Chapter III

THE COMMAND OF THE ALLIED ARMIES IN THE ORIENT. THE FRENCH TROOPS.

Let us now see how the Chief Command of the Allied Armies at Salonica was organized. This should have been essentially an inter-Allied Command. But in practice it always remained a French Command, to which some liaison officers were attached representing the other Allied armies. Instead of devoting his attention to operations exclusively, and particularly to those executed by several Allied forces in collaboration, General Sarrail, and to a lesser extent even his successors, was principally occupied with the _Armée française d’Orient_, although the latter had its own Command and Staff. Sarrail moreover attended personally to a number of other matters, such as the police, the Press and postal censorship, trade, archæology etc., which ought not to have required the attention of the Commander-in-Chief, or at least should have been delegated by him to subordinates.

General Sarrail came to Salonica from the French front, where he had commanded the III Army. He had proved himself a gallant soldier, and had distinguished himself at the Marne and at the first battle of Verdun. But he was not a good army commander, nor was he popular at G.H.Q. on account of his intriguing nature. The French Government wished to get rid of him, and, having recalled him from the command of the III Army, contemplated sending him to the East to take command of an expedition which was to have operated in the Dardanelles and in Asia Minor. But when the impossibility of holding the Dardanelles became manifest that scheme was abandoned, and General Sarrail was appointed to command the troops in Macedonia. He at first did not wish to go, as he regarded that command as inferior to his rank, but he soon saw that the choice lay between Salonica and Limoges, so that he had to accept.

He therefore reached Macedonia under the shadow of failure, and this was the initial reason which prevented him from exercising great authority or personal prestige over the other Allied commanders. His policy of intrigue increased this lack of confidence in him. In a certain passage of his memoirs he makes the characteristic admission that, while he was still in Paris before coming out to take up his duties in the East, M. Millerand, then Minister of War, enjoined on him at their last interview “not to frequent members of Parliament.” He was extremely ambitious and had high political aspirations, so that from the beginning of his reign at Salonica we find him deeply involved in diplomatic questions, and he subordinated his whole military activity to political considerations. He never showed himself a really inter-Allied commander; he constantly acted in what he thought were the interests of France, but he understood French interests only in the narrowest and most exclusive sense, not only to the detriment of the interests of the other Allies, but also to that of a common friendly agreement of all the Allies, and consequently even of the real higher interests of his own country. Many of the far more serious disagreements which have subsequently developed between France and her Allies have their remote origins in the bickerings engendered by General Sarrail’s policy in Macedonia.

In appearance he was a handsome, attractive-looking man, of martial bearing, in spite of his white hair, and he was affable with everybody. He affected a slightly exaggerated _bonhomie_ which occasionally assumed a somewhat vulgar tone, easily degenerating into coarseness. Nor did he always maintain that dignity which should characterize the bearing of every officer, but particularly of one invested with such important functions. He allowed Captain Mathieu, attached to his Staff (an officer of whom I shall have more to say later) to behave and adopt a tone towards him at his own mess which scandalized the other French or Allied officers who were present at these unedifying scenes. A freemason, an anti-Clerical, of strong Radical-Socialist sympathies, he had composed his Staff of officers having the same views, many of whom had no other qualifications for their jobs. The great majority of the French officers were anything but enthusiastic towards Sarrail’s military and political conduct; they complained of favouritism in the matter of promotions for merit, which were reserved for a small clique of officers in his immediate entourage, and were seldom granted to the real fighters. He rarely visited the front, save on the occasion of ceremonies, conferring of medals, official visits, etc. He prepared his plans of operations in his office at Salonica, where he spent nearly all his time, even during important offensives.

His amorous relations were the subject of a vast amount of gossip. His friendship for a Russian lady of high rank reached such a point that she was allowed to enter his office at G.H.Q. at any moment, even when he himself was not there and confidential documents were spread about his desk. The lady in question was actually suspected of espionage, and apart from this charge, which was probably unfounded, she was also accused of illicit interference in political and military affairs. In this connexion she once said to an Italian officer, some time after Sarrail’s departure; “It has been stated that when General Sarrail was here, it was I who commanded the Armée d’Orient. Unfortunately, this was untrue; if I had commanded it, far fewer _bêtises_ would have been committed.” The greatest surprise caused by General Sarrail was his marriage with a French Red Cross nurse attached to one of the military hospitals in Salonica, in the spring of 1917. The affair caused a considerable scandal, as all Allied officers were forbidden to bring their wives out to Macedonia, whereas Sarrail not only married, but kept his wife with him in Salonica.

To face p. 58.
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The absolute want of confidence of the Allied commanders under his orders in General Sarrail’s military qualities, his position became ever more impossible. To command an army composed of soldiers belonging to five different nationalities, two of them indigenous to the country, each with its own military organization, is at best no easy task, and only a leader endowed with great tact, a conciliatory spirit and a keen respect for the national feelings of others could have done so with success. In a national army the orders of the commander are obeyed without discussion; but in a force like the Armée d’Orient the Allied commanders under General Sarrail were representatives of their respective G.H.Q.’s and Governments, to whom they could always apply if he gave orders which appeared to them out of place. Sarrail ever gave the first consideration to the political effect which this or that event would produce, and he often gave orders for an operation simply because he believed that it would make a good impression on the public and on the Press, and consequently on the world of politicians, even if it were of no real military value. It was clear that with such a leader, even if he had had military qualities superior to those which he actually possessed, and if he had had really abundant resources at his disposal, it would have been very difficult to carry out an offensive on a large scale with any likelihood of success. In fact, while the Monastir offensive was only half a success and produced hardly any results, the offensive of May, 1917 was, as we shall see, a complete failure. Sarrail’s only real achievement was the deposition of King Constantine, and that was a political rather than a military enterprise.

A characteristic side of General Sarrail’s activities was his commercial policy. He took a lively interest in the promotion of French economic development in Macedonia, to the detriment, not of enemy interests, which were non-existent, but of those of the other Allies. He had instituted a very well-organized commercial bureau, but it was generally regarded as not quite correct that an inter-Allied Commander should avail himself of his position as such to develop the trade of his own country alone. To attain this object he also made use of the postal censorship, to which he devoted considerable attention. By its means he learnt which local merchants sent their orders to France and which to other countries; the latter were not infrequently the objects of thinly veiled threats and persecutions, inflicted with a view to inducing them to alter their ways. Matters reached such a point that the other Governments ended by establishing postal censorships of their own over the correspondence between Salonica and their respective countries.

General Sarrail had numerous conflicts with the Italian Command. I have already mentioned the incidents which occurred in connexion with the Monastir operations and the transfer of the division. But incidents were of almost daily occurrence. One day a movement order concerning our own troops was not communicated to the Italian Command; another time a communiqué from G.Q.G. on some operation in which an Italian detachment had greatly distinguished itself failed to mention the Italians at all. On one occasion the local French or Greek press was allowed or inspired to print articles attacking and libelling Italy, while on another the local Italian paper _La Voce d’Italia_ was suspended for having replied in a somewhat violent tone. It might be thought that the Italians were too susceptible on these matters, but incidents of this kind occurred with such frequency in connexion with them that it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that there was considerable animosity on Sarrail’s part against them. But above all our Command was convinced that he had no notion of what war in the Balkans really was. In this it was in perfect agreement with the other Allied Commands.

With the other Allies too Sarrail’s relations were anything but cordial. He was in constant disagreement with the British, whose commander had succeeded in getting himself invested with the rank of Commander-in-Chief so as to reduce his dependence on Sarrail to a minimum. Even with the Serbs he was not on good terms. They complained that French help had come too late to save their country from disaster, and that the French never forgot to remind them of their debt to France. They did not wish to take orders in matters of tactics from the C.A.A., both because their army was commanded by the Crown Prince who refused to accept a subordinate position, and because they considered that they knew a good deal more about Balkan warfare than Sarrail, and in this they were not altogether wrong. They were moreover irritated by the fact that the French communiqués never gave sufficient prominence to the actions of the Serbian troops, so that their G.H.Q. ended by issuing communiqués of its own. Even with the Greeks, to whom, after the Venizelist revolution, he always spoke “honeyed words” in public, he was on the worst of terms, as appears from his memoirs and articles published since the war. The street in Salonica which had been gratefully baptized “Odos Sarrail” has recently had its name altered.

It can be fairly stated that General Sarrail stands condemned by his own memoirs more severely than by any outside criticism. The volume is very interesting and well written, but, as a distinguished Italian officer stated, “on a background of undeniable truths, he has woven a tissue of venemous untruths, with which he has sought in vain to justify his action in the Orient.” His political intrigues, his conduct towards the Allies, the manner in which he treated many gallant French officers, such as General Cordonnier--to mention one case alone--all this appears in the clearest light in his _Apologia pro vita sua_.

The G.H.Q. of the C.A.A. was of course at Salonica. It was, like other French Army Commands, divided into two main branches--the _État-major de l’Avant_ and the _Direction de l’Arrière_. The Chief of the General Staff under General Sarrail was first Colonel George and then General Michaud. The _Avant_ was divided into four bureaux: 1st, effectives and materials; 2nd, information (intelligence); 3rd, operations; 4th, supply and transport. Relations between the liaison officers and the Command and its bureaux were as a rule extremely cordial, and for my own part I shall always have the pleasantest remembrance of them, especially of my connexion with the _Deuxième Bureau_, to which we liaison officers were for a long time attached; its successive chiefs (these unfortunately were constantly changing) were regular, and usually very distinguished, officers of field rank, and the other members of it were reserve officers, some of them eminent men in different walks of life--university professors, archæologists, jurists, etc. With the 3rd bureau too, to which we were afterwards attached, I always got on well. But it should be added that with the French Command (advisedly, I call it French, although in theory it was inter-Allied) there was never that same _camaraderie_ that there was with the British. With the former we were welcome guests, whereas the latter treated us as brothers and hid nothing from us. Let me quote an instance of this difference with regard to the question of strength returns. It was very important for all the Allies to know each other’s respective strengths. We naturally communicated ours to the C.A.A. and the other Commands periodically and in the greatest detail. To learn the French strength required immense labour and ingenuity in collecting, collating and completing the figures; they were communicated to us unwillingly, in an incomplete form and with considerable delay--it was indeed far easier to learn what were the enemy’s effectives than those of the French. The British on the other hand placed their statistical returns at our disposal, showing the organic strength, the actual strength, the reinforcements asked for and those known to be on their way out, for each unit and specialty. Nor did the Serbs or Greeks have any objection to communicating their strengths to us. It was generally believed that the reason of this reticence on the part of the French was that, while they maintained the number of their units unchanged, their effective strength was greatly reduced, and that they feared that the Allies, especially the British, might avail themselves of this state of things as a pretext for refusing to recognize France’s right to the supreme command of operations in Macedonia. I do not know whether this was the real or only reason, but the fact in itself is undoubted, and it certainly rendered co-operation much more difficult than it ought to have been.

To face p. 62.
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The services of the Army were carried out partly by the 1st and 4th bureaux of the _Avant_, and partly by the _Direction de l’Arrière_, the latter being for a long time under the sympathetic and jovial General Boucher. The organization was not perfect, and transport and supplies were sometimes faulty. The Italian expeditionary force in particular often suffered from these defects whenever its services had to be supplied by the French, not on account of any ill-will on the part of the latter, but owing to the defects of the system and the imperfect manner in which orders were executed. The French themselves were wont to say that more time was needed for a letter to go from the _Avant_ to the _Arrière_ than to ask for and obtain instructions from Paris.

Of the 8 French divisions 5 were Metropolitan (i.e. raised in France proper)--the 30th, 57th, 76th, 122nd, and 156th--and 3 Colonial--the 11th, 16th and 17th. At first they were all of 4 regiments of 3 battalions each. But subsequently, owing to the reduction of strengths and also to the general reorganization of the French Army, the Metropolitan divisions were reduced to 3 regiments each, and the brigades (which had been of 2 regiments each) abolished. Each regiment in the colonial divisions comprised 2 white and 1 coloured battalion. The divisions, as we have seen, were formed into groups, corresponding to army corps but of somewhat looser formation, of whom there were at first 2 and afterwards 3, and they also included non-French troops. Special units were from time to time constituted according to necessity for special operations, etc. There was in addition the Cavalry Division, comprising the 1st and 4th Chasseurs d’Afrique and the Morocco Spahis (coloured), commanded by General Jouinot-Gambetta. There were also some units not forming part of any division such as the 2nd bis Zouaves, the Algerian, Annamite, Madagascar, Indo-Chinese _tirailleurs_, the Koritza gendarmerie, etc.

* * * * *

It was generally admitted that the French artillery in Macedonia was excellent. In spite of the defective and seldom renovated material the gunners accomplished wonders, and although the enemy during the early period of the campaign had a larger number of guns than the Allies, and was supplied to the very end with guns of heavier calibre and greater range, the French batteries held their own admirably. The French artillery officers attached to our force were always on the best of terms with their Italian comrades, and they learned to appreciate each others’ fine military qualities.

As regards general education, the French officers were superior to those of any of the other Allied armies. There was hardly one of them who had not a literary, political and historical culture which we should have regarded as above the average, and in this they also ranked above the British; their conversation was nearly always extremely agreeable owing to their high intellectual level, wide range of interests and their keen wit. Their knowledge of foreign languages on the other hand was very slight; regular officers usually knew German, and among the reserve officers one occasionally came across some who for business or other reasons knew foreign languages, but the great majority only understood French. Personally they were generally attractive, had good manners, made a great many compliments and very keenly appreciated any courtesy extended to them. At mess their behaviour was decorous, and they spoke less loudly than their Italian colleagues, many of whom invariably raised their voices to add strength to the arguments they were sustaining. But they had a somewhat exaggerated idea of the absolute superiority of the French over all other nations in everything, and they did not hide it; for this reason they sometimes appeared ungenerous, and succeeded in irritating their foreign colleagues of all the Allied armies. The officers attached to the General Staff seldom made any attempt to disguise their weakness for foreign decorations, and the extremely transparent allusions which they made to the subjects when conversing with liaison officers or others whom they believed to have ribbons galore at their disposal contributed not a little to make the horrors of war quite bearable.

French Staff officers were always under the incubus of the _mot d’ordre_. One day the word would be passed round that optimism was to be the keynote, and then one saw nothing but smiling faces, cheerfulness and confidence in the final victory within a month. Another day the _mot d’ordre_ was in a minor key; that meant long faces, black pessimism, _le cafard_, no end to the war in sight, the Germans invincible, peace goodness knows when and at goodness knows what conditions. All this had nothing to do with the actual military events either fortunate or the reverse, but was the result of orders from above. Similarly, their attitude towards the Allies varied from day to day, being warmly cordial at one moment and coldly courteous the next.

But whatever the faults of the French may have been, it must be admitted that in actual combat they were marvellous. Officers and soldiers vied with each other in patriotism and courage. When they were in the front lines no one could fail to admire their dash and gallantry; their battle discipline was magnificent. On the other hand, their discipline at the rear and on the lines of communication left much to be desired, and the behaviour of the soldiers and even of not a few officers at some distance from the front, especially at Salonica, often led to unpleasant incidents. Once they were away from the front these men seemed to forget the respect due to their officers, who seldom dared to reprimand them even for quite serious disciplinary offences. They often behaved riotously, got drunk, appeared with their uniforms in disorder, and it was an unusual sight to see two men dressed alike. A British officer connected with the officers’ clothing store told the writer that as long as French officers were forbidden to wear Sam Brown belts he was constantly receiving applications for authority to purchase them (they could not be sold to non-British officers without written authority from the A.Q.M.G.), but as soon as their G.Q.G. issued a circular removing the ban on that article of equipment the applications from the French fell off!

Rioting among French soldiers was by no means unknown, and encounters were particularly frequent between French and Allied soldiers, whereas other allies seldom had rows among themselves. Even the French camps were less orderly and well-arranged than those of the British or Italian troops. Where French and Italian troops were in direct liaison at the front relations were excellent, and the former often had recourse to the latter’s assistance in constructing huts.

But it was enough to see a French unit in fighting kit on the march towards the front lines or returning from them to realize the high military and warlike spirit of the French nation. Patriotic feeling was extremely developed among all. “Defeatist” talk, expressions of sympathy, or complaisant admiration for the enemy, such as were heard among the officers of some other armies, were unknown, and would indeed not have been tolerated for an instant. They might, as I have said, often talk in a pessimistic tone, but anything like sympathy for the enemy was inconceivable. The tradition of ten centuries of splendid military history was not belied.

Of the sectors held by the French two were particularly hard--that of Hill 1248, north of Monastir, and around the city, and the eastern part of the Cerna loop, which presented features similar to those of our own sector. The other French sectors were extremely uncomfortable, as was indeed the whole of the Macedonian front, but less dangerous from a purely military point of view. The Monastir area was exceptionally hard, inasmuch as the town exercised a peculiar fascination over the Bulgars--to them it was the symbol of Macedonia, the Mecca of their Balkan aspirations; indeed almost the only territory not yet occupied by them to which they laid claim, and which they had reasonable hopes of acquiring. They therefore maintained a relentless and vigorous pressure on those lines in the hope of breaking through and achieving not only a strategic victory of considerable importance, but also a highly significant moral and sentimental success. The German Command at one time was anxious to withdraw from the Monastir area altogether, but the opposition of Bulgaria to this plan for once prevailed. The struggle round the town therefore continued with great violence, and the troops on Hill 1248 had to keep a ceaseless vigil, sustain perpetual attacks or deliver counter-attacks, and were always under the fire of heavy bombardments. Monastir itself suffered severely as it sheltered various staffs, and also many batteries of artillery.

The A.F.O. front was reached by railway to Armenohor (the station for Florina) or Sakulevo, and thence by road and décauville to the first lines, but supply trains at night went almost into Monastir. For the troops west of the Pisoderi pass a “telepheric” line was used for supplies, but it sufficed only for a small part of the necessary materials, and the rest had to be conveyed by lorry or cart. The two divisions in the eastern half of the Cerna loop were supplied by the same routes as those used by the Italians. The H.Q. of the A.F.O. was at Florina, a pleasant little town at the foot of the Pisoderi pass, well watered by many runnels and adorned with trees. The troops of the _Premier groupement_ (122nd Division and Greek units) were supplied by the Vardar railway to a certain point, and thence by road.