BULGARIAN ADVANCE—SERBIAN RESISTANCE

On November 7, 1915, the Bulgarians captured Alexinatz in the north. The Serbian army of the Timok, retiring from Zaitchar, barely succeeded in crossing the bridge over the river in time to avoid complete disaster. In the south, and on that same day, the Serbians were compelled to abandon Leskovatz. With the capture of these two towns, and several other minor points along the line, the enemy secured complete possession of the main line of railroad from Belgrade through Nish to Sofia and Constantinople, and of the Nish-Saloniki railroad as far south as the French intrenchments at Krivolak. This was to them a very material triumph, for hitherto they had been transporting munitions to the Turks by the water route, along the Danube to Rustchuk in northern Bulgaria. This route was not only more direct, but much quicker. Their main object had now been accomplished in full. Thus Germany was now in direct railroad communication with Asia, and again the German and Austrian papers made frequent references to a possible Egyptian campaign in the future. Another great advantage resulting to both Bulgaria and the two Teutonic empires from the capture of the railroad was the fact that Bulgaria, whose cereal crops had been accumulating in big stores because they could not be exported, could now send them into Germany and Austria, where they were badly needed, thus defeating in some measure the object of the British blockade.

From Alexinatz the hard-pressed army of the Timok had only a single line of retreat, which was by the road to Prokuplie and Kurshumlia, and, in danger of being cut off by the Germans in the west, it began a hurried march, though fighting rear-guard actions all the while, and was thus able to make a junction with the Serbians retiring from Krushevatz. Prokuplie did not fall into the hands of the Bulgarians until November 16, 1915. Northwest of Leskovatz, where the pressure was not quite so extreme, the Serbians under Stepanovitch made a determined stand on November 11-12, 1915. Charging the Bulgarian center suddenly, they broke through their lines and threw them back in great confusion and took some guns and a number of prisoners. But as usual, the Serbians were not strong enough to follow up their advantage, and presently strong reserves came up to reenforce the Bulgarian forces. Two days later the fight was renewed and the Serbians were compelled to retire down the road toward Tulare and Pristina.

Meanwhile the Bulgarians in Uskub were sending forces north toward Pristina, and this sector of the campaign was to witness the battle of Katshanik Pass, in which the Serbians were yet to put up a fight as heroic as any of the whole campaign.

It has now become quite obvious to the Serbians that they were not to receive from the Allies the assistance that was necessary to save their main armies. At this time there were reports of a Russian invasion of Bulgaria to be led by General Kuropatkin, and it was even said that the czar had himself sent a telegram to the Serbian Premier, M. Pachitch, promising him such aid if only he could hold out until the end of November, 1915. How much of these rumors reached the Serbians is not known, but at any rate they did not materially affect their plan of action. There was only one plan now possible, and that was to effect an orderly retreat to some territory where their enemies could not follow, and thus keep the army intact. The way behind them, into the mountains of Montenegro or Albania, lay open. But without railroads, without even one good wagon road, it was impossible for an army to pass this way in a body. It would have to break into small bands, each taking a separate trail by itself. Aside from that there was no food supply; the soldiers would starve to death. It was true that the ships of the Allies controlled the Adriatic, but without roads no adequate food supply could be forwarded to the retreating armies. Nor did those barren regions offer any local supply; the poverty-stricken natives could barely maintain themselves. The only alternative to a retreat through this wilderness was to escape south over the Greek frontier, where they could join the French and British forces outside Saloniki.

But this was just the alternative which the Austro-Germans and the Bulgarians were determined to deny them. The Serbian forces still numbered somewhere around 200,000; this body, combined with the allied troops, who would presently be numbering another 100,000, would form a military force, its rear protected by the British and French ships, which the Teutons and Bulgarians would never dare to attack, even though the Greeks still continued neutral. Moreover, there was no doubt that the Greeks would interfere should the Bulgars cross their frontier.

This force, then, would continue a constant threat to the lines of communication and transportation which had just been opened up between the Central Powers and Turkey, and along which they would soon be sending large quantities of war munitions to the Turkish forces at Gallipoli. At any moment the enemy at Saloniki might strike, and to guard against such a possibility, the Austro-Germans would have to maintain larger forces along the railroad than they could spare. At all costs the Serbians must be prevented from joining the Allies. And this was the object of the powerful effort made by the Bulgarians to hurl their forces through the gap between Sarrail and the Serbians in the Babuna Pass.

However, the Serbians decided on a determined effort to break through the net that was being drawn around them. This meant, first of all, that the Katshanik Pass, which in the second week of November, 1915, was still in the hands of the Serbians but was being attacked from the south by the Bulgarians, had to be first cleared of the enemy, who must then be driven out of Uskub, whence the Serbians would then be able to force their way west to Tetovo, and then south by the main highway through Gostivar and Kitchevo, to Monastir. Once at Monastir the road would be comparatively easy to Saloniki, by way of the short branch of railroad whose terminus was at Monastir.

In the effort to carry out this plan one of the most desperate battles of the whole Serbian campaign was fought, quite as bloody and as heroic as any of the large engagements that were fought in the beginning of the invasion. It failed, but it was a failure of which no army need to have been ashamed.

On about November 10, 1915, Bojovitch's army with which he had been holding the pass against overwhelming numbers of Bulgarians, had dwindled to 5,000. At about that time he was reenforced by three regiments, including one from the famous Shumadia Division and one from the Morava Division, which were sent to him along the railroad, the only bit of railroad remaining to the Serbians, leading from Pristina to Ferizovitch, the latter point being some ten miles distant from the Katshanik Pass. The weather had begun getting cold and raw by this time, and the roads were in a miserable condition. The Serbians, though exhausted by their many hardships, and weak from the want of proper food, set out from the terminus of the railroad and pressed on toward the pass. As soon as they arrived Bojovitch prepared to deliver his final attack on the Bulgarians. The Serbian general had now about one hundred field pieces, mostly of the French 75 and 155 type; 3 inches and 6 inches. With these he began a vigorous bombardment of the Bulgarian trenches, raining a continuous shower of shrapnel and high explosive shells on them. Under this terrible fire the Bulgarians were compelled to retire from their defensive works and retreat south for four miles, out of range of the Serbian artillery.

Then the Serbian infantry charged, pouring volley after volley into the ranks of the retreating Bulgarians. The latter began fleeing in disorder, but presently they came up against their reserves, whereupon they rallied. On came the Serbians with cries of "Na nosh! Na nosh!" and "Cus schtick! Cus schtick!" ("With the knife!" and "With the bayonet!")

Those were cries that the Bulgarians knew well, and they too set up the same shouts. The rifle firing died down. The two lines charged each other silently, like warriors of old, with points of glittering steel before them. Then came the merging clash, and the rows of running men broke into turbulent mÊlÉes, knots of struggling, writhing bodies. Shouts and hideous curses sounded up and down the lines like the snarls of savage animals. Wounded men reeled, panting and sobbing, sometimes in their savage agony springing on their friends and rending them with their hands and teeth before they finally collapsed into inert heaps, dead. Others, throwing down their unloaded rifles, picked up jagged rocks and hurled them into knots of struggling men, regardless of whether they smashed in the skulls of friends or foes. There had been greater battles in that campaign, but never had the fighting been so savage, so bitter; even the battle of Timok, the first encounter between Bulgar and Serb, was far outdone.

For a while it seemed as if the Serbians would actually batter their way through. One Serbian regiment charged seven times and each time captured three guns, only to have them wrested out of its hands again. Once the Bulgarians' center was pierced by a tremendous effort on the part of the Shumadians and the Morava troops. The Bulgarians sagged back, and some broke and fled. But again reserves came on the scene, whereas the Serbians were, every last man of them, on the front line of the fighting. Fresh forces of Bulgarians, being shipped up from Uskub by rail, were constantly arriving on the field, and in the end they were enough to turn the balance.

For three days the battle had raged, one continuous series of sharp, hand-to-hand encounters, by night as well as by day. But finally, on November 15, 1915, the Serbians had reached the limit of their strength; the battle was going against them. And then they retired from the pass by way of the Jatzovitza Hills toward Prisrend.

Thus the plans of the Serbians to cut their path south to their Allies on the Greek frontier were defeated, and they were forced back into the north again. The effect of the collapse of this effort was immediately seen in the withdrawal from Mitrovitza of the Serbian staff, such members of the Serbian Government as had remained there and the diplomatic representatives of the Entente nations.

The Bulgarians had been perfectly well aware of the plans that lay behind the tremendous effort made by the Serbians at Katshanik Pass and they had sought to forestall part of it by attacking Kalkandelen, a point which had been taken and retaken more than once. On November 15, 1915, they took it again, and finally, driving the small Serbian force that had occupied it before them, they took Gostivar on the following day, the Serbians retiring to Kichivo, on the road to Monastir. On about the same day, or a little later, Boyadjieff, after a stiff fight, stormed the heights near Gilan, northwest of Kutshanik Pass, and, after occupying Gilan itself, advanced toward Pristina, reaching its vicinity by November 22, 1915.

The invaders had succeeded in their main object, which was to round up and if possible corner the main Serbian forces; they were now rolled back on to the great Kossovo Plain, where they were united, but considerably confused and hampered by the vast crowds of fugitives fleeing from all parts of the north, center and east of the country. Near Mitrovitza, on the north of the plain, near Pristina on the east of it, and at Katshanik at its southern extremity, the Austro-Germans and the Bulgarians had, by the beginning of the fourth week of November, 1915, absolutely rounded up and hemmed in all the larger forces of the Serbians. Here they must either surrender, engage in one last desperate battle that meant certain destruction, or retire backward into the mountains of Montenegro and Albania, which by this time were covered with deep snow.

It was finally decided to give the enemy one more battle and if that failed, as seemed inevitable, to retreat into the wilderness, thus defeating the main hope of Mackensen, which was to eliminate the Serbians entirely as a factor in the war, either by capturing the whole army or destroying it. King Peter himself was present, hoping by his presence to revive the spirits of his soldiers to such a pitch that they would make a hard fight, for by this time they had undoubtedly lost a good deal of their morale.

Von Gallwitz had passed through Nish and was now driving back the Serbian advance posts in the Toplitza Valley, while the Austrians, on his right, were pressing on toward Novi Bazar. As will be seen by a glance at the map, the Serbians were therefore bearing the concentrated attack of four armies; that which operated from Vishegrad, the mixed forces under KÖvess, Gallwitz's army and the main Bulgarian forces. The pressure was incessant. Reenforcements had been hurried through from Germany to make good the heavy losses which had been sustained during the campaign. Communication between the main Serbian armies and the Serbians in the south had now been cut completely and only Prisrend and Monastir remained to be taken before the whole of Serbia and Serbian Macedonia would be cleared of the Serbian fighting forces.

The fight in the region of Pristina was to be the last grand battle of the retreat. Here what remained of the Serbian main forces took battle formation, finally to dispute the enemy's advance. To this end the remaining stock of gun ammunition and rifle cartridges had been carefully saved and a store of war material gathered at Mitrovitza in readiness for such a stand. The weary bullocks were turned loose from the gun carriages they hauled, for there could be no taking them along up among the crags of the mountain country. The guns themselves were brought into position on the surrounding hills, trenches were dug wherever possible. Machine guns were located to cover the mountain paths and valley roads, and strong redoubts, which had been thrown up with civilian labor before the army had arrived, were manned. And then there remained a brief period during which the weary soldiers could take some much needed rest.

There was something tragically significant that this last stand should be made on the plains of Kossovo, or the "Field of the Ravens," as it is sometimes called by the natives, on account of the great flocks of those birds that frequent it. For on this same field it was that Lazar, the last of the ancient Serbian czars, whose empire included the whole of Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, northern Greece, and Bulgaria, had fought just such a last desperate battle against the Turks in 1389, and had gone down before the Moslem hordes, and with him the Serbian nation. Each year the Serbians had commemorated the anniversary of this event by mourning.

Kossovo Plain is a high plateau, forty miles long and ten wide; from its rolling fields the forbidding crags of Montenegro and Albania are plainly visible, black in summer and white with snow in winter.

The gray dawn of a November day brought the first mutterings of the storm that was presently to break in fury up and down the whole front. The ragged, mud-stained cavalry of Serbia came trotting wearily through the infantry lines, bearing signs of the many skirmishes they had taken part in. The outlying posts were exchanging rifle fire with the advance guards of the enemy and now, through his powerful field glasses, the Serbian commander could see great masses of the invading troops deploying against his front.

"You have come to see the death of a nation," he remarked to an American correspondent who was present.

"It is sad that a stranger's eyes should see us die," said another officer in high command.

Soon the crackling and sputtering fire of the Mannlicher rifles was rippling up and down the lines; the whole front from Pristina to south of Marcovitza blazed flame, and the last big battle of Serbia's resistance was on. Two lines of men, the one thick and heavily equipped, the other attenuated and half-starved, were locked together in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle.

As though to afford a proper setting for the scene, nature herself broke into a wild fury; overhead the sky darkened, then the black clouds burst into a howling storm, full of cold sleet and rain. Amidst the black, stark hills, in a ceaseless downpour, men trampled and slipped through the clay mud, dripping wet from head to foot, stabbing, shooting, hurling hand bombs, until this peaceful valley echoed to the shouts and roar of combating armies.

And as the first day's fighting increased in intensity, the fury of the elements overhead intensified, and presently it was impossible to distinguish the roar of the big cannon from the deep crash of thunder; intermingling with the shouts and cries of men roared the blast of the gale as it whipped over rocky eminences.

Here again was raised that dreaded battle cry: "Na nosh! Na nosh!" With such a shout a whole regiment of the fierce Shumadians leaped out of its trenches and tore across the intervening ground between its trenches and the rocks of a near-by eminence which a force of Magyars had made into a position. Haggard from pain and starvation, their hair long and matted, some still in ragged uniforms, but most of them in the sheepskin coats of peasants, their eyes bloodshot with rage, they formed not a pleasant picture to the intrenched Huns. The rifle fire from the eminence leaped to a climax; the Hungarians knew they were fighting for their lives. In the horde rushing up the steep slope lay an appalling danger. Up they surged, without firing a shot, the bayonets gleaming in the lightning flashes. Among the rocks appeared white faces behind black rifle barrels. And then, with one fierce yell, the men in the shaggy sheepskin coats were hurling themselves in among the men in blue-gray uniforms. For a few brief moments there was a wild mÊlÉe; then the men in blue-gray broke and ran. Such scenes were common throughout the three or four days of the battle.

What made the resistance of the Serbian soldiers so fierce was the knowledge possessed by each that there was no alternative to victory but a retreat into those white, bleak wilds behind him. And there was not a Serbian boy in those ranks who did not realize what a winter's march through that country would mean.

From the fall of Nish, in fact, the Serbians had been fighting with their backs to a wall, and grim and bloody were the struggles between Serb and German in the wild tangle of hills that surrounded the Plain of Kossovo. Quarter was neither given nor asked, and unlucky was the too venturesome Austrian regiment that penetrated the Serbian lines the first few days without sufficient support.

"The 184th Regiment," said one of the soldiers' letters, which were published in the Austrian papers, "went into a valley and was never seen again." One Serbian regiment, stationed to hold the mouth to a small valley, to cover the retirement of another Serbian regiment, remained at its post for four days, fighting off the greater part of an Austro-German division, until, of the 1,200 men of the original detachment, only sixty-three remained on their feet, and most of those wounded.

To his credit be it said that the aged King of Serbia remained with his battling men to the end. While the guns were thundering against Pristina and the thin line of the last resistance was frenziedly holding back the German and Bulgarian lines, there came to an ancient church, which was under fire, a mud-stained old man in a field service uniform. The few foreign correspondents who saw him pass into the church did not recognize in this old man, bent, haggard and unshaven, the king who had sat on the throne of Kara-Georgevitch—the grandson of that famous swineherd.

Before the high altar the old man knelt in prayer while a group of staff officers stood at a distance, watching him in silence. The crash of bursting shrapnel came to them from outside and once a window was shattered and the little church was filled with splinters of flying glass and still the King of Serbia knelt at his devotions, praying that at the last moment his kingdom might be saved from destruction.

But in spite of his appeals the end came.[Back to Contents]