The Story of the Great War, Volume 4: Champagne, Artois, Grodno; Fall of Nish; Caucasus; Mesopotamia; Development of Air Strategy; United States and the War
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume 4: Champagne, Artois, Grodno; Fall of Nish; Caucasus; Mesopotamia; Development of Air Strategy; United States and the War
World War, 1914-1918
The first line of the Teutons wavered, then broke and scattered.
Coming up against reenforcements behind, they re-formed and advanced
again. And again the Shumadians burst down on them and engaged them
hand to hand. Fighting like savages, they drove the invaders before
them for a considerable distance, taking over 3,000 prisoners and
several guns. When finally they retired just as the main body of the
advancing foe was coming up, they left behind them hundreds of enemy
dead, the fallen literally covering the ground in heaps.
The mixed forces of Koevess, keeping in touch with Gallwitz's right
wing, had been advancing more or less in line with the Germans,
marching along the railroad from Belgrade and Obrenovatz toward the
Western Morava. South of Belgrade the Serbians had put up a stout
resistance at Kosmai, but were finally dislodged by the heavy
artillery fire. On October 25, 1915, Koevess arrived at Ratcha, south
of Palanka, on the right side of the Morava. After a hard fought
battle at Gorni Milanovatz, he reached Cacak on November 1, 1915, a
few miles west of Kragujevatz. Here it was that he struck the Western
Morava and the railroad passing along it eastward from Ushitze to its
junction with the main line. Farther to the westward his cavalry, on
October 26, 1915, had occupied Valievo on the Upper Kolubara and one
of his divisions had crossed the Maljen Mountains, where the Austrians
had been so humiliatingly defeated the year before. Farther west, but
more to the south, the Austrians, who had pushed on from Vishegrad,
arrived in Ushitze on November 2, 1915, and presently effected a
junction with the main body.
Meanwhile, a day or two before the end of the month, an incident up in
the northeast foreshadowed the attainment of the main objective of the
Austro-German forces. The Serbians had, naturally, withdrawn from this
section and now a German cavalry patrol, scouting in advance of its
own lines, met with a body of Bulgarian scouts. The Bulgarian and the
Teutonic forces had come in contact with each other. But the chief
significance of this fact was that now the road was open for
communication between Germany and Turkey. Even if the railroad running
from Belgrade to Constantinople, by way of Sofia, should be
temporarily cut, or should not be captured throughout its entire
length for some time, shipments of war material could already be made
to Turkey by way of the Danube down to Rustchuk in northern Bulgaria
and thence by railroad. Thus the Turks at Gallipoli, who had been
running short of ammunition, could now be relieved.
This opening of communication with Turkey was made much of in the
German official reports and some of the newspapers began referring to
Mackensen's army as "the army of Egypt."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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