LAiND & WATER 
November 
■ j> 
191O 
The Occupation of Monastir 
By Hilaire Belloc 
AT eight o'clock upon the moming of Sunday last, 
/% the 19th of November, Lieutenant Murat i ntered 
/ % the town of Monaslir at the head of lii-- troop, 
^ .m. which was acting as escort to General l.cblois. 
This little body of cavalry was followed by tiie infantry 
columns of the French and Russians. Ihe tnwn had 
been completely e\acuated by the enemy during the 
preceding night, and the event marks the close of the 
first chapter in the Salonika offensive. 
The moment is suitable for a review of the progress 
thus made upon the north-eastern sector of the Macedonian 
front, and for some analysis of its causes : for tlie causes 
of that progress are part of the whole military situation, 
and the nature of the advance helps to explain events very 
far distant from this particular field. 
The operations imdcrtaken by General Sarrail with 
the immediate object of taking Monastir and the ultimate 
object (if that be found possible) of so weakening the 
Bulgarian Army in front of him that an invasion of and 
through the Balkan Mountain Mass should follow, were 
designed to begin in the middle of September. 
That was a very late date on which to initiate such 
operations in a mountain country- But the delay was 
due to political and other considerations, which cannot 
properly be discussed here. 
This date, the middle of September (to be accurate 
September nth and 12th), had long been known to the 
enemy.' He was present in front of the Salonika armies 
of the Allies in a strength of eleven divisions, just less than 
two-thirds of the whole of the enemy forces then south of the 
Danube. Of these forces much the greater part were Bul- 
garian, but there were also present a mixed division of 
Austro-Himgarian troops, certain contingents of l^russian 
infantry, and a considerable force of Gcrmin and Austrian 
artillery. 
General Sarrail had the advantage, as has often been 
shown in these pages, of acting from a base whence com- 
munications radiated east towards his Struma front 
along road (i) northwards along the-Vardar valley and 
towards Lake Doiran, along road and railway com- 
nnmications (2), and westward towards ^lonastir along 
road and railway communication (3), in the accom- 
panying Map I. He thus held a convex front running 
from the Lower Struma to Lake Uoiran, and so round to 
the neighbourhood of Lake Ostrovo, and on this front the 
English were charged with the right, towards the Struma ; 
the English, French and certain Serbian contingents with 
the centre towards Lake Doiran ; the Serbians, the mass 
of the French forces (especially the main strength of the 
French artillery) and the Russian contingents with the 
left or north-western sector facing towards Monastir. 
The Allies thus furnished with radiating comnumica- 
tions could ^t^ike at will upon any part <jf this front and 
concentrate upon the part chosen with more rapidity than 
could the enemy : for the enemy possessed no good 
lateral communications. His forces in front of Monastir 
were separated from his forces defending the trench of the 
Vardar by the mountain mass A, while the latter were 
similarly separated from the forces upon the Struma by 
the mountain mass B. It was clear, therefore, that 
whenever the Allied offensive should be imdcrtaken, it 
would possess the advantage of superior mobility. 
The enemy, consistently with a general policy which 
he has displayed in every held and particularly upon a 
large scale in the Verdun and the Trentino attacks, 
determined to anticipate the Allied offensive and to 
contain it before it could be launched. Knowing accu- 
rately as he did the date for whicli tlie concentration of 
men and munitions had been arranged on the Allied 
side, he himself hrst attacked, especially upon the two 
wings, with increasing energy as the moment of trial 
approached. The last days of August and the first 
days of September were filled with his very vigorous 
movements of this kind. He pressed the western out- 
posts hard (Serbian in formation) near Lake Ostro\o ; 
he cannonaded to hold us on the centre near Lake Doiran ; 
he massed in peculiar strength upon the Struma front 
about which he seems to have been particularly nervous, 
and incidentally had occupied to the east of it the Greek 
seaport of Kavalla, though this place had been to the 
Greeks the chief object of their efforts during the Balkan 
WAY four years ago. ^ 
The Allied Higher Command struck its first offensive 
blow upon September nth. 
It is convenient to regard the operations as a whole, 
from that day to this, which have taken up two calendar 
months, as separated into two equal parts ; t he first 
occunving almost exactly the first calendar month con- 
sisted in the advance upon Monastir, coupled with holding 
operations upon the centre and the right, that is upon 
the Vardar valley and upon the Struma. This phase 
comes to an end in the middle of October, when the main 
Allied offensive against Monastir is checked upon the 
14th of that month by the strong defensive organisation 
called the lines of Kenali, crossing the mouth of the 
Monastir Plain, and covering the city at an a\erage 
chstance of from eight to ten miles. 
The second phase of the operations following upon this 
check also occupies exactly one calendar month and 
consists in the turning of the Kenali lines by an attack 
across the great bend of the Cerna— which attack was 
crowned with success in the middle of November, and 
resulted in the fall of Monastir. « 
We will now turn to these operations in some detail. 
The First Month and Phase 
It was, as I have said, upon the nth of September 
that the English troops struck upon the Struma with 
the object of fulfilling the task there entrusted to them — 
which they have thoroughly fulfilled and have maintained 
ever since — of holding the enemy in this region, and 
preventing his reinforcing his right in front of Monastir. 
For four days this British movement upoij the Struma, 
which was wholly successful, and contemporary pressure 
exercised upon the centre round Lake Doiran, may have 
led the enemy to believe that the main attack was coming 
upon one of these two sectors, his extreme left or his 
centre. As a matter of fact, it was coming towards 
Monastir on his riglit, and this became apparent on Sep- 
tember 14th when the Serbian outposts, \yhi(h had 
hitherto suffered strong Bulgarian pressure and had been 
pushed in towards Lake Ostrovo, were heavily reinforced 
and took the offensive. 
To appreciate what followed we must glance at sketch 
Map IL 
iMoni the neighbourhood of Lake Ostrovo in the 
direction of Monastir there lies, as a first obstacle to 
military progress, a prolonged ridge culminating to the 
north-east in the mountain summit of Kaymackchalan, 
which rises nearly 8,000 feet above the sea, and some 
6.000 feet above the neighbouring water and valley 
levels. (The general average of the lowlands hereabouts is 
