Oct 2024 – Salonika Campaign Society, 1915-1918

The Navy was There!

For understandable reasons we tend to focus on the British Salonika Army but, on this Trafalgar Day, we should remember the important part the Royal Navy played in the campaign. In the very last issue of the Salonika Reunion Association’s publication – The Mosquito (May 1969) – there is a fine tribute from the Pongos of the BSF to the Senior Service. Here are some extracts.

Remembering the BSF

As is customary on the first Saturday after the anniversary of the Bulgarian armistice (30 September 1918), SCS members and friends gathered at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Saturday 5 October to lay a wreath and remember the dead of the British Salonika Force.

Once Through The Alphabet

Whilst the BSF did not produce a poet of the stature of Wilfred Owen, it did have Rifleman T. B. Clark of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps whose poetry was published in a small volume – Rhymes of A Rifleman – by William Nicholson & Sons Ltd of London. Whilst this has not been perpetuated through exam syllabuses, from it we get an interesting view of the campaign from a thoughtful, pre-war private soldier. So, for National Poetry Day, here is Rifleman Clark’s poem, Once Through The Alphabet – Tommy’s Version, composed in the trenches in Macedonia, October 1917.