As we’ve seen over the past 15 months, the war has grown ever larger as new countries
join the fight. You’d think they may be deterred by the death toll of millions of
young men, but you’d be wrong.
You’d especially be wrong this week, as this week Bulgaria joins the war.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week, a combined Austro-German force, almost 400,000 strong, invaded Serbia from
the north and occupied Belgrade October 9th. Further south in Salonika, in neutral Greece,
20,000 French and British troops landed to help the Serbs. On the Western Front the battles
at Loos and Champagne, British and French offensives, entered their second week, and
over on the Eastern Front, the Russians had begun new offensives in the Dvinsk region
after the months of German advances had finally been halted. Here’s what came next.
Well, I already mentioned that Bulgaria joins the war, so I’ll start with that.
I realize that to those of you who regularly follow our channel Bulgaria’s declaration
of war is a bit of an anti-climax, since last month we talked about the deal Bulgaria made
with the Central Powers that she would declare war on Serbia within 30 days, but that the
German and Austro-Hungarian armies would have to attack Serbia first. That attack came last
week, so Bulgaria was now obligated to begin her own attack.
And that began on 11th, as the Bulgarian forces attacked the Serbs at Byelogradchik. They
did not officially declare war on Serbia until the 14th; within 48 hours of that, both Great
Britain and France had declared war on Bulgaria. The Serbs were in pretty dire straights, since
around 400,000 Austro-German troops had just hit them from the north and captured Belgrade,
which was partly destroyed this week. Serbia had appealed to neutral Greece for help, but
Greece refused the appeal. See, those two countries had a treaty together from 1913
that said that if either one was attacked by two or more powers, the other one would
help out, but the Greeks said, no no no, that treaty is for purely Balkan aggression, and
this was a European war. Still, the French had landed all those troops last week at Salonika,
and this week, on the 14th, the first French units reached the Serbian-Greek border, and
18,000 more French troops landed at Salonika.
Those troops had been pulled from Gallipoli, where the stalemate continued after nearly
six months.
It was fairly obvious that without Allied help, Serbia would fall, but things were also
grim at Gallipoli. The Ottoman forces could look down from the heights with total control
of the situation, but General Sir Ian Hamilton refused to accept defeat or evacuation, but
on October 14th he was replaced by Lieutenant General Sir Charles Munro. When Munro visited
Gallipoli he was appalled- the tactical and logistical situations there were a nightmare.
He recommended a quick evacuation but Lord Kitchener, British secretary of State for
War, was hesitant, he didn’t want to cause any sort of negative reaction in the Muslim
parts of the British Empire because evacuation would be admitting a humiliating defeat by
the Turks. And so the men stayed.
There were issues in the British High Command elsewhere this week as well, over on the Western
Front where the Battle at Looks had been raging for the past two weeks.
That battle, a British offensive, officially drew to a close October 14th with the British
taking just under 60,000 casualties. The Germans took only around 26,000, and British Commander
John French seemed to be losing support. On October 9th, General Douglas Haig told Richard
Haldane, the former British Secretary of State for War, that it was French’s mishandling
of his reserves that had lost the Battle of Loos, and the next day told General Henry
Rawlinson, that he could no longer be loyal to French.
But, you know, historians may often consider Loos to be a failure because it did not achieve
a breakthrough, but the British High Command did learn a few valuable lessons. For the
first time, a creeping barrage was successful and the troops could take maximum advantage
of the suppression fire provided by a creeping barrage, which is when you have a curtain
of artillery fire just ahead of advancing infantry, which would constantly creep forward
just ahead of the troops. Creeping barrages weren’t really seriously deployed until
later in the war, though as far as I know the first one was in the Balkan War in 1913
when Bulgaria tried the tactic during the siege of Adrianople, but you could see at
Loos on a small scale how effective they could be. One costly lesson for the British, though,
was that their artillery shells just were not cutting the German barbed wire defenses
and the wire cutters provided to the troops were too light to cut it. It was also obvious
that the British still did not have sufficient artillery to back up the infantry.
The tactics at Loos were, in fact, a variation of a very old tactic; the wave attack, where
each battalion or each unit had three separate lines, one behind the other. When the first
line got pinned down or exhausted, the second and third lines would pass through the first
and continue the assault. Now, back in the Napoleonic era, these lines were very stiff
and precise, but here they were more like blobs. One unit at Loos, the 9th Scottish
Division, used the wave very effectively, and battered the Germans just like waves hitting
the beach. The German front line trenches were overwhelmed. The problem, as you may
imagine, is that you need to keep a certain distance between the lines so you don’t
bunch up and become a huge target for enemy artillery, and while the 9th Scottish may
have succeeded, other units were less successful, such as the 12th Sherwood Foresters, who went
over the top at 11 AM September 27th, and when they were met with heavy artillery and
rifle fire, they grew disorganized and mixed with other battalions, and suffered heavy
casualties.
The French were also suffering heavy casualties at their own ongoing offensive, the second
battle of Champagne, which had begun the same time as Loos, on September 25th.
Here’s what I think is an interesting side note that I found about Champagne. Now, the
French Foreign Legion was waiting to go into action in Champagne. It included the American
poet Alan Seeger, and the 19-year-old American volunteer Edmond Génet, the great grandson
of Citizen Génet who was sent by revolutionary France to America in 1792 as its representative.
The Legion’s brigadier was Mussorgsky, cousin descendent of the famous Russian composer
of “Pictures at an Exhibition”. The Legion, 500 strong, had gone into action September
28th at the Battle for Navarin Farm, east of Reims. More than 300 of them were killed,
Seeger and Genet both survived.
Another interesting thing I found that hasn’t really fit anywhere so far is this, from “The
Story of the Great War”:
The French method of aerial maneuvering is interesting as well as effective. The air
squadrons operate in the following manner: ten machines rise 6,000 feet along the enemy’s
line, ten others rise 9,000. An enemy attempts to pass are attacked from both above and below.
And here are a few British notes to round out the week: the Armenian Genocide was discussed
in the House of Lords this week, with 800,000 reported killed since May. On October 9th,
British forces captured Wumbiagas in Cameroon, and on October 13th, the heaviest zeppelin
bombing raid on London of the war so far happened. Five zeppelins dropped 189 bombs, killing
71 civilians.
And we come to the end of yet another week. The men at Gallipoli still remaining, waiting
for God knows how many more desperate battles. The Battle of Loos coming to an end, with
the British losing more than twice as many men as the Germans. The French still fighting
at Champagne, where they were losing even more men than the British at Loos, Greece
refusing to come to Serbia’s aid, even as Bulgaria declared war.
Yep, yet another country joined the war. Bulgaria wanted land and the Central Powers promised
it. Men would die. We know that; I mean, all major powers who joined the war had lost hundreds
of thousands of men, did Bulgaria think it would be any different? By this time, Bulgaria
had mobilized over 600,000 men, nearly a quarter of the male population of the entire country,
including all age groups. The field armies that invaded Serbia were 300,000 strong, and
here’s something I bet you didn’t know, Bulgaria would eventually mobilize 1.2 million
men to fight in this war, and the entire population of Bulgaria in 1915 was just under 4.3 million
people, so Bulgaria would send well over a quarter of its entire population to war, which
was the highest percentage of mobilization of any country in the First World War.
Madness.
You might be a little curious what Bulgaria's background to the First World War was.
You can check out our special episode about that right here.
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