801 MT COY ASC
Balkans 1914
The Great War started in the Balkans with the assassination of the Austrian Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand on June the 28th 1914 by the Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princep (see picture) in Sarajevo. The assassination gave the Austro-Hungarians the excuse to declare war on Serbia on the 28th July 1914. The Austrians launched their attack at the end of August in the hills of western Serbia. As a result of tactical errors, the fierce four day battle of Cer resulted in the defeat of the Austro Hungarians, forcing them to retreat.
The Serbian army was put under pressure by its allies to try and stop the Austro-Hungarian 2nd army from being moved to the Russian front. The Serbian First Army reluctantly conducted a limited offensive across the Sava River into the Austro-Hungarian region of Syrmia, but it failed to achieve its objective, the Austro Hungarian second army were already on the move. The Timok division of the Serbian Second Army suffered a heavy defeat in a diversionary crossing, with around 6,000 casualties while inflicting only 2,000 casualties on the Austro Hungarians.
On the 7th September a renewed Austro-Hungarian attack from the west was launched, across the river Drina, this time with both the Fifth and the Sixth armies. The initial attack by the Fifth Army was repelled by the Serbian Second Army, with 4,000 Austro-Hungarian casualties, but the stronger Sixth Army managed to surprise the Serbian Third Army and gain a foothold. Despite additional units from the Serbian Second Army being sent to bolster the Third, the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army also managed to establish a bridgehead with a renewed attack.
The Serbs withdrew the First Army from Syrmia and used it to deliver a counterattack against the Sixth Army that initially went well, but finally bogged down in a bloody four-day fight on the Jagodnja mountain, both sides suffered horrendous losses in successive frontal attacks and counterattacks. Two Serbian divisions lost around 11,000 men, while Austro-Hungarian losses were probably comparable.
There followed a period of trench warfare which favoured the Austro-Hungarians with their greater resources particularly with regard to artillery. Having weakened the Serbian army, the Austro-Hungarians launched another attack on the 5th November. The Serbs resisted strongly but were forced to withdraw abandoning Belgrade on December 2nd.
The Austro-Hungarian forces were by this time dangerously overstretched, so the Serbs, having received artillery ammunition France and Greece, launched a full-scale counterattack with the entire Serbian Army on December 3rd. The Second and Third Serbian Armies overwhelmed the Austro-Hungarian Fifth forcing a full retreat back across the border into Austria-Hungary, and Belgrade was recaptured on December 15th 1914.