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A British encampment at Zeitelik on the Salonica Front. Colorized version of a black and white postcard.
Indian Lancers riding through Jerusalem. The city was taken by the Allies on December 11, 1917.
Bulgarian machine-gunners laying out ammunition belts on the Salonica Front.
Bulgarian Soldiers, many of them wounded, on the Salonica Front. Bandages on hands, arms, heads, eye, a number with canes, one with crutches.
Map of the Western Front in early September 1918 showing the American divisions in position in the American Sector. The Americans reduced the St. Mihiel sector in an offensive beginning on September 12. The dotted line shows the limit of the German advance from March to July prior to the Allied offensives that had retaken all their gains. From The History of The A.E.F. by Shipley Thomas.
"On this side of the lake the attack began at five on the morning of 18th, and fighting continued all day with tremendous intensity. . . .If the fighting on the west of Lake Doiran was heavy on September 18th it was equally severe on the following day, when the main purpose of the British and Greek troops was decisively attained. This purpose was not merely territorial gain, but the retention of enemy troops, which would otherwise have been used against the Allied advance in the vast area between the Vardar, the Negotin-Prilep road, and the Cerna. Here the Serbs, Jugo-Slavs, French and Greeks were pushing forward with amazing rapidity, and the Bulgar could send no help from the Doiran front to stem the onset." ((1), more)
"At 3.30 in the morning of September 19th began a tremendous drum fire against the whole front of the right wing of the Eighth Army from the coast to the mountains. Shortly after daybreak squadrons of British fliers appeared over the houses of headquarters of the Seventh and Eighth Armies, over the tent camps of the various corps headquarters, and over the central telephone office of the Army Group in Affuleh; flying low, they threw bombs on them and destroyed part of our wire. . . .Numerous wires in our land lines had been cut in the early morning hours by the Arabs. . . .Between 9 and 10 a.m. headquarters of the Seventh Army wired from Nablus that Colonel von Oppen had reported that the front of the right flank group in the coast sector had been broken through, and that strong cavalry forces were advancing northward along the coast. . . .Up to this day no exhaustive account has appeared of the complete and sudden collapse of the 7th Division in the western part of the coast sector, and of the adjoining two regiments of the 20th Division. . . . After two hours of drum fire they had completely disappeared on September 19th . . ." ((2), more)
"Todorov, it is interesting to note, had no experience of the Doiran front. . . . Nerezov, on the other hand, had spent two years building up the defenses of Doiran . . .A Bulgarian writer describes how the First Army, in the clear moonlight, was preparing to meet renewed British attacks and even, perhaps, to go over to the offensive. Now, before dawn on September 20, the operational order for a retreat went out from Nerezov's headquarters at Dedeli: the First Army must fall back to cover the withdrawal of the 3rd Division on its right. In a stunned silence the divisional commanders returned to their advanced positions. It had been a bitter blow for them, but they felt there was one small crumb of consolation: they, at any rate, were not retreating under pressure from their adversaries." ((3), more)
"It was the airmen who first let Milne know what was happening. Two De Havilland 9s of 47 Squadron, R.A.F., reconnoitered the Vardar and Strumica valleys on the morning of September 21. At 10:40 one of their observers noted: 'The defile west of Rabrovo on the Stumica-Rabrovo road was packed with transport, and round Rabrovo were anything up to 500 lorries and H[orse] T[ransport] wagons waiting to go up the road.' The significance of the report could not be missed: Rabrovo was two miles north of Nerezov's headquarters at Dedeli. And it was the same on every road leading back into Old Bulgaria. The enemy was in full flight. . . .The long columns of lorries and horse-drawn vehicles moving slowly along the impossible roads were mercilessly bombed and machine-gunned by the R.A.F. Not a German plane was to be seen, and the Bulgarians themselves offered little resistance. . . . Todorov and his German allies had envisaged an 'orderly retreat.' They had no notion of the havoc created by air attacks on a slow-moving column caught in the confines of a rocky valley. An army ceased to exist." ((4), more)
"I definitely fixed the time schedule for the general offensive from the Meuse to the North Sea:September 26th—A Franco-American attack between the Suippe and the Meuse.September 27th—An attack by the British First and Third armies in the general direction of Cambrai.September 28th—An attack by the Flanders Group of Armies between the sea and the Lys, under the command of the King of the Belgians.September 29th—An attack by the British Fourth Army, supported by the French First Army, in the direction of Busigny." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpts from the official report of British General George Milne, commander of British forces on the Salonica Front. On September 15, 1918 French General Franchet d'Esperey, commander of Allied forces — French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and British — in the theater, opened an offensive through the mountains between Greece and Serbia. East of the initial advance and also on the Greco-Serbian border, the British, with some Greek units, held the sector around Lake Doiran. The British opened their phase of the offensive on September 18 against Bulgarians who had two years of strengthening their defenses behind them. General Milne may have been putting a good face on what looked to be a failed attack.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 315–316, 317, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Excerpts from German General Otto Liman von Sanders account of the September 19, 1918 British attack on the Turkish forces in Palestine. British General Edmund Allenby attacked along the coast rather than inland where Arab forces working with T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, staged a raid on Daraa and the Hejaz Railroad. Sanders account on the 19th and subsequent days gives ample evidence of the success of the deception and of Arab and Royal Air Force attacks on communications.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, pp. 275–277, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
(3) On September 15, 1918 French General Franchet d'Esperey, commander of Allied forces — French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and British — on the Balkan Front, opened a successful offensive through the mountains between Greece and Serbia. The British, with Greek support, held the sector around Lake Doiran to the east of the initial advance and opened their phase of the offensive on September 18 against Bulgarians who had held and strengthened their position for two years. The British offensive, like their previous assaults at Lake Doiran, was failing when the Bulgarians retreated. General Georgi Todorov, who had replaced the ailing Nicola Zhekov as Commander-in-Chief of the Bulgarian Army ten days earlier, agreed with the Germans that the Allies' supply problems would only increase as they advanced, and that the best action was an orderly retreat. General Stefan Nerezov was commander of the Bulgarian First Army holding the Lake Doiran sector.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, pp. 214–215, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(4) On September 15, 1918 French General Franchet d'Esperey, commander of Allied forces — French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and British — on the Balkan Front, opened a successful offensive through the mountains between Greece and Serbia. The British, with Greek support, held the sector around Lake Doiran to the east of the initial advance and opened their phase of the offensive on September 18 against Bulgarians who had held and strengthened their position for two years. The British offensive, like their previous assaults at Lake Doiran, was failing when the Bulgarians retreated. General Georgi Todorov, who had replaced the ailing Nicola Zhekov as Commander-in-Chief of the Bulgarian Army ten days earlier, agreed with the Germans that the Allies' supply problems would only increase as they advanced, and that the best action was an orderly retreat. General Stefan Nerezov was commander of the Bulgarian First Army holding the Lake Doiran sector.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 215, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(5) Allied Commander-in Chief Ferdinand Foch's summary of his planned offensives at the end of September, 1918. The Meuse River flows east of Verdun. The Franco-American attack of the 26th would be the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The British offensive of the First Battle of Cambrai in November, 1917 had demonstrated how successful tanks could be. Foch and Albert, King of the Belgians, had agreed on the creation of the Flanders Army Group on September 9. It included the Belgian Army, the British Second Army, and the French 7th Army Corps and 2nd Cavalry Corps under the command of Albert. In his Pyrrhic Victory, Robert Doughty dates Foch's decision as September 23. In his Memoirs Foch writes only that he determined the schedule after a tour of inspection from September 19 to 22.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 408, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
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