The rebuilt Serbian army returns to the front

The British chronology of the war records under 25 July 1916 that the rebuilt Serbian army went into action on the Salonika front. Eight months had passed since the autumn defeat and the winter retreat across the mountains of Albania and Montenegro. The British journalist Gordon Gordon-Smith, who accompanied the Serbian army, wrote that on that day the Serbs began an attack on the Bulgarians in the hills above the Meglena (PL) (Moglena) basin, on the border between Greece and occupied Serbia. According to him, the Šumadija Division drove the enemy from several positions, among others in the area of the village of Požar. The next day the Bulgarians brought up reinforcements and for 28 hours there was fierce fighting, in which both sides several times charged with the bayonet. The Serbs held the ground they had taken, but the summits remained in Bulgarian hands. Gordon-Smith admitted that the fighting in the last week of July was mainly preparatory in character. The British official history of the operations in Macedonia does not describe it at all and speaks only of the Serbs taking over a sector of the front.

From Corfu to Macedonia

After their defeat in the autumn of 1915 the Serbs spent the winter resting on Corfu, where the army was reorganised into three armies of two infantry divisions each and a cavalry division. It was armed mainly by France and uniformed by Britain. From April it was shipped to the Chalcidice peninsula near Salonika. According to Gordon-Smith, the last transport landed troops in Mikra Bay on 6 June, and a few days later the staff of the supreme command arrived. In camps outside the city the soldiers spent several weeks, in the heat and without shade, learning to handle their new French weapons. They still lacked some of their artillery and transport. The Regent Alexander, formally commander-in-chief, and the chief of staff, General Petar Bojović, moved to Salonika. According to the British official history, about 120,000 Serbs found themselves in Macedonia.

The first Serbian units moved towards the front as early as June. Gordon-Smith states that the Šumadija Division of Colonel Živko Pavlović took up positions by the railway bridge over the Vardar on 11 June, and on 4 July, together with the Drina Division, it was sent to the frontier. They were to cover the concentration of the rest of the army. As early as May a Serbian volunteer corps had occupied the border area around Florina, including the road to Korçë in Albania, to cut off the smuggling of arms and food between the Bulgarians and the Greeks.

A place in Sarrail’s plan

The Serbs were to play the main part in the offensive being prepared by the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Macedonia, General Maurice Sarrail. The Entente was then negotiating with Romania and wanted to tie down the Bulgarians in the south when the Romanian army entered the war. On 15 July the commander-in-chief of the French army, General Joseph Joffre, demanded a plan for such an operation from Sarrail. According to the British official history, on 17 July the Serbs began to move out of the entrenched camp at Salonika to take over the front from the village of Kupa, about 20 kilometres west of the Vardar, to Florina. Until then this long sector had been watched only by a French detachment of four battalions and a few squadrons. The Serbs were to deliver the main blow towards the village of Huma just beyond the Serbian frontier, from where a good road led into the Vardar valley. Between them and the river the expected Russian brigade and at least one French brigade were to take position.

On paper the plan looked good, but the British doubted from the start whether the Serbs would get into place in time over the poor mountain roads. They were right. Even at the beginning of August the Serbian First Army, which lacked transport, was still slowly moving up to its positions, and by 1 August, the original date of the attack, no troops west of the Vardar had occupied their assigned places. The two other armies, however, were already at the front, including the Second Army of Vojvoda Stepa Stepanović, to which the Šumadija Division belonged. Their line ran through the village of Strupino to a point just north of Lake Ostrovo, and further on, now only weakly held, to Lake Prespa. It was here, in mid-August, that an unexpected Bulgarian blow fell on the Serbs, and in the autumn they fought for the mountain of Kajmakčalan and for Bitola, the first Serbian town recovered in this war.