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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.
On 17 October the Salonika line was pierced at Vrania, Veles fell on the 20th, and Uskub on the 21st. By the 26th Mackensen and the Bulgarians had effected a junction in the north and cleared the Danube route into the Balkans. Nish fell on 5 November after three days' fierce fighting, and the Constantinople railway thus passed into enemy hands.
Each town had its captain. . . . Where complaints were made to the regular authorities they pretended to know nothing, or, if the person were obscure, punished him. If he were a personage, as for example the Archbishop of Veles, the bands were sent from the town down to the villages, only to be replaced immediately by bands from Uskub."
And the extreme limit, on the south and east, of Turkish territory assigned to Servia by this treaty was fixed by a line starting from Ochrida on the borders of Albania and running northeastward across the Vardar River a few miles above Veles and thence, following the same general direction, through Ovcepolje and Egri Palanka to Golema Vreh on the frontier of Bulgaria a terminus some twenty miles southeast of the meeting point of Servia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria.
When news of the proximity of the French advance reached Vassitch, he redoubled his efforts, and on October 22, 1915, he thrust his little army forward and succeeded in recapturing Veles. This town lay along the railroad, about thirty-five miles northwest of Krivolak. It was this height which enabled them, when the Bulgarians did swarm down on them, some days later, to hold their position.
This cut the main Bulgarian communications with Prilep on the west and Doiran on the east, and compelled a general retreat along a hundred miles of front. On the 23rd the French occupied Prilep; on the 25th the Serbians captured Veles and Ishtip and pressed on towards Uskub, while their cavalry were at Kotchana almost on the Bulgarian frontier.
Unless the replier has the vigour of Swift, or at least of Bentley, the adroitness in fence of Pascal, or at least of Voltaire, "replies, duplies, quadruplies" are apt to be wofully tedious reading, and Mr Arnold was rather a veles than a triarius of controversy.
For a whole week Vassitch held Veles against the overwhelming attacks of the Bulgarians; then, finally, on the 29th, he was compelled to retire to the Babuna Pass, the narrow defile also known as the Iron Gate, through which passed the highway from Veles to Monastir, by way of Prilep.
During this same period another Serbian force under Colonel Vassitch was fighting farther south. On October 22, 1915, he succeeded in recapturing Veles, which, it will be remembered, Todoroff had taken in his rapid advance during the first few days of his fighting.
With adequate forces they could have pushed beyond Veles to Uskub, broken the wedge which the Bulgarians had driven in between them and the Serbians, restored the line of the Vardar, and secured the Serbian retreat. It was this Bulgarian stab in the back which made havoc of the Serbian defence.
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