| British Salonika Force British Salonika Army | |
|---|---|
 An officer of the British Salonika Army demonstrating how to throw a Mills bomb | |
| Active | World War I |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Branch |  British Army |
| Type | Field army |
The British Salonika Army was a field army of the British Army during World War I. After the armistice in November 1918, it was disbanded, but component units became the newly formed Army of the Black Sea, and General Milne remained in command. [1]
The Army was formed in Salonika under Lieutenant-General Bryan Mahon to oppose Bulgarian advances in the region as part of the Macedonian front. [2] The army arrived in Salonika (along with French troops) on 15 October 1915. [3] In May 1916 Lieutenant-General George Milne replaced Bryan Mahon as commander of the Army. It eventually comprised two corps and as the Army of the Black Sea remained in place until 1921. [4] The dead of the British Salonika Army are commemorated by the Doiran Memorial.
British Salonika Force, March 1917 [4]
GHQ Troops
Commanders:
The 10th (Irish) Division, was one of the first of Kitchener's New Army K1 Army Group divisions, authorized on 21 August 1914, after the outbreak of the Great War. It included battalions from the various provinces of Ireland. It was led by Irish General Bryan Mahon and fought at Gallipoli, Salonika and Palestine. It was the first of the Irish Divisions to take to the field and was the most travelled of the Irish formations. The division served as a formation of the United Kingdom's British Army during World War I.
The 27th Division was an infantry division of the British Army raised during the Great War, formed in late 1914 by combining various Regular Army units that had been acting as garrisons about the British Empire. The division spent most of 1915 on the Western Front in France before moving to Salonika where it remained with the British Salonika Army for the duration of the war. In 1916 its commander Hurdis Ravenshaw was captured by an Austrian submarine whilst sailing to England. In 1918 in Salonika the division took part in the Battle of Doiran. It carried out occupation duties in the Caucasus in the post-war before being withdrawn from the region in 1919.
An army group is a military organization consisting of several field armies, which is self-sufficient for indefinite periods. It is usually responsible for a particular geographic area. An army group is the largest field organization handled by a single commander – usually a full general or field marshal – and it generally includes between 400,000 and 1,000,000 soldiers.
The Bulgarian First Army was a Bulgarian field army during the Balkan Wars, World War I and World War II.
Brigadier-General Sir Dalrymple Arbuthnot, 5th Baronet, CMG, DSO, JP was a British baronet and Army officer.
The Russian Expeditionary Force [REF] was a World War I military force sent to France and Greece by the Russian Empire. In 1915, the French requested that Russian troops be sent to fight alongside their own army on the Western Front. Initially they asked for 300,000 men, an unrealistically high figure, probably based on assumptions about Russia's 'unlimited' reserves. General Mikhail Alekseev, the Imperial Chief of Staff, was opposed to sending any Russian troops, although Nicholas II finally agreed to send a unit of brigade strength. The first Russian brigade finally landed at Marseille in April 1916.
Field Marshal George Francis Milne, 1st Baron Milne, was a senior British Army officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) from 1926 to 1933. He served in the Second Boer War and during the First World War he served briefly on the Western Front but spent most of the war commanding the British forces on the Macedonian front. As CIGS he generally promoted the mechanisation of British land forces although limited practical progress was made during his term in office.
The British XVI Corps was a British infantry corps during World War I. During World War II the identity was recreated for deceptive purposes.
228th Brigade was a formation of the British Army in both the First and Second World Wars.
Maurice Paul Emmanuel Sarrail was a French general of the First World War. Sarrail's openly socialist political connections made him a rarity amongst the Catholics, conservatives and monarchists who dominated the French Army officer corps under the Third Republic before the war, and were the main reason why he was appointed to command at Salonika.
The Macedonian front, also known as the Salonica front, was a military theatre of World War I formed as a result of an attempt by the Allied Powers to aid Serbia, in the autumn of 1915, against the combined attack of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The expedition came too late and with insufficient force to prevent the fall of Serbia and was complicated by the internal political crisis in Greece. Eventually, a stable front was established, running from the Albanian Adriatic coast to the Struma River, pitting a multinational Allied force against the Bulgarian army, which was at various times bolstered with smaller units from the other Central Powers. The Macedonian front remained stable, despite local actions, until the Allied offensive in September 1918 resulted in Bulgaria capitulating and the liberation of Serbia.
13th Corps was a corps-sized formation of the British Army that fought on the Western Front during the First World War and was reformed for service during the Second World War, serving in the Mediterranean and Middle East throughout its service.
The Allied leaders of World War I were the political and military figures that fought for or supported the Allied Powers during World War I.
The Armée d'Orient (AO) was a field army of the French Army during World War I who fought on the Macedonian front.
XII Corps was an army corps of the British Army that fought in the First and Second World Wars. In the First World War, it formed part of the British Salonika Force on the Macedonian front. In the Second World War, it formed part of the British Second Army during Operation Overlord and the subsequent North-West Europe Campaign of 1944-45.
Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Fuller Maitland Wilson was a British Army officer who, throughout his long military career which spanned over four decades, served in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the Second Boer War and the First World War, during which he served with distinction, commanding a division on the Western Front and an army corps in the lesser-known Salonikan campaign.
XIV Corps was a British infantry corps during the First World War. During the Second World War the identity was recreated for deceptive purposes.
The Battle of Kosturino was a World War I battle fought between 6 and 12 December 1915. It was fought in the initial stage of the Macedonian campaign, in the Balkans Theatre. On 6 December, Bulgarian troops attacked the French and British-held trenches in Kosturino, at the time part of the Kingdom of Serbia. Though the early offensive was held in check, on 8 December, Bulgaria managed to infiltrate the Memesli ravine. Bulgaria then seized Crete Simonet, thus threatening to outflank the Allies. The Entente defeat at Kosturino led to the complete withdrawal of Allied forces from Serbia, thus enabling the Central Powers to build the Berlin to Constantinople rail line. In the meantime, the Allies concentrated on solidifying their defenses in Greece.
General Officers of World War I is an oil painting by John Singer Sargent, completed in 1922. It was commissioned by South African financier Sir Abraham Bailey, 1st Baronet to commemorate the generals who commanded British and British Empire armies in the First World War.
The Allied Army of the Orient (AAO) was the name of the unified command over the multi-national allied armed forces on the Salonika front during the First World War.
