9th Battalion at Salonika (1918): Difference between revisions

==The Pioneers: Salonika 1918==

The new year opened with a continuation of reinforcements arriving for the French and British forces on the Macedonian Front. It appeared, at this time, that what was occurring on the Western Front was to ultimately have an effect on what was happening at Salonika. As the bitter fighting raged in France and Belgium, and with a shortage of troops, it had at first been examined as a possibility to withdraw a large body of men to the Western Front from other less important theatres; as a result of this a decision was made to extract no less than 24 battalions, 12 from the French and 12 from the British, to help with the fighting in France. How this was achieved from the British was thus: there were 12 brigades containing 4 battalions each; each of these brigades had one battalion removed to cover the numbers required. Roughly each battalion at full strength will consist of 900-1000 men so this would have totalled 12,000 men from the British and roughly the same from the French. This, however, would not have tipped the balance especially when armies are counted in millions. The reduction of men on the Macedonian Front did not hit the fighting force too hard and the Italian, Greek and Serbian forces were still plentiful, all be it if dispersed across a wide area.<div style="float:right; margin-left:15px;">