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German pencil sketch dated April 14, 1916, of the Vardar River valley in Macedonia. Mount Dudica is on the current (2018) border between Macedonia and Greece.
Map of the the Balkan Front — Germany's Southeast Front — with the mountain passes between Austria-Hungary and Romania. From the Reichsarchiv history of the wars in Serbia and Romania, Herbstschlacht in Macedonien; Cernabogen 1916.The capitals of Belgrade (Serbia), Bucharest (Romania), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Constantinople (Turkey) are prominent, as is Salonica, Greece, the Allied entry port into the country.
Photograph of a French aviator downing a German observation balloon near St. Mihiel on September 16, 1918, the last day of the American St. Mihiel Offensive. That same day American airmen Frank Luke and Joe Wehner downed three balloons in the sector.
Syria and Palestine Front: Showing Cairo, Egypt, the northern Sinai peninsula, Akaba on the Red Sea, Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo. The Hejaz Railway runs north, parallel to the Mediterranean coast. From Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus by Karl Baedeker.
A British encampment at Zeitelik on the Salonica Front. Colorized version of a black and white postcard.
"It did not take the Voivode long to make up his mind. A signal was dispatched to every unit between the Vardar and Monastir—Mettez en route quatorze officiers et huit soldats—and each battery commander knew that on September 14 at 8 A.M. he was to open fire. There were barely two hours to wait.The machinery of the great offensive was put in motion. Over five hundred guns poured their shells into the enemy defenses along eighty miles of front. By the standards of Verdun it was nothing, but it was without precedent in the Balkans. And as the gunners had their day, 36,000 French and Serbian and Italian infantrymen had their rifles ready. Behind them were eighteen squadrons of cavalry. The Bulgars and the Germans caught unprepared in this sector were outnumbered three to one. Just one more dawn and all the seventy-five Allied battalions would be moving forward. Just forty-eight more dawns and the Serbs would re-enter their capital city." ((1), more)
"On September 15, agreeably with the general forward movement of the Allies on all the fronts, the so-called Salonika Army developed an offensive against Bulgaria, having for its central objective the important town and railway junction of Uskub. It was indeed a heterogeneous army that advanced under the orders of Franchet d'Esperey, the ultimate successor of Sarrail. Eight French, seven British, six Greek (Venizelist), six Serbian, and four Italian Divisions—all under strength, wasted with fever, and modestly equipped with artillery, set themselves in motion against the mountainous frontiers of Bulgaria. Seventeen Bulgarian and two Turkish divisions, gripped and guided by a few German battalions and batteries and the prestige of Mackensen, constituted a force ample for a successful defence of such difficult country. But the Bulgarians would fight no more." ((2), more)
"'How would it be if we left the airdrome just in time to get those balloons at dusk, when their observers are taking a last look at our troop movements? Wehner can get one about seven-ten, I'll get another about seven-twenty, and between us we ought to get the third about seven-thirty. Just start burning flares and shooting rockets here on the drome about that time and we'll get back all right. I'll promise you that.'" ((3), more)
"The Royal Air Force launched aerial attacks on Daraa on 16 September in a bid to disrupt Ottoman communications and to encourage Liman von Sanders to focus on the defence of the Hijaz Railway. T. E. Lawrence led Arab forces in an attack with armoured cars on the railway south of Daraa, where they succeeded in destroying a bridge. The following day, the main Arab force attacked the railway to the north of Daraa with relative impunity. The Ottomans rushed to repair the line, and Liman called up reserves from the coastal port of Haifa to reinforce Daraa—playing perfectly into Allenby's deception." ((4), more)
"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." ((5), more)
(1) French General Louis Franchet d'Esperey commanded Allied forces — French, British, Italian, Greek, and Serbian — on the Balkan Front, but the plan for an offensive through the mountains between Greece and Serbia, and the detemination that weather conditions were right to execute it, belonged to Serbian Voivode (Field Marshal) Zivojin Mišić. The Bulgarians and their German allies had kept an Allied army penned in and languishing in the region for two years, and were unprepared for the assault when Mišić started up his fourteen officers and eight soldiers. The Vardar River valley was the most obvious route for an Allied invasion, and was heavily defended. Monastir was a Serbian town on the Greek border that had been taken by French, Serbian, and Russian troops on November 19, 1916.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, pp. 199–200, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(2) Summary from Winston Churchill's history of the war on the Allied Balkan offensive that French General Franchet d'Esperey opened on September 15, 1918. General Maurice Sarrail had originally led Allied forces in the region, forces that had been invited by Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos but opposed by Greek King Constantine. With French and British firepower backing him, Venizelos won and the King was deposed. German Field Marshal August Mackensen had been victorious on the Russian Front and in the conquests of Serbia and Romania. Bulgaria was war weary. By September, 1918 German forces on the Western Front had been driven back from all the territory taken in their spring and summer offensives.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, page 834, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
(3) American Lieutenant Frank Luke to his commanding officer Major Hartney on September 16, 1918. Luke had a short and spectacular career as a pilot, downing four German airplanes and fourteen German observation balloons between August 16 and September 29, 1918 when he died after being shot down over Murvaux, France after shooting down three balloons. Joe Wehner partnered with Luke, sometimes providing cover from enemy planes while Luke went after a balloon. Wehner was killed on September 18. Frank Luke was the leading American 'balloon buster' of the war, but was surpassed by the Belgian Willy Coppens, with 37 victories, 35 of them balloons. Coppens survived the war.
The Balloon Buster by Norman S. Hall, page 88, copyright © 1928 Liberty Weekly, Inc., renewed, 1956, Lorraine Lester et al., publisher: Bantam Books, publication date: 1966
(4) Under the command of General Edmund Allenby, the British entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917, then continued advancing along the Mediterranean coast in Palestine. Allenby failed to take Nablus in an attack launched on March 8, 1918, and further attacks were suspended after the success of Germany's Spring Offensives made the Allied position on the Western Front desperate, demanding men and materiel in France. With the ultimate German failure and the success of Allied offensives beginning in July, Allenby resumed his campaign. He would do so on September 19, attacking along the coast rather than inland. The Daraa raid deceived German General Otto Liman von Sanders who commanded Turkish and German forces in the region. T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, worked with the Arabs opposing the Turks and led a campaign sabotaging the Hijaz Railway that ran from Medina in Arabia, north to Maan, Amman, and Damascus.
The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East by Eugene Rogan, page 374, copyright © 2015 by Eugene Rogan, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2015
(5) 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
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