Serbs withdraw from the Drina

The British chronology of the war records under 30 October 1914 the start of the Serbian withdrawal from the Drina line. This date agrees with Serbian sources. That day the Serbian Supreme Command ordered the Second Army of Vojvoda Stepa Stepanović to abandon its positions in the lowland Mačva, between the lower Drina and the Sava, and fall back to previously prepared positions in the Cer range, where in August the Serbs had won their first victory.

Six weeks in the trenches

Since September the front on the Drina had stood still. After the Battle of the Drina, in which the Austro-Hungarian offensive ran out of steam in the second half of September, both sides dug in in Mačva and on the mountain ridges along the river, on Gučevo, Boranja and Jagodnja. The lines were often only a few dozen metres apart. The autumn rains turned the trenches into muddy ditches, and night raids and skirmishes developed into long artillery duels.

This kind of war quickly exhausted Serbia. The country had no armaments industry of its own, and supplies from its allies arrived late. Artillery shells were in shortest supply. According to accounts cited in the literature, on 27 October Stepanović reported to Vojvoda Radomir Putnik that his army had still not received ammunition, while the enemy was bombarding the Serbian trenches and there was nothing to reply with.

The attack in Mačva

General Oskar Potiorek, commander of the Austro-Hungarian forces in the Balkans, was meanwhile preparing a third offensive against Serbia. Its prelude was the fighting in Mačva. From 24 October his Fifth Army carried out secondary attacks there, and on 27 October the 21st Landwehr Division struck at the Serbian positions around the village of Parašnica. The defenders repulsed the infantry, but their trenches were then buried under a hurricane of artillery fire, according to Serbian studies more than 4,000 shells.

Without ammunition for their own guns, the Serbs could no longer hold their positions on the flat, open plain. After two days of heavy fighting the Supreme Command issued the order to retreat. On the night of 30–31 October the divisions of the Second Army, among them the Timok and Šumadija Divisions, slipped away unnoticed from the Glušci – Uzveće – Pričinović line. When the Austro-Hungarian units cautiously moved forward on 31 October, they found empty trenches. Almost the entire population of Mačva fled behind the army, remembering the crimes committed by Austro-Hungarian soldiers in August.

Retreat to the Kolubara

The abandonment of Mačva was only the beginning. Most studies date Potiorek’s third offensive from 5–6 November, when after a heavy artillery preparation both his armies moved off, the Fifth Army from Mačva and the Sixth Army from the mountains above the middle Drina. Deprived of ammunition, the Serbian armies were unable to hold even the ridges they had been fighting for since September and began to retreat into the interior. On 15 November the Austro-Hungarians entered Valjevo, and the Serbs withdrew to the line of the river Kolubara, its tributary the Ljig and Mount Suvobor.

Soon they had to give up the capital as well. On 2 December Austro-Hungarian troops marched into the abandoned Belgrade. Potiorek was convinced that Serbia was beaten. Meanwhile ammunition supplies from the allies had at last reached the country, and the very next day the Serbs went over to a counter-offensive which, in the Battle of Kolubara, drove the invaders out of the country by mid-December.