4.
The Macedonian Front.
The following morning saw me heading west on the road which runs to the south of the mountains which form the border between Greece and Bulgaria. The First World War shaped the northern border of Greece in this area, as the physical border follows the Bulgarian front lines from 1916.
The road was good smooth tarmac and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was tempted to just carry straight on to the Macedonian border, but my plans involved heading up the 6,170ft high Tumba Peak where the borders of Greece, Bulgaria and Macedonia meet. The weather was getting warm and I was cursing myself as I trudged up the rough track which led through the trees and onto the slopes of the mountain. It was really hard work pushing my bike up the steep incline, so I had a little rethink of my plans. I had originally intended to get to the summit and visit the remains of the trenches before descending down the Bulgarian side. I would then have entered Macedonia via Bulgaria, before visiting a Bulgarian cemetery in the town of Novo Selo. They refurbished this cemetery a few years ago and hold an annual memorial service at the beginning of May. Unfortunately, due to my Turkish kebab illness, I had already missed this, so another slight change of plans was feasible.
I hid my bike and most of my gear under a bush in the woods and headed off up Tumba Peak, getting there just after noon. The view was amazing, but as I wasn’t supposed to be there (border area) I didn’t hang around. I found a couple of trench systems near the top, but was slightly disappointed as they weren’t as good as they had looked to be on Google Earth, oh well. The descent back to my bike was a lot quicker, especially when I found a half eaten wild pig just inside the tree line. Bear? Wolf? I didn’t stick around to find out!
It felt good to be back riding on tarmac, although by then it was late afternoon, with still a fair distance to travel. Fortunately, it all seemed to be downhill until I reached the border at Lake Dojran. I made a small diversion to the British Dojran memorial and cemetery before crossing the border, which went relatively smoothly. (I was taken to the front of the queue, asked what I was planning to do in Macedonia, and when I showed them my translation card which, surprisingly, they seemed to understand, they just waved me through without really looking at my passport when I offered it to them. I instantly liked Macedonia!)
Once again, I had the problem of finding somewhere to sleep when it was starting to get dark. A local man collared me and told me in perfect English to follow his car. He led me to what looked like a communist era static caravan site. There were rows upon rows of tiny white touring caravans which had bricks instead of wheels. “Ye Gods, holidays must have been fun under Tito!” I camped next to the caravans, before having a look around the town of Star Dojran. Macedonia was just how I remember Greece in the good old days. Cheap, cheerful, slightly rough around the edges, but most importantly, the people looked happy in stark contrast to the people of Greece!
There were three battles of Dojran during World War One: one for 1916, another in 1917 and the last, yes you’ve guessed it, in 1918. The first battle didn’t entirely go to plan. (Well, not at all!) Following an artillery bombardment on the 9th of August 1916, 45,000 men from three French and one British divisions tried to capture the Bulgarian positions in the hills around Lake Dojran. The battle carried on until the 18th of August when they were forced to retreat back to their original positions after sustaining heavy casualties.
The second battle of Dojran began on the 22nd of April 1917 with the British firing about 100,000 artillery shells at the fortified Bulgarian positions. The Bulgarians replied with equally vicious counter battery artillery fire from positions between Vardar and Dojran. The British Infantry used the night of the 24/25th of April to provide cover for their first attack. They seized some of their objectives, but after a Bulgarian counter attack and artillery barrage, they were forced to retreat back to their original positions on 27th of April, after once again sustaining heavy casualties. Another attack was made on the same positions on the 8/9th of May. This had the same effect and the British were forced to concede defeat after sustaining 12,000 dead, wounded or captured. The battlefield around Dojran then stabilised for the remainder of 1917 and most of 1918.
The third battle of Dojran lasted for two days, starting on the 18th of September 1918. The end result was the same as the previous two battles around Dojran, but the fighting there had a serious impact on other battles, which were being fought at the same time further west on the Macedonian Front. The Bulgarians, plus a small number of Germans, were stretched to breaking point on this campaign front and the fighting at Dojran meant that they were unable to move their troops from one position to bolster their defences at another position. The Greek, French and British soldiers were like sacrificial lambs with the losses sustained here, meaning that the French and Serbian troops further west managed to capture their objectives and force the Bulgarians to retreat. Thus, although the third battle of Dojran was another defeat, at the same time, it wasn’t! The fighting was tough and bloody, with the infantry having to fight uphill against entrenched and fortified positions, in the heat of late summer, whilst wearing gas masks! The British lost 6,559 soldiers whilst the Greeks lost 7,819. (I don’t know the number of French casualties, probably about 1,000?) Although this number is less than the first day of the Somme, the number of troops involved was a lot less, so percentage wise it was probably higher! Late on the 19th of September the survivors of the attacks once again retired to their starting positions, probably hoping that they’d never be sent back to fight in the hills around Lake Dojran.
A few days afterwards, the British thought that the Bulgarians had gone a bit quiet and upon investigation it was discovered that the Bulgarians had abandoned their positions. The Serbs and French had broken through the Bulgarian positions during the battle of Dobro Pole and were moving towards Dojran. The Bulgarians were in the midst of a full retreat to avoid being cut off and surrounded. The war in the Balkans was more or less over, except for a few rearguard actions by the Bulgarians, which prevented most of their army being cut off. They eventually sued for peace on September 30th 1918, in order to prevent Bulgaria being occupied by the enemy. (They were probably scared about the Serbian army, as the Bulgarians helped the Austro-Hungarians reduce the Serbian population by about a quarter during the occupation of Serbia!)
As I pushed my bike up the steep track which led to the old battlefields to the west of Star Dojran I wondered how they had managed to fight in that place. I was struggling, despite not being under heavy fire or wearing a bloody gas mask! I eventually located the remains of a heavily fortified Bulgarian position late in the morning, after getting lost several times in thick brush. The front line section that I found consisted of four reinforced concrete bunkers from 1918, surrounded by the remains of a very smashed up trench system. All the bunkers bore the scars of heavy shelling, but they were still formidable obstacles despite the passage of nearly a century. The bunkers were one of the main British objectives and it’s no wonder they were never captured. After leaving a poppy and having a bit of a rest, I carried on up a track which lay on the Macedonian side of the border, towards the summit of the hill. It was on a ridge and in places I could see the remains of trench systems down the hill on the other side of the ridge. I didn’t visit these, as I had no wish to see the inside of a Greek prison cell after illegally crossing their border. (The Greeks are very touchy about anything to do with Macedonia, especially at the border!)
The track that I was following was probably used by the Macedonian border patrols, or should I say that it used to be, as it was very overgrown. This was a bit of a problem, as I’d planned to follow this all the way until I reached the bottom of the hill further west, near the town of Gevgelija. The summit of the hill had a very spooky looking 1960s abandoned border guard post built on it and soon after that, the track was impassable due to trees covering it. I was frustrated, as I knew from my planning and research that the trees and bushes petered out about a mile further on, but I literally couldn’t get my bike through. I needed another plan (again!) Like my fellow Brits a century before, I retreated. Fortunately, only back to the summit to have a look at my maps and rethink my route.
Just behind the spooky building was a low mound covered in the remains of a small trench system, I explored these for a while before sitting down to plan my next move.
It was a clear spring day with no haze and far reaching views into Greece. Snow capped mountains were shining in the far distance and I was sure that I could also see the sea. I tried to imagine being in that place a hundred years ago. Obviously it was impossible in some ways, as I didn’t have the trepidation of an attack or artillery bombardment, the boredom of waiting or the fear of dying. All I had was being in the same place as the Bulgarian soldiers who manned those positions a hundred years before. It had changed little in the preceding years. Yes, the trees had grown, but as the front lines formed the frontier between Greece and Macedonia, nothing else was different. The trenches and bunkers were all still there, albeit collapsed and shallower. Because of those, it was possible to imagine a soldier sat where I was, staring at the flat plains and mountains of Greece, the shimmering rippled waters of Lake Dojran and the craggy forested mountains of Macedonia, whilst hoping and praying that he’ll soon be back at home with his loved ones. As that’s exactly what I was doing!
After looking at my maps, I had identified two possible routes to follow. The first was to drop down the southern side of the hill, where it was clear of vegetation and skirt around the impassable section before heading back up. I was really tempted to just go ahead and do this, but if I had been caught by the Greeks, things could have got slightly problematic, to say the least!
The dispute between Greece and Macedonia isn’t about the location of the border, which was defined during the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919. Rather, it’s about the actual name of Macedonia. It’s officially called the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, FYRM for short. That’s a bit of a mouthful, so I just call it Macedonia, as that’s what it should be called. The Greeks don’t like this, as they have a region called Macedonia. It is none of Greece’s business really, Macedonians should be free to call their country whatever they want to, but it’s caused a few problems in the last 20 years or so.
Because of this silly dispute, it was too risky to illegally cross into Greece, even for a short time. So, feeling slightly deflated, I started on plan C by retracing my route back to Star Dojran and the strange campsite.
(After I returned home, I discovered that I was too far to the south. Most of the actual battlefields were about half a mile or so further north away from the modern border. Oh well, at least I had tried, such is life!)
The following day, I headed further into Macedonia. I was actually following part of the route that the British and French armies followed when they first came into the Macedonian theatre of war, during the autumn of 1915.
Since the start of the war, the Serbs had pleaded for Britain and France to send troops to their aid, but due to the pressures of the Western Front, it wasn’t possible until the numbers of available troops had vastly increased during 1915. After landing at Salonika, they headed north into what was then Serbia (Macedonia now.) To try to assist the Serbs who were in a full retreat after a three pronged invasion by Austro-Hungary, Germany and Bulgaria. Unfortunately, the British command were, for some reason, reluctant to advance too far into Serbia, stopping and digging in on the hills to the south of the town of Kosturino, not too far from the border. Meanwhile the French, who had no such qualms, had advanced up the river Vardar towards the town of Krivolak, where they supported attempted Serbian counterattacks in the area. The Battle of Krivolak was fought between 21st October and 22nd November when the situation became hopeless due to the overwhelming numbers of Bulgarian troops. The French then retreated to the British lines, where they also took part in the Battle of Kosturino, which began with a two day artillery barrage, before the main attacks by Bulgarian infantry which carried on until the 11th of December, when the British and French troops withdrew to the Greek border. It was an orderly withdrawal which was necessary due to the eventual loss of Serbia. Although the two battles were a defeat for Britain and France, they had still managed to help save part of the Serbian army which would have been lost otherwise. The Bulgarians stopped their advance at the Greek border, under the orders of their ally Germany, who were fearful about the Greeks entering the war. This gave the allies a bit of breathing space which meant that they could fortify their positions around Salonika before the expected Bulgarian attack that didn’t take place until the following August. (Struma Offensive.)
I reached the approximate location of the British lines south of Kosturino late in the morning. I say approximate as, although I knew where I was, I couldn’t find any traces on the ground. The stunted trees and heavy undergrowth had hidden what remained from the battle, so after an hour wasted in fruitless searching I gave up. Although I did find the memorial that was built to commemorate the 10th Irish Division, which is located next to the Greek military cemetery, just east of the village of Rabrovo. Built in the style of a Celtic cross, it overlooks the battlefields where those brave Irishmen fought to preserve another country’s freedom, something that they didn’t have, but that’s another story....
After retracing my route southwards for a few miles, I turned onto a small road which ran a few miles behind the border, eventually reaching the towns of Bogdantsi and further on, Gevgelija. Before I reached these, I found a picnic area next to a small lake, where I sat for a while, just taking in my surroundings.
Macedonia really is a beautiful and mostly unspoilt country, especially in the mountainous border areas where the lack of people means that nature is king. My eyes had been drawn to the high mountains which straddled the border further west. The old front lines pass straight over them and my intention was to follow them. I knew from my research that they would be brutal and unforgiving as well as wild and beautiful. My view of their northern side was slightly unsettling though, as there was a lot of snow left on them from the winter. I was still going up there, but things would be a little bit trickier because of this.
Gevgelija was in the news in late 2015, as the place where thousands of Syrian refugees crossed from Greece on their way to the ‘promised lands’ of western Europe. It was a nice and pleasant little town when I was there and I really hope that the migrant crisis hasn’t changed it. I was warned by the Dutch guy about the hordes of refugees heading north. I would come across them in a few days time, but for the moment I was blissfully unaware of the extent of the problem.
The next morning saw me following a small road which snaked up the lower slopes of the mountains. I was heading towards a ski resort, which was hopefully the easiest route to the top of the ridge that the front lines followed. Whilst on the road, I was stopped by some border police who checked my passport. All seemed to be in order and they asked me where I was going, I just pointed at the mountains above, which seemed to satisfy them and they let me continue on my way, phew! (It probably helped that I pointed towards the mountains away from the border!)
Further up past the village of Smrdliva Voda the road became a bit rougher, with gravel and rocks brought down onto the road during the spring thaw. It was no longer possible to ride along the steep switchbacks, so I steadily pushed my bike upwards, eager to get to the ski centre before nightfall and hopefully somewhere safe to camp.
After realising that the impending darkness was going to beat me, I took shelter in a small cave under a rocky outcrop, just where the forest gave way to the upper slopes of the mountain. As I was rather nervous about the local wildlife (brown bears), I quickly gathered enough firewood to see me through the night and positioned my fire at the entrance to the cave. After a meal of noodles and dried sausage, I drifted off into a slightly anxious but exhausted sleep.
A few hours later, I was woken by a “Woooo, hooooo!” coming from the forest, below the road, about half a mile or so away. The air was blue as I quickly built the fire up, hoping and praying that it was a wolf instead of a man eating, werewolf shepherd dog thingy! I slowly relaxed as I heard an answering howl coming from further away, followed by several more yelps and howls. After several minutes listening to the pack, they went silent and I drifted back to sleep, content that I was safe behind the fire and amazed that I had heard wolves howling in Europe.
The road became a track about half a mile higher up, which led in the direction of the summit and I reached the snowline a little bit further up. The snow was patchy and melting at first, with the ground underneath wet and muddy which made the going extremely difficult. It became easier higher up as the snow became firmer, although I still had to watch my step as I didn’t have any crampons with me.
Upon reaching the border at the summit of the ridge, I just knew that there was no way I could stick to my plans of following the ridge west, it was just too damned difficult and dangerous.
After leaving my bike at a col between two mountains, I headed east to ascend the final slopes of the mountain, Tzena. (7,135ft) Up there, I could get a clearer view of what lay further west. More snow, a lot more snow! Looking south east along the border, the terrain dropped back down into the forests which surround these mountains, but it was still possible to see the area which the Battle of Skra-di-Legen was fought on. This two day battle was fought by the newly formed Greek National Army of Defence alongside a French division, against a heavily fortified Bulgarian position on 29th-30th May 1918. The position was captured with a loss of over a thousand men on both sides.
After returning to my bike, I made the decision to head a mile or so to the west and ascend the mountain of Zelen Breg (7,106ft) After all, I’d probably never get another chance. The pristine wilderness feeling was slightly spoilt by the ski lifts, etc which littered its slopes, but I still had the feeling of being a long way from civilisation. My laminated google earth printout showed the locations of trenches near the summit, but it was all now buried underneath the snow which still clung to the mountain.
This area was the location of the Battle of Dobro Pole which was fought by Serbian and French troops between the 15th and 18th September 1918 and resulted in the collapse of the Bulgarian held front lines and ultimately forced Bulgaria out of the war.
Whilst on the summit and gazing towards Mt Kaimakchalan further to the west, my eyes caught sight of a black dot moving along the ridge of the next mountain to the west. I didn’t know what it was but I guessed it was probably a bear, as it was too large to be human. A primeval fear slowly crept into me. I was in an extremely vulnerable position all on my own up there, so I beat a hasty retreat back to my bike, only feeling better when I reached the rock strewn tarmac of the road below the ski centre. The decision was made, so I headed back down the long mountain road towards Gevgelija many miles below.
Despite reaching the summits of two mountains that morning, it was still only early afternoon when I reached Gevgelija, so after a quick break and a look at my maps, I decided to head north along the route that the French took in Autumn 1915, towards the town of Negotino and the Krivolak battlefield.
The main road which followed the Vardar river valley was very busy with traffic, so instead I travelled along a dusty track which followed the railway line north. After a mile or so, I noticed that there was an awful lot of rubbish strewn along the side of the track, after rounding a corner I discovered why. I had caught up with Europe’s refugee crisis.
At first there were only a few small groups, but further on I had to pass through a horde of them and I began to feel slightly apprehensive. Every single one of them was a young man. Where were the women, children and old people? I’m not going to get into politics as I had decided during the planning stage to keep politics out of it. Hell, I didn’t vote in the UK General Election because of it but from what I saw it looked more like a peaceful invasion than the normal refugees that you see on TV.
After speaking to a couple of them who spoke perfect English, a large group of them started to show a lot of interest in my bike. They probably thought that it would be easier to ride than walk and things weren’t looking good for me. Fortunately, just then a siren could be heard coming from the road a hundred or so yards away, which distracted them enough so that I could make my escape up a little path to the road. Coincidence, or had the police been watching them, I don’t know? But it probably saved me from walking home!
Back on the relative safety of the road I headed north, reaching the town of Negotino late in the afternoon. I headed a few miles further north to try to find the place where the Battle of Krivolak was fought. Unfortunately it was right in the middle of a Macedonian army training area a few miles north of the village of Krivolak. Oh well, at least I’d tried....
After returning back through Negotino, I headed south west to the town of Kavadarci, intending to camp in the hills to the south of the town. The lack of remaining daylight beat me, so I found a cheap hotel and settled in for the night. That evening, whilst speaking to Ruthy, she mentioned that there had been a shootout between the police and terrorists in northern Macedonia and asked if that was anywhere near where I planned to go. Unfortunately it was and we both agreed that it would be wise to find an alternative route. That alternative would involve going west then north, through Albania (gulp) and missing out Serbia altogether. Fortunately I had originally planned to go through Albania, but I’d dismissed it as being too risky, so at least I had a back-up plan.
The alternative route that I’d chosen after abandoning the mountains now involved heading back down south towards the mountains to try to get back to my original plans. The road south of Kavadarci wound upwards until I reached a plateaux which then gradually rose up to reach the mountains on the border. I was now following a rough road which was used by the Bulgarians as a main supply route for their frontline positions.
After about 10 miles I reached the Blastica River whose crystal clear waters rushed through the gorge that it had created over millennia. Above the water the trees clung to the steep hillsides, now green with the impending arrival of summer, whilst winter still clung to the mountains above. I felt like I was in my idea of paradise! Then the tarmac of the road disappeared and it turned into a track.
After stopping to get some water from the river, an old guy on a tractor beckoned me over and using hand gestures he pointed at my water bottles ‘telling’ me to follow him along a path at the side of the river. He showed me to a spring which was coming out of the rock on the side of the gorge. The spring had been improved by somebody in the past by the insertion of a metal pipe and below it some words had been carved that I couldn’t read, together with a date: 1916. I presume that it had been used by the Bulgarians during the war and was the first of many springs that I would utilise which had probably been built and used by the Bulgarian soldiers manning those wild and remote battlefields.
Further on, the road started to rise up into the mountains at the border and the steep switchbacks made it difficult to ride my fully laden bike, so I pushed instead. After passing through the small hamlet of Majden, I turned off the main track onto a smaller rutted track which headed up towards the old front line in the mountains above. The going had once again become very difficult so it took me approximately three hours to reach the top of the watershed. (4,000ft) All that was in front of me now was Greece, where I feared to go. Fortunately the track branched off here, with one part going down the other side and into Greece, whilst the other headed west along the border which I followed.
That track was probably used by the Macedonian border patrols in the past, but obviously didn’t see much recent traffic going by the deep ruts, boulders and trees blocking it. After a couple of hours, I reached a wide grassy clearing at the top of a mountain. (5,900ft) The snow was rapidly melting there, with rivulets of water flowing down into the tree line below. The gaps between the snow patches showed what lay beneath: century old trenches in remarkably good condition despite the passage of time zig zagged across the clearing. Two ruined buildings stood near the summit; maybe they offered some shelter to the Bulgarians who manned that lonely position? There was a distinct lack of shell holes on the ground, proof that it was probably deemed a position of little importance. The view was very good though, with the mountains from a couple of days ago easily visible to the east, whilst the bulk of Mt Kajmakcalan about 10-15 miles to the south west. That was my intended destination, but as I stared at its snow capped summit shining in the sun, I knew that it was slipping out of my grasp; there was just too much melting snow on it to make it possible whilst pushing my heavy bike. Where there wasn’t snow, mud and bogs probably prevailed, as I’d had to contend with some knee deep mud to reach my present location. No, it would be stupid to try, especially as I still had such a long way left to go on my journey. I will get up there one day though, as Mt Kajmakcalan is a special place on the Macedonian Front.
At a height of 8,281ft, Mt Kajmakcalan was one of the highest battlefields of the Balkan theatre during the war. It was also the first Serbian victory since they were driven out of their homeland the previous winter. They fought with a tenacity and courage that put the fear of God into the Bulgarian soldiers defending the mountain.
The attack started on the 12th of September 1916 and continued until the 30th, with the summit changing hands several times. Eventually the Bulgarians conceded defeat and fell back to some hastily prepared defences in the mountains a few miles to the north.
The Serbs lost 4,643 soldiers in the battle, whilst the Bulgarians lost over 5,000 (true figure unknown.)
After the war, a small