French take Prilep

In the early afternoon of 23 September 1918 French cavalry rode into Prilep. That date is given by Cyril Falls’s British official history, which at this point relies on the accounts of the French cavalry commanders. Some French accounts say that the cavalry reached Prilep as early as 22 September. The town in the northern part of the Pelagonia plain, taken by the Bulgarians in November 1915, had for almost three years been the rear base of the German-Bulgarian Eleventh Army, which held the front north of Bitola and in the bend of the Crna. It housed the headquarters of the army’s commander, General Kuno von Steuben, and through the town ran a narrow-gauge light railway that linked the front with the railway in the Vardar valley at Gradsko.

Prilep fell without a fight, as a result of the breakthrough at Dobro Pole. For a week the Serbian armies had been advancing north, and on 21 September the Serbs came down into the Vardar valley. The whole right wing of the Eleventh Army, which was still holding positions between Bitola and Lake Ohrid, was in danger. The same day the French and Greeks saw that the Bulgarians were abandoning the Crna bend, and the Italian 35th Division took the famous Hill 1050, from which the enemy had looked down on its trenches for two years. On 22 September the French 11th Colonial Division and the Greek 3rd Division entered the mountains south-east of Prilep, and Italian cavalry reached the village of Kanatlarci. On the evening of that day General Friedrich von Scholtz, the army group commander, and Steuben, who had already moved to Skopje, issued the order for a general retreat. One corps was to withdraw through Kičevo and Tetovo to Skopje, the other over the pass in the Babuna mountains to Veles.

The first to reach Prilep was the cavalry brigade of General François Jouinot-Gambetta: two regiments of Chasseurs d’Afrique and a regiment of Moroccan spahis, with a few armoured cars. According to Falls, the cavalrymen, coming from near Bitola through Topolčani, covered more than 30 miles, almost 50 kilometres, in 12 hours. The town was empty: it had been abandoned by the German 302nd Division, in which, apart from the command and staff, Bulgarians served. Behind the cavalry, men of the 11th Colonial Division entered from the south-east. The same day, to the east, the Serbs forced the Vardar, and a column of the Serbian Drina Division fought the German rearguard defending the approaches to the Babuna Pass.

General Paul Henrys, commander of the French Army of the Orient, wanted after the capture of Prilep to send the cavalry west towards Kičevo to break up the retreating columns. The commander-in-chief, General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey, however, caught up with the brigade by car on the road and personally ordered it to go straight for Skopje. On its capture depended whether the right wing of the Eleventh Army could escape. On 24 September the French 11th Colonial Division and the Greek 3rd Division halted at Prilep to divide into two groups: the smaller was to go through Veles to Skopje, and the larger to pursue the enemy along the road to Kičevo. In the evening of that day Jouinot-Gambetta’s cavalry set off towards the Babuna Pass, in the direction of Skopje.