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Updated: June 6, 2025
With General Sarrail placed at the extremest point of danger, it would have been a likely move to transfer the entire British Expeditionary Force from the left wing to the weak point at Bar-le-Duc. There is reason to believe that General von Kluck believed that this had been done.
Mihiel, where the invaders managed to cross the Meuse, General Sarrail defended Verdun with a field army in a wide circle of intrenchments, with the result that the crown prince was unable to bring the great howitzers within range of the fortress, and his army suffered a severe defeat in the Argonne.
He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he deemed they would be most effective: the First army, under General Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army, under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet d'Espérey; then the little British army of three corps, under General Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.
General Sarrail, therefore, had to depend on the natural difficulties of the country and to avoid giving battle too readily against the superior forces by which he was confronted.
There was the First army, under General Dubail; the Second, under General Castelnau; the Third, under General Sarrail; the Fourth, under General Langle de Cary; the Fifth, under General Franchet d'Espérey; the Sixth, under General Manoury; the Seventh and Eighth armies are not mentioned in the Battle of the Marne, and I have not been able to find out where they were in service.
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 part of Greece there was no change; she still continued her attitude of sullen acquiescence to the presence of the Allies' troops in Saloniki. In the last week of January General Sarrail sent a detachment to occupy Cape and Fort Kara Burun, about twelve miles from Saloniki and commanding the harbor.
Meantime, the crown prince's army had been steadily victorious. The weak French army under General Sarrail had been pushed back, yielding only foot by foot, back, back, along the rugged hill country of the Meuse. A determined stand was made to protect the little fort of Troyon, ten miles south of Verdun, for had the Germans succeeded in taking this, Verdun would have been surrounded.
To be sure, Rumania was defeated, but her defeat must have cost the Central Powers grave losses which may eventually prove to have turned the tide in favor of the Allies. Already before August, 1916, it was becoming obvious that Sarrail was beginning to feel strong enough to play a less passive part. Little by little he had been pushing out his lines.
On the day the retreat began from Krivolak, General Sarrail, commanding the Allies in Serbia, gave us permission to visit the French and English front. The French advanced position, and a large amount of ammunition, six hundred shells to each gun, were then at Krivolak, and the English base at Doiran.
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