November i, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
13 
, Our Right Flank 
By H. Gollinson Owen (Editor of The Balkan News). 
THE left flank of the Western front runs down to the 
sea at Nieuport. where it is held by British troops 
backed by British sea-power. And— a fact which is, 
perhaps, not often recognised — the right flank of the 
Western front is also held by British troops backed up by 
J^ritish sea-power : for the real right flank of the Western 
front is not on the frontier of Switzerland, nor yet on the 
Adriatic, but on the Gulf of Orfano, .in Eastern ^lacedonia, 
where the British trenches run down to the .Egean Sea. 
A journey to this part of our long Balkan line would dispel 
in the mind of anybody who held it the idea that our mis- 
named " Salonika Force " is grouped in and around the city 
which is fondly described as tlie Pearl of the .-Egean. The 
land way to Stavros and so on to the right flank of the Allied 
line nins along the broad valley which lies beyond the first 
barrier of high hills that shut in Salonika. This broad valley 
is lor the most part filled in by the two large lakes of Langaza 
and Besik. Only five or si.x years ago, when the world generally 
had barely heard of the e.xistence of Salonika, this valley must 
have been one of the most .primitive and isolated stretches of 
country in Europe. 
Salonika has its cinemas, and electric tramcars, and its 
Saloniciennes who follow with great eagerness the latest trend 
of fashion ; but on Lake Langaza, ten miles away across the 
hills, there are fishing boats which are probably the exact 
counterparts of Iwats used two thousand years ago— they 
could not ix)Ssibly be more primitive. Here, in this valley, 
up to four or five years ago, the roaming comitadji had it all 
his own way. An Anglo-Greek with whom I was talking 
recently said that in Langaza itself— a large picturesque 
village, where nearly ever\' chimney-pot shelters a stork's 
nest^he had met a young Greek of less than thirty, who had 
Ijeen leader of a " band " in this neighbourhood, and who 
"laimed sixty Bulgarsas his own portion. His special beat was 
th(i road out from Salonika up to the valley— now a broad 
highway lined with Allied camps and innocent of 
brigands. • - . , ' 
Along the valley itself ran the famous \'ia Ignatia, the old 
Roman road, starting from near Durazzo on the Albanian 
coast, whic^^ linked up Rome and Constantinople. One can 
see little or no trace of it now. The road to Stavros is merely 
an improved track, and where it crosses the beds of water- 
courses it is non-existent twenty minutes after a fall of rain 
in the mountains. St. Paul walked along every foot of the 
\alley. The \"ia Ignatia ran through Salonika itself, along 
what is now known as the Rue Ignatia, one of the most crowded 
cosmopolitan, uncomfortable and noisy streets in all the uni- 
verse.* It climbed over the. hills past the twin and beautiful 
peaks of Hortiach and Kotos which dominate the city, dipped 
down steeply into the valley, and so on towards Stavros, and 
along the coast to Constantinople. 
Roman civilisation was the last to touch this valley. Since 
the Romans went, Macedonia has known only one long endless 
succession of warring tribes, none of whom ever brought 
with them much beyond the sword and sudden death. And 
now the British are making war here— one of the very few 
virile races of Europe which had not already adventured into 
Macedonia. 
P'or the time being, at any rate, tliis part of Macedonia 
behind our lines is perfectly happy ^nd prosf)erous. We pushed 
cur way through drove after drove of beautiful sleek cattle, 
very like our Alderney breed but rather bigger. In each one 
of the occasional villages, swarms of chubby children rushed 
out at the sound of the car to cheer and shout "at the" Johnnies," 
and all the British here from general to private are plain 
" Johnnies." Big herds of goats scattered in absurd terror 
to right and left of the track. Past Lake Besik there is a good 
deal of cultivation, and everything seemed as placid^ and as 
content as could be. 
Macedonia is by no means all bare mountains, shimmering 
with the heat in summer, and icy with the wind of the V'ardar 
in winter. Stavros is as charming and picturescpie a spot as any 
.in Fuiope, with the blue waters of the Gulf of Orfano lapping 
gently into' the bay, and its beautiful green wooded mountains 
which run down the left finger of the Chalcidice Peninsula to 
Mount Athos at the end. In a happier or more accessible 
country, the swelling hills would be dotted with the white 
villas of the rich, and steam \achts would know its pleasant 
anchorage. The bathing, as 1 can vouch, is excellent. There 
would certainly be a casino, and Monte Carlo would embark 
on a campaign of intensive rival advertising. _But as things 
•This article had proi?res.sed thus far wlicn somebody came into the 
room to saV that "imile la rilh hriilc.' Ignatia Street lias changed con- 
siderably since then. 
are, Stavros is one of the lost corners of the world. . It is on 
the road to nowhere, the railway having completely outclassed 
the Via Ignatia ; or rather, it would have been on the road to 
nowhere had not the British, waging a war which has taken 
them into the most unexpected places, dropped down into this 
corner also. As it is, Stavros is the beginning of the last stage 
of the journey to our Right Flank A few miles further along 
the coast our trenches run down into the sea, and beyond that 
the Bulgar and the Boche hold sway. 
And having at last arrived at our Right Flank it is perhaps 
a little difficult to know what to say about it. The military 
expert would no doubt find a great deal to enlarge upon, but 
for my part, 1 saw only the same forbidding mountain barrier 
which everywhere confronts the British on their long Balkan 
front — a front which, it is perhaps not generally recognised, 
is much the same length as the one we hold in France. Our 
land and sea and air forces were showing activity. A 
monitor had slipped out into the blue water, and was sending 
some " heavy stuff " over into the Bulgar territory. An 
aeroplane droned overhead on some jirivate mission of its 
own, and one of our batteries was barking spasmodically. 
But this is the small change of war, and leaves little to be said 
about it at this time of day. For the rest, one knew that our 
infantry was keeping its unceasing watch down in the valley 
there, as it has done for many long months past with verA" little 
relief ; with tier upon tier of Bulgarian positions rising ahead 
of tliem, culminating in the great mass of Pilaf Tepe which is 
something over 6,000 feet high. 
Apparent Deadlock 
At a dinner that evenmg in a pleasant white-washed room, 
the largest to be found in the deserted Greek village of X, 
the Brigadier asked, with what I thought a quizzical look in 
his eye, " Well, what do you think of it ? " LTnfortunately 
1 had to confess that I had nothing to suggest. The layman 
can sometimes bring forward startling proposals for the benefit 
of the expert, but as far as our Right Flank is concerned, 
he was silent. There was only this to be said — that if we can 
find no particular comfort in contemplating the Bulgar posi- 
tions, he can find none in looking at ours. And with this, 
at least, the Brigadier agreed. 
It is a most interesting- country this, where the Struma 
widens out into Lake Tahinos before it reaches the sea. As 
our car hummed up the long hill road to headquarters, a 
Ix^autiful prospect of land and sea was unfolded, with the coast 
stretching towards Kavalla in the east (the richest tobacco 
region in the world) and the mass of Mount Athos just faintly 
in view to the south. It is a region with strange and large 
poisonous insects that bite freely ; a region where the heat can 
be fierce in the summer ; where thistles grow to such giant 
size that they make the most patriotic Scotsman feel strangely 
hiunble : and where there is a tiny but awkward visitor known 
as the sand fly (although he is common to all Macedonia) 
wlujse bite produces a very rapid and debilitating fever. 
It is a country very rich in archa;ological remains, and 
possibly our presence here during the war will give an impetus 
to theirexplorationwhen the war is over. The site of ancient 
Amphipolis is in the No Man's Land between our trenches 
and the Bulgars, and what the ancient Athenians prized and 
were ven,- sorry to lose at the hands of Philip, the modern Greeks 
gained through the good fortune of the last Balkan War — 
and lost when, by Constantine's treachery of 1916, the Bulgars 
came down through Rnpel. . 
As already indicated, there are more things to fight against 
than merely the Bulgar. On two successive nights four visitors 
slept in the " guest chambers " improvised in a tumble-down 
house near to headquarters. The rooms were as spick and span 
as British army cleanliness could make them. But the sand 
fly was not to be denied. All four were liberally bitten by 
these tiny and irritating i^ests, which pass serenely through 
the meshes of a mosquito net. Of the four, three went down 
with sand-fly fe\'er within a few days. On the way back along 
the valley my friend and I bathed in Besik Lake, 
not far from some ancient warm sulphur baths, whose springs 
bubble up only a few yards from the shore. It was a blazing hot 
day — one of the hottest we have had out here— but we kept 
our sun-helmets on in the water and rejoiced in rude health. 
Three days later my friend was riding his horse somewhere 
far up the Seres Road, when he incontinently fell off it. 
" Sand-fly " had claimed him. and he was picked up with a 
temperature of over 104. It is a little way Macedonia has — 
to trip you up just when you are feeling that you are proof 
against anything her climate can do. 
