Bulgarians take the Babuna Pass and Prilep

The British chronology of the war records under 16 November 1915 that Bulgarian troops took the Babuna Pass and the town of Prilep in Serbian Macedonia. Sources on both sides confirm this. According to the Austrian official history, on 16 November a Bulgarian cavalry division, after several days of fighting and a wide outflanking movement from the west, drove the Serbs from around Prilep to the south. Bulgarian studies state that the town was taken that day by a battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment of the 7th Division. The Bulgarians date the event to 3 November, because they still used the Julian calendar.

The pass on the road to Bitola

The pass in the Babuna mountains lay on the road from Veles on the Vardar to Prilep and on to Bitola, which the Serbs called Bitolj and Europe Monastir. When at the end of October the Bulgarians took Veles, weak Serbian units from Macedonia withdrew here, according to the Austrian official history the troops of the Bitola divisional area. The British history of the war published by Nelson put them at about 5,000 men and stated that they were commanded by an officer named Vasić. The defence of the pass had two aims. It barred the Bulgarians’ road to Bitola, from which a railway ran to Greek Salonika, and it covered the flank of the French, who were advancing in the Vardar valley.

In the first days of November the defenders repulsed a Bulgarian attack and threw the leading units back as far as the village of Izvor, about 20 kilometres from Veles. The American monthly “Current History” dated this victory to 6 November. Among the Serbs on the pass was an Englishwoman, Flora Sandes, a nurse with a regimental ambulance, who a few weeks later, during the retreat, was taken into the army as a private. But more and more Bulgarian units were converging on the Babuna, and the defenders were now held there only by the hope of help from the French.

The French too late

The French of General Maurice Sarrail tried to reach them. At the beginning of November, during the fighting at Krivolak, they crossed to the left bank of the Crna and attacked the heights with the Monastery of the Archangel. They were a dozen or so kilometres in a straight line from the Serbian positions. According to the British official history of the Macedonian campaign, however, it was already too late. Around 10 November the Bulgarians lost interest in the Serbs on the pass and turned against the French, who after heavy fighting at Čičevo went over to the defensive. The Serbian units on the Babuna were left alone against a much more numerous enemy.

For several days the Serbs held the ridge, but the Bulgarian cavalry outflanked them from the west. On 16 November the pass and Prilep were in Bulgarian hands. The Serbs fell back south, towards Bitola. According to Nelson’s history, they held out in front of the town until the beginning of December and only then abandoned Bitola.

The road south closed

The fall of Prilep sealed the fate of the Serbian army. Its main forces had by then gathered on the Field of Kosovo and were still trying to break through south, to the French. The route through Prilep and Bitola was the last road by which part of the army could reach Greece and, by rail, Salonika. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith, who was then with Serbian headquarters at Prizren, wrote that the news of the Bulgarians in Prilep and their march on Bitola extinguished the last hope. In the same days another Bulgarian detachment, advancing through Tetovo, reached Gostivar on 16 November and threatened Prizren from the south. A week later the Serbian high command decided to withdraw the army across the mountains of Albania and Montenegro to the Adriatic.

The Bulgarians held Prilep and the Babuna Pass almost to the end of the war. They were retaken only by the Allies during the offensive on the Salonika front in September 1918.