The Serbian lion, wounded, bleeding, turns from the skeletal bodies of its cubs to face its enemy: his time for justice has come. In the background are images of Serbia burning and Serbians hung.
Tempus et Meum JusTime and My JusticeSerbiaReverse:Proprietà artistica riservata — Visto. Uff. Rev. Stampa Firenze 28-12-18-Gino Matteucci-Firenze.
"The Serbs, whom Sarrail planned would form the spearhead of his initial assault, began to move westward on July 17 in order to take over sixty miles of the front from the French well beyond the Vardar and facing the mountain peaks which marked the old frontier of their land. As the Serbs had been encamped ten miles southeast of Salonika, it was necessary for them to be brought through the outskirts of the town. There was little transport available; they marched along, chanting interminable patriotic ballads as they went, and all could see that the Serbian Army was resurrected. A chain of enemy agents, recruited from the peasantry of the Struma valley and the highland east of Salonika, spread the news up to the Bulgarian lines . . ."
Victorious but weakened by Austria-Hungary's invasions in 1914, decimated by typhus in 1915, and overwhelmed by the 1915 invasion by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria, Serbia's government and the remains of its army fled to the Adriatic Sea and eventual transport by its allies to the island of Corfu to recuperate. In the spring and summer of 1916 it joined the Allied forces headquartered in Salonika, Greece, forces that originally deployed to Greece to aid Serbia. French General Maurice Sarrail planned an attack on the Bulgarian forces that had thwarted the Allies in 1915.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 74, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
1916-07-17, 1916, July, Serbian army, Greece, Serbia
