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Meanwhile the French and British had fallen back on an intrenched line two or three miles to the south of the Greek frontier. This front stretched from Karasuli, on the Vardar River, to Kilindir, on the Doiran-Saloniki railroad, and was about fifteen miles in length. The French were still on the left and the British on the right.
Meanwhile, over on the right of the Allied front, between Doiran and the Vardar, violent fighting had been going on during the past few weeks, and though the Allies seemed to make some slight progress here and there, none of these gains were of a significant nature. Here the Bulgarians seemed to be holding their own completely.
The Serbian Army was the spear-head of the attack, and it had with it an equally eager and effective force of Jugo-Slavs; with them cooperated the French on the west of the Vardar, while east of it were the Greeks and the British with the arduous and somewhat thankless task of facing the impregnable Demir Kapu defile and Belashitza range.
The hill was the highest point of a ridge that looked down into the valleys of the Vardar and of Bodjinia. Toward the Bulgarians we could see the one village of Kosturino, almost indistinguishable against the snow, and for fifty miles, even with glasses, no other sign of life. Nothing but hills, rocks, bushes, and snow.
The offensive began on 15 September, and the main attack was on the Dobropolie ridge in the angle between the Tcherna and Vardar rivers. On the first day the Bulgarian line was broken on a front of sixteen miles, an advance was made of five, and 4000 prisoners and 30 guns were taken.
This road stretches from the seat of the war at Belgrade on the Danube down a narrow valley, the Morava, thence through the highlands of Macedonia into the Vardar Valley to Saloniki, on the Ægean Sea. At Nish, above Macedonia, another road branches off into Bulgaria across the plains of Thrace and into Constantinople. This was the road by which the Crusaders swarmed down to conquer the Holy Land.
By leaps and bounds the incredible élan of the Greek troops drove the Bulgarians back toward Kilkis itself, which position had been heavily entrenched. By 4 P.M. on the 2d of July, the Greek main army was within three miles of the town, while the 10th Division, helped by two battalions of Servian infantry, gradually fought its way up the Vardar toward Guevgheli.
Mackensen made slow progress at first, partly because he had no wish to drive the Serbians south until the Bulgars had cut off their retreat down the Vardar. Belgrade did not fall until three weeks after the bombardment had opened; but with the intervention of the Bulgarian armies all along the bare Serbian flank, events moved with tragic rapidity.
It had been agreed that Bulgaria, as its share of the spoils, should have all central Macedonia, with Monastir and Okhrida, although on ethnical grounds the Bulgarians have only very slightly better claim to the country and towns west of the Vardar than any of the other Balkan nationalities.
As soon as he had landed at Saloniki he had sent every soldier under his command along the railroad up the valley of Vardar, toward Veles. Unfortunately, transportation facilities were poor; the road was only single track; curving and twisting in and out among the rising foothills and mountain spurs.
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