Bulgarians take Negotin

On 24 October 1915 the right wing of the Bulgarian 1st Army took Negotin, a town in the north-eastern corner of Serbia, near the mouth of the Timok where it flows into the Danube. The British chronology of the war wrongly places Negotin on the Vardar. It probably confused it with Negotino, a small town in the Vardar valley in Macedonia, near which the French had taken up positions in those very days. The date of 24 October is given by the Austro-Hungarian official history. The British history of the war published by Nelson writes that Negotin fell a day earlier.

The fight for the Krajina

Negotin was the chief town of the Krajina, the region in the fork of the Danube and the Timok, on the border with Bulgaria. When the Bulgarians moved against Serbia on 14 October, General Kliment Boyadzhiev, commander of the 1st Army, which was subordinate to Field Marshal August von Mackensen, sent one brigade of the 6th Infantry Division here. It was to clear the bank of the Danube and open the river route. The rest of the 6th Division was attacking the fortress of Zaječar. The brigade did not force the swollen Timok near Negotin until 16 October, and then for many days could not break the resistance of a Serbian detachment defending itself south of the town.

Boyadzhiev asked Mackensen’s headquarters to speed up the attack from the other side of the Danube, where the Austro-Hungarian group of Feldmarschalleutnant Fülöpp stood near Orsova, then in Hungary, on the border with Romania. The first attempt at a crossing, on 22 October, failed. According to the Austrian official history, Romanian searchlights lit up the bank and gave away the artillery preparations. The next day, after a heavy bombardment supported by German batteries, the Austrians crossed the river and easily took the hills on the Serbian bank, because most of the Serbian detachment from the Krajina had already left for the Timok. On 24 October the Bulgarians entered Negotin, and the Serbian units fell back to the south-west. The Bulgarians also took the port of Prahovo, where, according to Nelson, they seized large stocks delivered there by the Danube for the Serbs.

The Danube open

On 25 October Fülöpp’s advance guard reached Kladovo, abandoned by the Serbs, and on 26 October at Brza Palanka it met Bulgarian cavalrymen. The Austro-Hungarians had linked up directly with the Bulgarians, and the whole Serbian bank of the Danube from Belgrade to the Bulgarian border was in their hands. Minesweepers appeared at once to clear the fairway through the Iron Gates for the ammunition transports for Bulgaria and Turkey that were already waiting. Russian torpedo boats stationed in Romanian waters below the gorge were, according to the Austrians, withdrawn after protests lodged in Bucharest.

For Germany this was one of the main objectives of the whole campaign. The Turks were defending the Dardanelles and Gallipoli with ammunition depots growing ever emptier, and neutral Romania would not let military transports pass through its territory. Now supplies could travel down the Danube to Bulgarian ports, and from there by rail to Turkey. Meanwhile the Germans and Austrians were pressing harder and harder from the north. On 27 October the Serbian forces on the Timok began to withdraw, and in the last days of the month the Bulgarians entered Zaječar and Pirot.