command gathered them around Elbasan, Tirana and Kavajë. The capture of Debar, Ohrid and Struga completed the conquest of Serbian Macedonia, which was now almost entirely in Bulgarian hands. Ohrid and Debar remained under Bulgarian rule until the autumn of 1918.