Fighting at Kosturino

On 7 December 1915 Bulgarian infantry attacked the British 10th (Irish) Division, which was holding bare ridges near the village of Kosturino, in the Belasica mountains south of Strumica. The British chronology of the war records under this date “fighting at Kosturino (7–8 December)” and the beginning of the British retreat from Macedonia. The Irish were covering the right flank of the French, who for several days had been withdrawing from the Vardar valley towards the Greek frontier. The division was already badly weakened. At the end of November a blizzard and frost had forced the evacuation to Salonika of more than 1,600 of its men suffering from frostbite and extreme exhaustion.

Fog and Rocky Peak

Bulgarian artillery had been shelling the Kosturino ridge since 4 December, and on the afternoon of 6 December the infantry of General Georgi Todorov’s Second Army made the first attacks. They were repulsed, but before dawn on 7 December the Bulgarians crept up gullies in thick fog to an advanced post which the British called Rocky Peak, and took it with the bayonet. It was held by only one company of a battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. According to the British official history, the defenders could not tell friend from foe until the last moment, because the uniforms of the two sides were very similar. From the knoll, which overlooked the line of the 30th Brigade, Bulgarian machine guns, and soon a mountain battery, began to enfilade the British trenches. The British official history regarded the loss of Rocky Peak as the main cause of that day’s defeat.

The breakthrough

Between 9 and 10 a.m. the Connaught Rangers battalion beat off an attack with rapid fire, and the French on the left flank repulsed an attack on their sector. At about 2 p.m. companies of the Hampshire battalion, fired on from the front and the flank, fell back to the second line of defence. Half an hour later, after a heavy artillery bombardment, the Bulgarians attacked the Connaught Rangers in dense masses. Despite heavy losses they reached the trenches and after hand-to-hand fighting broke through the battalion’s line. Its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Jourdain, rallied the remnants of his men in a ravine behind the position and led them out to the Dedeli pass. The Royal Munster Fusiliers battalion on the left flank held out longer and withdrew on orders at about 3.40 p.m., company by company. The British official history, citing a Bulgarian source, states that the main attack was made by two Bulgarian infantry regiments. The war correspondent George Ward Price, who was then in Macedonia, wrote that the Connaught Rangers went into the position 960 strong and in the evening numbered 350.

The Bulgarians did not pursue the Irish vigorously, but the withdrawal took place in confusion. The detachment of one battery near the village of Kajali concluded that the whole front had collapsed and abandoned its guns, taking only the breech-blocks and sights. For the same reason a second battery near the village of Prsten was abandoned. The guns had earlier been hauled up the steep slopes on ropes, so they would have been hard to save in any case. In the evening the 30th Brigade occupied a hill called Crête Simonet, and the 31st Brigade the hills north of the village of Tatarli. Lieutenant-General Bryan Mahon, commander of the British forces at Salonika, who had come to the front the day before, demanded that another brigade be sent at once. Its first battalion reached Doiran that same night, and the French General Maurice Bailloud sent two battalions and a mountain battery to help.

The following days

On 8 December the Bulgarians attacked the new line. When in the evening they began to outflank the division’s right wing, the British withdrew to the Kara Bail ridge and the Dedeli pass, and in the following days, together with the French, across the Greek frontier. More than half of all British losses in the entire expedition to Serbia, put by the official history at just over 1,200 killed, wounded and missing, were suffered by the two battalions that took the main blow on 7 December: the Connaught Rangers and the Hampshires.