The Crna in the First World War

The Crna, Crna Reka in full, called Czarna Rzeka in some of our Polish articles, is a right-bank tributary of the Vardar in what was then Serbian Macedonia. It flows south across the plain east of Bitola, then turns back in a tight bend and reaches the Vardar near Gradsko through a mountain gorge. In the autumn of 1915 the French held out along its lower course, waiting for the Serbs, who never came. From 1916 a front stood in the bend, fought over in three successive years, until in September 1918 the Bulgarians abandoned it.

The river that turns back

The British official historian Cyril Falls wrote that the Crna reverses the normal behaviour of rivers. On the plain of Bitola it is slow, winding and muddy. Near the village of Brod, however, it turns through almost 180 degrees, to the north, enters a gloomy gorge through the mountain massif and in wet weather becomes a foaming torrent. It leaves the gorge at the widest part of the Vardar valley, at Gradsko, where during the war the railway from Salonika met the light railway from Bitola.

Whoever held the bend covered Bitola from the east and the road to Prilep, which lay halfway between the upper and lower courses of the river. Falls observed that the hills inside the bend were as craggy as the rest of the mountains, if lower than those to the east.

The Vardar–Crna loop (1915)

The river first became a front line in October 1915. The French 57th Division, moving up the Vardar to help the Serbs, halted near Krivolak, a dozen or so kilometres from the mouth of the Crna. The French formed a bridgehead on the far bank at the village of Vozarci, where a bridge had survived, and at the beginning of November crossed to the left bank to attack the hills with the Monastery of the Archangel. But it was too late. Around 10 November the Bulgarians turned against the French, and the Serbs at the Babuna Pass were left on their own.

On 20 November General de Lardemelle withdrew all his troops behind the Crna and had the bridges blown. In the Battle of Krivolak the French held the Vardar–Crna loop until the beginning of December, and then slipped away before the Bulgarians had finished concentrating. On the morning of 4 December the Bulgarians threw trestle bridges across the river, but the French were already on their way to Greece.

The bend (1916–1917)

After the September offensive of 1916, when the Serbs took Kajmakčalan above the bend, the Bulgarians fell back to a fortified line along the river. On 5 October the Battle of the Crna and Bitola began. The Serbs of Voivode Živojin Mišić got across the river between Brod and Skočivir and, in mud and then in snow, drove the Bulgarians and the German battalions sent to help them from the hills in the bend. In mid-November the defence broke, and on 19 November the Allies entered Bitola, the first town of Serbia recovered since the autumn of 1915.

But the front stopped a few kilometres further on. In the bend its key point was Hill 1050, which the Germans and Bulgarians had held since the autumn of 1916. In February 1917 a German attack took part of their positions on the hill from the Italians. On 9 May, in the offensive called the Battle of the Vardar, the French, Italians and Russians attacked in the bend after a bombardment lasting several days. The attack collapsed, and the Italians alone lost 2,400–2,700 men that day. The last attack, on 17 May, achieved nothing either.

The end of the front (1918)

The front in the bend lasted almost two years. The decision came from the mountains east of it, where on 15 September 1918 the Serbs and French broke through the front at Dobro Pole. On 17 September the commander of the Bulgarian 2nd Division withdrew behind the Crna without orders. The Serbian First Army fought for several days for the crossings on the lower river, but by 20 September it had still not managed to hold a bridgehead.

On 21 September French and Greek patrols found the positions in the bend abandoned, and the Italian 35th Division took Hill 1050. Falls wrote that even the Italians, who knew the fortress well, were amazed by the size of the chambers on its northern slope, hewn out of solid rock, proof against any shelling and lit by electricity. On 22 September the Serbs crossed the river and captured the bridge at Vozarci intact, and on 23 September the French entered Prilep. A week later Bulgaria signed the armistice.