I said the other week that there were now 12 war zones in this war. 12. On three continents.
But you know what? That’s obviously not enough because this week yet another war zone opens.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Italians had begun the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo River against Austria-Hungary,
the Russians had again stopped the Germans in the northeast, the Germans and Austrians
were rampaging through Serbia, while the Bulgarians had their hands full trying to stop the French
from reaching the Serbs and uniting forces. Here’s what came next on the world’s battlefields.
Let’s take a look first at the Italian front, where the 4th Battle of the Isonzo River was raging.
Now, because of the early arrival of winter, Italian Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna’s objectives
were somewhat limited. There was heavy snow in the north so there was no hope of gaining
control of the Bovec Basin or destroying the Austrian Bridgehead at Tolmin.
So following short but incredibly intense artillery barrages, wave after wave of Italian
infantry went up the exposed slopes of Hill 383, Mount Sabotino, Mount San Michele, Oslava,
and Podgora. The Austrian machine gun emplacements took a heavy toll on the brave, but freezing
and exhausted Italian soldiers. So, Cadorna, like he had done before, was throwing away
the huge advantage he had in men, which was more than two to one.
Now, all the attacks on Hill 383 were repulsed, but the attack south of Zagora followed what
was by now becoming a familiar pattern. The Italians would advance and push back the enemy
until Austrian reserves arrived and held the line. The Italian Third Army was commanded
by Prince Emanuele Filiberto, the Duke of Aosta, cousin to King Victor Emmanuel III.
This army had the nickname “Armata Invitta”- undefeated army- but, at least here, that
may have been a misnomer, for his army made repeated desperate attacks up the slopes of
Monte San Michele which either failed or made tiny gains that were re-taken by Austrian
counter attacks. In its second week, the intensity of the battle was growing and the casualties
were climbing as high as they had in the Third Battle of the Isonzo last month.
And another battle, not too far away, was also growing in intensity this week.
The French had tried and tried to reach the Serbs last week, battling the Bulgarians up
Mount Archangel until Bulgarian reinforcements arrived and the French advance was stopped.
Now the Bulgarians took the offensive. Their intention was to circle around the French,
cut off their retreat by destroying the only means of crossing the Tcherna River- a wooden
bridge- and pin them up against the mountains.
Violent battle took place over three days between the French and the Bulgarians, and
at the end of the third day the Bulgarian lines broke, and they were routed. The fighting
over those three days had been a really near thing, though, several times the Bulgarian
infantry got to within a dozen meters of the French, but couldn’t push past the French
machine guns. However, though in the end the Bulgarians were forced to retreat, the French
didn’t have enough men to pursue them and press their advantage, push their way to the
Babuna Pass, and relieve the Serbian forces.
Those Serbs held out until November 15th, hearing the French guns so close, loud and
clear, but the French could not do the impossible, and French General Sarrail did not dare to
leave that tiny bridge over the Tcherna, that single slender line of retreat, too far behind.
The Bulgarians had only been defeated, but not crushed.
The Serbs finally fell back from the pass, and the French, not knowing this, held Mount
Archangel till the end of the week when the Bulgarians returned to fight them again. But
the situation of the Serbian army was now desperate. The Austrian, German, and Bulgarian
lines began at Vishegrad, north of Montenegro, and went across Serbia in a straight line
to Nis, curved down to Vranya, then to Veles, and then down to where the French army stopped
it from reaching the Greek border. It was a dragnet, and if it was contracted, the Serbian
forces would be swept toward the Albanian and Montenegrin mountains, which could not
be passed by any organized force, and only the hardiest of souls in any case. The last
chance of breaking this dragnet was the French breaking through, but once the Serbs withdrew
from Babuna Pass, that was it.
It was indeed a dire and disheartening situation for the Serbs, and one other disheartening
situation for the allies was at Gallipoli.
On November 11th, British Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener had traveled to Gallipoli
to see the dismal situation there first hand. And it was dismal; as we’ve seen, the demoralized
British and ANZAC troops had no real hopes left for any kind of a victory, were short
on artillery shells, were riddled with disease, and had insufficient shelter and equipment
for the winter that was about to begin. Kitchener’s generals had urged evacuation, but Kitchener
had refused, worried that admitting defeat would have a negative effect on the Muslim
subjects of the British Empire. After seeing the situation firsthand, he now changed his
tune and called for a speedy evacuation.
And a side note here; Winston Churchill, one of the main architects of Gallipoli, who had
still been arguing that it could be won, now basically gave up and went to the Western
Front as a Lieutenant-Colonel to command a battalion there.
The Bulgarian front, Salonika, the Italian front, Gallipoli; these were all relatively new fronts
that had opened up in the past six months or so. This week, yet another war zone would open.
On November 14th, what is probably the most forgotten front of the entire war opened,
the Libyan Front. Libya was Italian, but before 1912 had been part of the Ottoman Empire and
now the Senussi tribesmen rose up against the Entente, with support from the Turks.
The Senussi attacked a British-Egyptian border post, and would continue harassing attacks.
Each time the British army would go into action against them, the tribesmen would melt into the desert.
British Officer Captain Jarvis, stationed in Egypt, had this to say “In
some respects this was the most successful strategic move made by our enemies of the
whole war, for these... Arabs tied up on the Western Frontier for over a year some 30,000
troops badly required elsewhere”.
And here’s a small note from one of the elsewhere those troops could not go to, the Western Front
On November 17th, the French Army committee of the Senate insists on the future use of
asphyxiating gas. The French will join the Germans and British in gassing each other
on the western front. To be fair, it was the French that used gas the first of them all,
at the very beginning of the war, but that was tear gas, not chlorine, phosgene, or any
other new and deadly form of poison.
And at the end of the week, Britain sends submarines to support the Russian fleet in
the Baltic. And it was indeed a busy week, with the Italians bravely trying again and
again versus Austria as the winter came on, the French routing the Bulgarians but unable
to press them further as the Serbs are forced into a dragnet that’s about to close, a
decision made to finally evacuate troops at Gallipoli and the opening of the Libyan front in North Africa.
It was quiet on the western front this week, which isn’t surprising after the six weeks
of carnage that had recently ended and caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, but I’m
going to end with something from that front, a quote from Louis Barthas’ book, “Poilu”
that shows life on the “quiet” front:
“...In certain places the trenches had completely disappeared under water. Almost all of the
dugouts had collapsed. Our section was lucky enough to have a dugout which was still intact...
but one night, when the rain came down in torrents, the tide invaded our dugout... The
next day... at many places on the front line, the soldiers had to come out of their trenches
so as not to drown. The Germans had to do the same. We therefore had the singular spectacle
of two enemy armies facing each other without firing a shot... Frenchmen and Germans looked
at each other, and saw that they were all men, no different from one another. They smiled...
we shared tobacco... a huge devil of a German stood up on a mound and gave a speech which
only the Germans could understand... but everyone knew what it meant, because he smashed his
rifle on a tree stump... applause broke out on both sides... if only you had been there,
mad kings, bloody generals, fanatical ministers, jingoistic journalists, rear-echelon patriots,
to contemplate this sublime spectacle... our big-shot leaders were in a furor... once the
front line was established again... it was forbidden under penalty of death to leave the trench."
We actually did a whole special episode on Louis Barthas and his first hand experiences
of the war, and you can check that out right here. You can also buy his book “Poilu”
at our Amazon web shop, and if you do, we actually get some of the proceeds.
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