Serbian retreat through Albania begins

The British chronology of the war records the beginning of the Serbian army’s retreat through Albania under 30 November 1915. The retreat, however, did not begin on a single day. The orders were issued between 23 and 25 November, the first columns, and with them the government and the king, set out from Prizren in the last days of November, and the main forces left Kosovo for the mountains only at the beginning of December. By the end of November every road already led in one direction. On 29 November, or 1 December according to the British chronology, the Bulgarians took Prizren, and the last Serbian units in its neighbourhood were falling back under their pressure across the Albanian border. The Albanian Golgotha, as the Serbs still call this retreat, was beginning.

A choice with no way out

After seven weeks of fighting the Germans, Austrians and Bulgarians, the Serbian army found itself trapped on the Field of Kosovo. From the north came the troops of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, which took Priština and Mitrovica on 23 November. From the east and south the Bulgarians were advancing. Attempts to break through southwards to the French on the Vardar had failed, and on 16 November the Bulgarians took Prilep, closing the last road to Greece. The Serbs could capitulate, fight a last battle in encirclement, or retreat across the mountains to the Adriatic, from where the Allies could take them off by ship. Capitulation was rejected. According to the Austrian official history, Vojvoda Radomir Putnik issued the order to retreat on 23 November; other sources give 25 November. The order, quoted by the American historian Richard DiNardo, explained that the only way out was a retreat to the Adriatic, where the army would be rebuilt, and that the nation would survive even on foreign soil as long as the king, the government and the army existed.

Mackensen’s troops had no intention of pursuing the Serbs into the mountains. On 24 November the field marshal gave his exhausted divisions a rest and began sending some of them to other fronts. Only the Bulgarians kept up the pursuit. According to the Austrian official history, between 28 November and 3 December their 3rd Division time and again ran into a tangle of troops, guns, carts and refugees near Prizren, Đakovica and in the valley of the White Drin, taking huge numbers of prisoners and great quantities of booty. Only on 4 December did it turn south, against the French.

Three roads across the mountains

The army retreated along three routes, or rather mountain tracks, for there were almost no roads in the strict sense there. The northern route, taken by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies and the units of the former Belgrade defence, led from Kosovo through Peć, Rožaje or Plav to Andrijevica in Montenegro, and on through Podgorica to Scutari. It was the longest, but according to the British official history perhaps the best, although it too was unfit for carts. All the artillery that could not be carried into the mountains on the backs of animals was to go this way. Most of the guns, however, were abandoned, buried or destroyed near Peć. The central route ran from Prizren along the valley of the Drin through the mountains of northern Albania to Scutari and Lezhë. It was taken by the troops from Macedonia and Kosovo and by the column in which the king, the government and the supreme command travelled. The southern route, along which the Timok army group retreated, led from Prizren through Debar on the Black Drin to Elbasan and on to Durrës.

The main forces waited a few more days at Peć. According to the Austrian official history, at a council of generals Vojvoda Živojin Mišić, the victor of the Kolubara, even proposed gathering whatever could be gathered and striking the tired enemy once more, as a year earlier. He was alone in this view. When the Bulgarians reached Đakovica on 3 December, the last rearguards left their positions. According to some works the last units of the northern column left Peć around 7 December, and its leading units reached Scutari in the middle of the month.

Winter, hunger and the Albanians

The retreat coincided with an early, harsh winter. The tracks were buried in snow, and blizzards raged on the high passes. The soldiers, worn out by weeks of fighting and marching, went hungry, often barefoot and in rags. Many were ill with typhus and dysentery. The poor villages of northern Albania could not feed such a mass of people, and their inhabitants, distrustful of the Serbs, who had marched in here in 1912 and as recently as the summer of 1915 had fought the Albanians, hid their food. The British official history writes that money had no value for them, so officers and men, teeth chattering with cold, gave their own shirts for a piece of bread. Stragglers and small groups were attacked and robbed by the highlanders. The tracks were marked by the frozen bodies of men and dead horses.

The Austrian official history describes how, from the very start of the retreat, hundreds and thousands of starving soldiers fell behind, scattered in search of food or went over to the enemy. Regiments numbered a few hundred men at most. In the columns there was bitterness towards the Allies, who had promised help and had not come.

The king, the vojvoda and the refugees

Those who embodied the survival of the state went with the army. Vojvoda Putnik, suffering from asthma, was carried by soldiers in a litter. The seventy-one-year-old King Peter I, in poor health and almost blind, crossed the mountains with the command, ahead of the army’s main forces. According to the Austrian official history, both reached Scutari on 7 December, the king in a cart drawn by buffaloes.

Behind the army came crowds of civilians, women, children and old people fleeing the occupation, as well as thousands of Austro-Hungarian prisoners taken in 1914. The Serbian command also took with it boys from the younger conscript classes, so that they would not fall into enemy hands. According to some works there were more than 30,000 of them, and thousands did not survive the retreat. The British official history states that many of the women and children who had accompanied the army so far were left in Kosovo, because they no longer had the strength to go on.

The cost of the retreat

The losses cannot be counted exactly, and the figures given in different sources vary widely. According to the British official history, before the invasion the Serbian army, together with its auxiliary services, had about 420,000 men on ration strength, and the Central Powers took about 170,000 prisoners and 900 guns in the whole campaign. At first about 100,000 soldiers reached Scutari, and in time half as many again. The British history of the war published by Nelson wrote of almost 130,000 soldiers who reached the coast. Serbian and modern estimates speak of several tens of thousands of soldiers who died of hunger, cold and disease during the retreat itself, often about 77,000, and of an even greater number of civilian dead. The Serbs also managed to bring out about 24,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners; many others died on the way.

Towards the coast

Salvation did not await the Serbs on the coast. The small port of San Giovanni di Medua, today’s Shëngjin, taken by the Montenegrins in the summer, lay too close to the Austro-Hungarian base at Kotor. On 5 December Austro-Hungarian warships sank most of the ships in the harbour there. The British and French decided that the army had to be taken off further south, from Durrës and from Vlorë, where the Italians were. The emaciated soldiers therefore had to march on through the Albanian marshes and rivers. They were helped by Essad Pasha Toptani, who ruled in Durrës and had sided with the Entente.

In the winter of 1916 Italian, French and British ships carried more than a hundred thousand Serbian soldiers from the Albanian coast to the Greek island of Corfu, where they rested and were rearmed. The Serbian government also settled on Corfu. The rebuilt army returned to the fighting in the summer of 1916 on the Salonika front.