Army of the Orient

The Army of the Orient was formed in autumn 1915 from divisions brought from Gallipoli and from France; from 5 October its units landed at Salonika to help Serbia. It was commanded by General Maurice Sarrail, who in January 1916 also took command of the British at Salonika and from August 1916 was commander-in-chief of the Allied Armies of the Orient (Armées alliées en Orient). These comprised French, British, Serbian, Italian, Russian and, from 1917, Greek troops, about 400,000 men in 1916. The French army itself was from then on led by separate generals, among them Paul Grossetti and Paul Henrys.

For almost three years the Macedonian front hardly moved, and the worst enemy was malaria: from June to December 1916 more than half of the French soldiers caught it. After Sarrail came Adolphe Guillaumat (from December 1917) and Louis Franchet d'Espèrey (from June 1918), who on 15 September 1918 broke through the front at Dobro Pole. Bulgaria signed an armistice on 29 September. According to the French defence ministry, nearly 300,000 Frenchmen fought in the Army of the Orient, and more than 50,000 of them did not return.