Beware The Greeks...

In the last few days of November, the 1st Battalion set foot in Macedonia as part of the newly created British Salonika Force (B.S.F.)
In this curious and often overlooked backwater of the war, the British with their French allies, joined a Greek and later Italian force, in assisting their ally Serbia.
The Serbians, who were first to be attacked in the conflict, fought gallantry and became a thorn in the Austro-Hungarian's side. Despite continued attempts to defeat them, the Serbians fought on.
On the Serbians flank was the Bulgarians who held the important buffer zone of the mountainous region between them and the Austro-Hungarians. Bulgarian and Serbia had never been friends in living memory. Two major wars before the outbreak of the Great War had seen Bulgaria victorious and then defeated. Their battle against the Serbs was unfinished business.
In the autumn of 1915, just as the Allies were contemplating their attack at Loos on the Western Front, the combined might of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria, attacked Serbia, causing the Serbs to be overrun in a matter of weeks. In a desperate, and altogether late gesture, the Allies mustered an expeditionary force to be sent to the region to bolster the Serbs.
It came altogether too late to prevent Serbia's fall, but did allow what was left of the Serbian armies, to escape into Greece. Behind their withdrawal, the allies established a 'stable' front line against the central powers, though for the majority of the campaign, the main enemy of the Allies would be the Bulgarians. 
The front line stretched from the Adriatic in the south to the Struma Valley in the north and for the next three years, the 1st Battalion would linger here in a bitter, hot, dusty fight against the Bulgars. Like Philip of Macedon; killed by his bodyguard in 336BC, many an old Suffolk soldier viewed his new allies with suspicion and just a little caution.

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