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Map of the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian advance into Serbia in October and November, 1915, with the Central Power offensive along the Greek border in August 1916 and the Allied counteroffensive the following month. Map from the Reichsarchiv Herbstschlacht in Macedonien (Autumn battle in Macedonia).
Postcard of Veles, Serbia, showing a view of the town and its marketplace with some German officers among the residents. An inset shows four German officers on the heights above the city and the Vardar River.
French folding postcard map of Verdun and the Meuse River, number 9 from the series Les Cartes du Front. Montfaucon is in the upper left and St. Mihiel at the bottom.
Bourlon and Bourlon Wood. From The Tank Corps by Major Clough Williams-Ellis & A. Williams-Ellis.
Detail showing the northern, Belgian sector of the Western Front from a map of the Allied offensives of 1918, from July 18 and the Second Battle of the Marne to the Armistice on November 11. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
"Next morning the brigade resumed their march into the hills toward the Babuna Pass. More than twenty miles northeast of them the 17th Colonial Division of General Pruneau and the Yugoslav Division were also moving toward Skopje up the Vardar River, and that same day (September 24) they succeeded in entering the vital town of Gradsko. . . . 'the most important center of all communications in the Macedonian theater of war.'As the armies wavered in the face of the Allied offensive and the onslaught from the air turned the retreat into a rout, the latent unrest in the country broke into open acts of defiance. On September 23 and 24 left-wing Socialists organized soviets in Pechaev, Berovo, and Tsarevo Selo." ((1), more)
"On September 15th, in the forenoon, two French divisions and one Serbian division, making an attack on the formidable mountain barrier formed by the Vetrenik, the Dobropolje, and the so-called Sokol, made a breach in the enemy front which was to bring about the falling-in of the front. . . .On September 18th the British-Greek divisions, after stubborn fighting, captured the enemy positions of Doiran, retaining in this region very important forces. From September 21st the Italian, Greek, and French troops of the allied army of Monastir moved up. On September 22nd the general pursuit commenced, and was carried out with splendid ardor and energy.On September 23rd the Serbians crossed the Vardar towards Krivelak. On the 24th the French cavalry entered Prilep. On the 25th Ishtip was captured, as well as the formidable barrier of the Beles. The British opened up the road to Strumiza, which they entered on the 26th. On the same day the Serbians reached Kotchana and Veles, and the Italian, French and Greek troops were marching on Kicovo.By the evening of the 26th the Bulgarians asked for a suspension of hostilities, and announced the dispatch of plenipotentiaries." ((2), more)
"At dawn on September 26 nine American divisions, amounting to two hundred and forty thousand men, jumped off into the old nomansland of the defense of Verdun. They had quietly replaced the French holding troops during the night, while one of the heaviest artillery bombardments of the war combed the German positions. The front on which they were to advance extended twentyone miles from the Meuse to the western fringes of the plateau of the Argonne Forest where they were to keep contact with Gouraud's Fourth Army advancing through the plains of Champagne east of Reims.Pershing's objective was to cut, in the vicinity of Sedan, the trunk line of railroad which furnished the Germans their chief lateral communication across their entire from from Metz to Valenciennes on the edge of Flanders. Giraud's objective was the same railroad a few miles further west at the important highway center of Mézières." ((3), more)
"The British part in the great general attack upon the whole German front was timed to begin in the early morning of September 27th. On the evening before a great bombardment opened on a thirty-mile front, from a point about two miles northwest of St. Quentin, as far as the Sensée River northwest of Cambrai. Then in the gray light of early dawn the 4th, 6th, 17th and Canadian Corps, thirteen divisions in all, of Byng's Third Army and Horne's First Army advanced on the Cambrai front, stormed the immensely strong Canal du Nord, swept beyond Bourlon Wood and Fontaine-Notre-Dame, the extreme limits of our advance in the first battle of Cambrai of November, 1917, and captured Sailly, more than six miles from their starting point, taking over 10,000 prisoners and 200 guns." ((4), more)
"SOLDIERS!You are about to deliver a powerful attack on the enemy positions. At the side of your British and French comrades, it is your task to fling back the invader who has oppressed your brothers for more than four years. This hour is decisive. . . .Forward for Right, for Liberty, for glorious and immortal Belgium!Albert" ((5), more)
(1) 'The brigade' that 'resumed their march' on September 24, 1918 was a French Moroccan one of the 1st and 4th Chausseur d'Afrique working its way through the mountains west of the Allied advance up the Vardar River valley on the Balkan Front. To the east, what had been intended to be an orderly retreat before the advancing British had turned into a rout when the Royal Air Force strafed and bombed the defenceless Bulgarian First Army moving north through mountain passes. As the Allies continued advancing into occupied Serbia, the Bulgarian home front threatened imminent collapse. The embedded quotation in the first paragraph is by German Commander Paul von Hindenburg.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, pp. 219 and 225, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(2) Extracts from French General Franchet d'Esperey's Official Report of September 30, 1918 on the defeat of Bulgaria and the Central Powers on the Balkan Front. In the two weeks between the opening of the offensive into Serbia on September 15 and the end of the month, the primarily Bulgarian line that had kept the Allied forces bottled up in the Salonika Front for two years collapsed, the Bulgarian home front rose up, and a new Bulgarian government signed an armistice. The liberation of Serbia would position Allied armies across the Danube River from the plains of Hungary. The British and Greeks held the eastern end of the battle front which meant they would swiftly be turned against Turkish forces in Europe in a drive to take Constantinople.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 313–314, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the first of four offensives Allied Commander-in Chief Ferdinand Foch had determined on September 23, 1918: a Franco-American attack beginning on the 26th in some of the killing fields of the 1916 Battle of Verdun. The Meuse River flows through the city of Verdun; the Argonne and its forest lie to the west. American Commander in Chief John J. Pershing commanded the offensive, General Henri Gouraud the French Fourth Army on his left in Champagne. Although Henri Giraud would become a French general I don't believe he was one in 1918, but that this is a an error and that Gouraud is meant.
Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, pp. 407–408, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
(4) Returning to his headquarters on September 22, 1918 after a tour of the front, Allied Commander-in Chief Ferdinand Foch settled on a plan for a 'great general attack': four offensives launched on four consecutive days beginning September 26, 1918. The second was the assault British General F. Maurice summarizes above. The British offensive of the First Battle of Cambrai in November, 1917 had demonstrated how successful tanks could be.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 291, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(5) Proclamation by Albert, King of the Belgians, the night of September 27–28, 1918, immediately before the third of four offensives on the Western Front launched on consecutive days. Albert and Allied Commander-in Chief Ferdinand Foch had agreed to the creation of the Flanders Army Group under the King of the Belgians on September 9. It included the Belgian Army, the British Second Army, and the French 7th Army Corps and 2nd Cavalry Corps. Responding to the British offensive against Cambrai launched the previous day, German commander Erich Ludendorff had redeployed troops from Flanders further south. The Allies advanced seven kilometers on the 28th and 14 by September 30. The advance was halted on October 3.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 222, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
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