Bulgarians take Dojran and Gevgelija

The British chronology of the war records under 11 December 1915 that Bulgarian troops took Dojran and Gevgelija, the last two towns of Serbian Macedonia before the Greek border. Gevgelija lay on the Vardar, at the first station on Serbian territory of the railway from Salonika, and Dojran on the western shore of Lake Dojran, on the road from Salonika to Strumica. Both towns had belonged to Serbia only since the Second Balkan War, and in September 1915 the Serbian government had promised them to Greece in return for military help. Bulgaria regarded them as its own. Since October Gevgelija had been the main base of the French Army of the Orient in Serbia, with barracks, hospitals and depots. Now the French and British gave up both towns as they withdrew into Greece. According to the available sources this happened during the night of 11–12 December and on 12 December, so the Bulgarians most probably entered on those two days.

The last days in Serbia

The retreat was hastened by the fighting at Kosturino, where on 7 and 8 December the Bulgarians drove the British 10th (Irish) Division from its positions in the mountains. General Maurice Sarrail intended to withdraw his troops across the border on the nights of 11–12 and 12–13 December, but he was in no hurry. According to the British official history he rejected his subordinates’ urging, because before leaving Gevgelija he wanted to remove all the stores from its station. The Bulgarians foiled this plan. On 10 December, taking advantage of fog, their small detachments infiltrated through the ravines ever deeper between the French positions. At 1 p.m. on 11 December the leading regiment of the Bulgarian 11th Division took Bogdanci, between Gevgelija and Dojran. The commander of the French brigade stationed there learned of it only when his ammunition wagons vanished in the fog. The Bulgarians also cut the telephone line to divisional headquarters. The French brigades began falling back towards Dojran and across the Greek border, not always warning the British.

On the evening of 11 December the British learned that the French were leaving from a passing French officer, and then from columns of troops and guns marching along the road. During the night the British troops crossed into Greece along a road crowded with French transport, refugees and driven cattle. One company of the 9th Battalion of the King’s Own of the 22nd Division, whose commander was waiting to be formally relieved by the French, set off only at a quarter to one in the morning and in the darkness ran into a Bulgarian battalion resting by the road. A bayonet fight followed. Only 17 men escaped, while two officers and 120 men were killed or taken prisoner. According to the British official history, in the early hours of 12 December all the British troops that had entered Serbia were back in Greece.

Gevgelija

The French were the last to leave Gevgelija. According to the French historian Jacques Ancel, the last regiments crossed the bridge over the Vardar to the sound of a band, after which the barracks and station were set on fire, the track destroyed, and on the evening of 11 December the bridge blown up. According to the British official history, the last French units crossed the border only late on the evening of 12 December. Bulgarian sources state that the Bulgarian army entered Gevgelija on 29 November by the Julian calendar, which Bulgaria still used at the time, that is on 12 December by the Gregorian calendar. For the Bulgarians it was the liberation of a town whose population was mostly regarded by them as Bulgarian.

Halt at the border

Across the border the French and British were not sure whether the Bulgarians would follow them. Greece had promised in November not to disarm or intern the retreating Entente troops, but the Greek border posts behaved in different ways. West of the Vardar they gave the French information about the roads, and one Greek officer even claimed that he had orders to defend the border against the Bulgarians. East of Lake Dojran they did not allow French cavalry patrols to reconnoitre. The Bulgarians, however, stopped at the border. According to the Austrian official history they were held back by a renewed, insistent request from the German Supreme Army Command. The Central Powers did not want to push neutral Greece over to the Entente, and according to the history of one French regiment the Greek government feared that its public would not tolerate the presence of Bulgarians on Greek soil. The Bulgarian command repeated this ban to its Second Army several times. On 12 December Sarrail received, through French headquarters at Chantilly, word from a secret Bulgarian source that the Bulgarians would not cross the border.

The whole of Serbian Macedonia was now in the hands of the Central Powers. The French and British fell back further, to Salonika, where they began building an entrenched camp. According to the British official history the British lost 1,209 killed, wounded and missing in the whole expedition to Serbia, almost all from the 10th Division, and the French nearly 5,000. Bulgarian losses, according to the same source, were much greater. From 1916 until September 1918 the front line was to run at Dojran.