Captain Cyril Falls
The second of the two Macedonia campaign volumes completes the narrative of British military operations in that Balkan theatre. The four months from late May to early September 1917 were relatively uneventful apart from raids, the most dramatic occurrence being a major fire in Salonika which destroyed between a third and a half of the Greek city, rendering 80,000 people homeless. Towards the end of 1917 things livened up, with operations in the Struma Valley, and at the end of the year the Allied C-in-C, the French General Sarrail, was recalled and replaced by Gen. Guillaumat. In May/June 1918 there were Franco-Greek operations, a testing rehearsal for the planned final offensive which was launched in September. The battles of Dobropolje and Dojran caused the Bulgarians to retreat. The narrative takes the story through the Allied pursuit to the armistice with Bulgaria on 30 September 1918. Total battle casualties among British and Indian troops amounted to 23,762; total non-battle casualties numbered 481,262, of whom just over 198,000 were malaria cases.
