United States or Barbados ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sarrail now advanced his men northward, along the west bank of the Tcherna, and next day he delivered an assault on the Mount of the Archangel, ten miles below Vozartzi. Here was the center of the Bulgarian positions, and here their lines must be pierced, if Babuna Pass was to be reached. But not only was this position well fortified, but the Bulgarians were in superior force to the French.
Meanwhile, Sarrail, on the Vardar, under cover of a feigned attack on Ishtip from Kara Hodjali, drew in his men from the Tcherna, and before the enemy had realized what he was doing, he had retired from the Kavaar Camp with all his stores, of which there was by this time a tremendous accumulation, and entrained at Krivolak, blowing up the bridges and tearing up the railroad behind him.
For fifteen miles the road lay across a rolling plain, to the River Tserna, as the Macedonians and Serbians called it, or Tcherna, meaning "Black," in Bulgarian. Beyond that rose steep and difficult mountain ridges, which the Bulgarians had occupied and fortified. Yet Sarrail determined to make an effort to force his way across.
On the morrow the front widened to twenty-two miles, and the advance increased to twelve; and within a week the Serbians had cleared the angle between the rivers and crossed the Tcherna on their left and the Vardar above Demir Kapu on their right.
Sarrail dared not leave that slender crossing over the Tcherna too far behind. On November 16, 1915, the Serbians finally fell back from the pass on Prilep. The French, however, not knowing of the Serbian retirement at the time, continued to hold their advanced position at Mount Archangel until November 20, 1915, when the Bulgarians returned to give them fresh battle.
General Sarrail's position was a remarkably insecure one. The taking of Prilep, and subsequently the occupation of Monastir by the Bulgarians, practically turned his line and exposed him to a perilous flanking movement against his extreme left on the Tcherna.
On the 16th and 17th the Serbians again attacked on the mountains in the Tcherna bend, carried the Bulgar positions, and by the 19th had reached Dobromir and Makovo whence they threatened the line of retreat from Monastir to Prilep. On that day the Germans and Bulgars moved out of and the Allies into Monastir.
On November 27, 1915, the French War Office issued an official communiqué, which gave the first indication of what was about to happen: "In view of the present situation of the Serbian armies our troops, which have been occupying the left bank of the Tcherna, have been removed to the right bank of the river, the movement being effected without difficulty."
The Bulgarian commander now showed that it was his intention to circle about the French, cut off their retreat by destroying the wooden bridge over the Tcherna in their rear, then pin them up against the mountain and pound them until they surrendered, all of which might have been accomplished by a more skillful general.
By November 2, 1915, the French were at Gradsko, where the Tcherna joins the Vardar River, hoping to get in touch with the Serbians who were defending the Babuna Pass and whose guns they could hear pounding over the ten miles of intervening mountain ridges. The British bore little of this fighting, having made their advance over toward Lake Doiran.
Word Of The Day