Bitola in the First World War

Bitola, known in Europe at the time as Monastir, lies at the southern edge of the Pelagonia plain, a dozen or so kilometres from the Greek border. In December 1915 the Bulgarians took it, and in November 1916 the Allies won it back: it was the first Serbian town recovered from the enemy. But the front came to a halt just beyond it, and for almost two years Bitola was shelled by artillery and bombed from the air until much of it lay in ruins.

Monastir

Monastir was an important centre of Ottoman rule in the Balkans. Mustafa Kemal studied at its military high school, Enver Pasha grew up here, and on 23 July 1908 Vehip Pasha read out in the town the proclamation restoring the constitution. On 19 November 1912, in the First Balkan War, the Serbs captured it. Before the war the town had about 60,000 inhabitants: Turks, Orthodox and Muslim Slavs, Greeks, Albanians and Jews. It was a road junction, and a railway through Florina linked it with Salonika.

Under Bulgarian occupation

When in mid-November 1915 the Bulgarians took the Babuna Pass and Prilep, weak Serbian detachments fell back towards Bitola. According to the British and Austrian official histories, on 4 December Bulgarian cavalry entered the town, together with a German squadron. The defenders did not go to Salonika but crossed the mountains into Albania after the rest of the Serbian army. The fall of Bitola closed the last road from Serbian Macedonia to Greece. The British correspondent G. Ward Price called the town one of the coveted prizes for which Bulgaria had entered the war.

Bulgaria regarded Macedonia as its own and placed it in a military general governorate with its seat in Skopje. Officials, teachers and priests were brought in from Bulgaria. A Bulgarian census of 1917 counted only about 36,000 inhabitants in Bitola. In the summer of 1916 the Bulgarian 1st Army had its headquarters in the town, and in August it advanced from here on Florina.

The town retaken

In the autumn of 1916 the Allies threw back the Bulgarians and advanced on Bitola. On 26 September the command of the German 11th Army took over the front before the town. In the Battle of the Crna and Bitola, the Serbs of Živojin Mišić and French Zouaves drove the enemy from hill to hill, and on 18 November the Serbian Danube Division took Hill 1378. General Otto von Below then decided, against the will of the Bulgarian commander-in-chief, Nikola Zhekov, that the town could not be held.

On 19 November 1916, the fourth anniversary of its capture by the Serbs from the Turks, the Allies entered Bitola: first French and Serbian cavalry, then French and Russian infantry. Two days later the regent, Alexander, arrived. The town was divided into French, Russian, Italian and Serbian sectors. For the Serbs, who a year earlier had crossed Albania and rebuilt their army on Corfu, it was the first piece of their homeland regained. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith observed, however, that the capture of Bitola, though important politically, had little tactical and even less strategic significance.

A town on the front line

The enemy fell back only a few kilometres and dug in on the hills north of the town, from where his artillery dominated Bitola. In March 1917 General Maurice Sarrail tried to push the enemy away from the town in the March offensive, but the town remained within range of the enemy guns. In May too, in the Battle of the Vardar, an attack north of Bitola cost more than 700 men and achieved nothing.

The shelling went on almost daily, and aircraft dropped bombs. According to Gordon-Smith more than half the town lay in ruins. Among the shells were incendiaries that set whole streets ablaze. The Swiss investigator Rodolphe Reiss reported that more than 1,500 civilians were killed or wounded. More than 20,000 inhabitants who remained in the town sheltered in cellars, where disease spread. According to Reiss, the Bulgarians shelled the town at night with gas shells, and the gas, heavier than air, sank into the cellars. Ward Price wrote that a helmet and a gas mask were still needed in Bitola, which is why the Serbian government could not move here and remained on Corfu.

The end came in September 1918, after the breakthrough at Dobro Pole. The right wing of the German 11th Army, which held the positions between Bitola and Lake Ohrid, began to fall back northwards, and on 23 September French cavalry from before Bitola rode into Prilep. After almost two years of shelling, Bitola ceased to be a front-line town.