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Within the week great stores of ammunition and supplies began to pour into it from Krivolak, and the Gate of Iron became the advanced position, and Gravec suddenly found herself of importance as the French base. To understand this withdrawal, find on the map Krivolak, and follow the railroad and River Vardar southeast to Gravec.
It rises on either side of the Vardar River and railroad line, and in places is less than a hundred yards wide. It is formed of sheer hills of rock, treeless and exposed. But the fame of Gravec as the French base was short-lived. For the Serbians at Monastir and Gevgeli, though fighting bravely, were forced toward Albania, leaving the left flank of Sarrail still more exposed.
"They feared," he said, "I was going to decorate that wall also, and they sent Chocolat outside to push it in." After the retreat from Serbia. English Tommies intrenched in the ten-mile plain outside of Salonika. "Are they down-hearted? The next day we walked along the bank of the Vardar River to Gravec, about five miles north of Strumnitza station.
It was a town entirely of mud; the houses, the roads, and the people were covered with it. Gravec is proud only of its church, on the walls of which in colors still rich are painted many devils with pitchforks driving the wicked ones into the flames. One of the poilus put his finger on the mass of wicked ones. "Les Boches," he explained.
So both armies fell back toward Salonika on a line between Kilindir and Doiran railroad-station, and all the places we visited a week before were occupied by the enemy. At Gravec a Bulgarian is pointing at the wicked ones who are being driven into the flames and saying: "The Allies," and at Strumnitza station in the mess-hall Bulgar officers are framing John McCutcheon's sketches.
The major asked us to take photographs of Gravec and send them to his wife. He wanted her to see in what sort of a place he was condemned to exist during the winter. He did not wish her to think of him as sitting in front of a café on the sidewalk, and the snap-shots would show her that Gravec has no cafés, no sidewalks and no streets. But he was not condemned to spend the winter in Gravec.
Five miles farther was Demir-Kapu, the Gate of Iron, and between these two towns is a high and narrow pass famous for its wild and magnificent beauty. Fifteen miles beyond that was Krivolak, the most advanced French position. On the hills above Gravec were many guns, but in the town itself only a few infantrymen.
He withdrew slowly, twenty miles in one week. The British also withdrew from their first line to their second line of defense. Demir-Kapu, meaning the Gate of Iron, is the entrance to a valley celebrated for its wild and magnificent beauty. Starting at Demir-Kapu, it ends two kilometres north of Gravec.
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