We’ve seen the Central Powers on top most of the year, taking enormous chunks of land
on the Eastern Front, overrunning Serbia, beating back the Allies at Gallipoli, and
holding their own on the Italian and Western Fronts, and this week sees one more victory;
this week the Bulgarian army drives the British and French out of Macedonia.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
So what had just happened before? Well, in Mesopotamia a British army was under siege
at Kut with no relief anywhere in sight. The Bulgarians were fighting the British and French
in Macedonia, and while the Allies were holding their own they were way outnumbered, the Western
and Eastern Fronts were mostly quiet, and the call had finally been given for the allies
to admit defeat and evacuate Gallipoli. Here’s what came next.
We haven’t looked at the Italian front so much lately, so I’d like to start off there today.
We don’t realize it now, but after the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo River, the Italian army
was near to collapse. The losses that Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna’s forces had suffered
were 400,000 casualties since May, and the survivors’ morale was shaky at best. They
had lacked weaponry, had been forced to charge en masse into machine gun defenses, had faced
cholera and typhoid, they were poorly clothed, poorly fed, often slept in mud or on wet hay;
they were, in short, cannon fodder.
Communications were improvised. Most of the front line was exposed and vulnerable to counter
attacks. Their trenches were often shallow scrapings in the ground, which were filthy
and filled with garbage. The woolen uniforms they had would become almost parchment thin
after facing the elements for months. They had shoes that were often cardboard uppers
and wooden soles, which ruined their feet. They didn’t have many helmets. They had
wooden water bottles that were unhygienic. When they did have tents, they often leaked.
The wire cutters for the enemy barbed wire were almost useless in general, and totally
useless under fire. They only had a hot meal in the morning, and from what I’ve read
it was often so bad that men would refuse it, so malnutrition was common.
On the heights, men tried not to freeze to death. They cooked their food on Primus stoves
that made everything taste of gasoline. They slept in pits, packed together for warmth,
and when the men had time away from the front lines, they were usually drafted into labor
battalions. There was no organized recreation of any kind, since Cadorna did not believe
in soldiers having “free time”. So soldiers were banned from entering cafes or pubs during
the day, and could not in many cases mingle with civilians. Soldiers were even arrested
for walking arm in arm with their fiancées. No movie theaters, no libraries, in fact,
the only real distractions the men had were alcohol and authorized brothels; separate
for officers and men, of course.
Cadorna encouraged, no, demanded callousness on the part of his senior officers, which
didn’t do morale any good. One Corps commander, General Vincenzo Garioni, said that the massacre
of infantry was a necessary holocaust, and was therapeutic and would strengthen the army
for future battles. Yes, that is insane. And even after more than half a year of war, thousands
of lives were lost because a lot of men lacked basic training, and hadn’t even been told
to keep their heads down when they reached the trenches. They hadn’t been taught how
to lay wire or how to throw hand grenades, and the sanitation was grotesque.
It is not surprising that discipline failed and the first proper mutiny in the Italian
forces happened this week. The 48th regiment had been reduced to 700 men from 3,000 after
four months in the trenches. On December 11th, 200 of the men were given leave but the other
500 were sent back to the front line. This didn’t sit well with the men and shots were
fired. A court martial was set up and two soldiers were executed. A few days later at
Kamno on the Middle Isonzo, a regiment was ordered back to the front lines and someone
fired a shot at the officers’ mess. The Divisional command surrounded the regiment
with four battalions, and even brought in machine guns and artillery. At a court martial
the next day, 8 men were sentenced to death and many more to 20 years hard labor. The
rest of the regiment were forced to watch the executions and were then escorted to the
front line by military police.
You can imagine what morale was like by now on the Italian front. Another front where
morale was low, and had been for months, was at Gallipoli.
The decision had been made to finally evacuate, though, and plans were made for the evacuation
to take place the 19th, but how would that be possible? The Allies had something like
83,000 men, 186 big guns, and loads of stores and animals. They would have to take that
off in small boats on a beach that was totally under enemy fire. And what if the snows and
stormy weather of early December returned? Well, Brigadier General Brudenell White had
a cunning plan, and it was just about to be put into action.
The Allies were actively retreating on another southern theatre of war this week, in Macedonia.
By December 11th, British and French forces that had been facing the Bulgarians along
the Vardar River were getting close to the Greek border. That day the Bulgarians unleashed
a final attack, taking 8,000 casualties. The following day the Allies crossed into Greece
and the Bulgarians made no move to follow them, perhaps not wishing to draw Greece into
the war. And something that was fortunate for the allies crossing the border on the
12th, it was only on the 11th that Greece had agreed to allow allied forces freedom of movement.
French general Maurice Sarrail should get a lot of cred for the way the retreat was
handled. The terrain was tough, there were no roads, and only a single track of railway,
but they managed to move all of their guns and supplies with them and only took 3,500
total casualties. They dug in a few kilometers south of the Greek border on a line about
25 kilometers long, the French on the left and the British on the right. The British
flank being about 50 kilometers from Salonika.
The Bulgarians published the following on the 14th: “December 12th, 1915 will remain
for the Bulgarian army and nation a day of great historical importance. The army on that
day occupied the last three Macedonian towns that still remained in the hands of the enemy...
the last fights against the British, French, and Serbians took place near Doiran and Ochrida
Lakes. The enemy was beaten everywhere. Macedonia is free! Not a single enemy soldier remains
on Macedonian soil.”
It went on to say that it took 40 days to beat Serbia, but only ten to beat the British
and French and that Bulgaria had taught the so-called “great powers” of Britain and
France a real lesson about fighting. There are now over 80,000 Bulgarian troops between
Monastir and the Greek border.
And here are a few notes to round out the week:
On the 11th- Russians take the Bulak Pass and occupy Hamadan in Persia. They routed
German paid rebels, over 20,000 strong, equipped with rifles and machine guns, on the 13th-
British under Colonel Gordon defeat 1,200 Senussites at Wadi Shaifa in North Africa,
and on the 14th- General Horace Smith-Dorrien was given command in East Africa. Now, he
had fought well on the Western Front, notably at Mons and le Cateau back at the beginning
of the war, but had been relieved of his command during the Second Battle of Ypres, for requesting
permission from Commander John French to retreat from the Ypres salient to a better defensive
position. He and French had clashed for years and that was the final straw. Smith-Dorrien
would contract pneumonia on the way to Africa and would never serve there, returning to
England in January 1916.
And the week ends, with despair and mutiny on the Italian front, a retreat into Greece,
and plans for another at Gallipoli, as the east and west remain mostly quiet.
We see so much death every week, that sometimes we- well, I- forget to think of the despair
of those who remained alive. Those Italians who had had it with marching straight into
Austrian machine guns, the Serbian population freezing in the Albanian mountains as their
country is overrun, knowing that the Allied help had failed, the men from the corners
of the world sitting on the now freezing beaches of Gallipoli wondering what would become of
them. And next week, it’s Christmas. This was supposed to be the war that would be over
by Christmas, remember? And it would be over by Christmas, but certainly not Christmas 1915.
Actually, in the beginning of the war the soldiers were told it would be over by Christmas
1914. As we know now that wasn't the case and you can click here to find out what happened
when the generals realised.
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