The Society’s 2025 tour (Sunday 21st to Tuesday 30th September) of the British Salonika Force battlefields is now well underway – with battlefield studies, cemetery visits and acts of commemoration. This year the tour has a special focus on artillery and small-scale operations.
The tour began with a Ceremony of Remembrance at Kirechkoi-Hortkoi cemetery, with a wreath laid by Patron of the Society, the Honourable Ann Straker, before moving on to Triada village for an introduction on the BSF in the Struma Valley and the role of artillery on that part of the front.
You can follow the progress of the tour on Facebook here.
Patron of the Society, the Honourable Ann Straker, lays a wreath at the Ceremony of Remembrance at Kirechkoi-Hortkoi cemetery
Programme for the Ceremony of Remembrance at Kirechkoi-Hortkoi cemeteryMemorial Wreaths at Kirechkoi-Hortkoi cemeteryTour members begin their site visits
SCS Secretary Chris Loader recently recorded (on July 28th) a new podcast as part of the History Rage series in which he shares his personal connection to the Salonika Campaign, through his family history, and discusses the background and complexities of the war in Greece.
You can listen to the podcast here (or via the image below):
The podcast is also available via these other podcast channels:
And earlier in the year, Jake also explained the background to the Salonika Campaign for Redcoat History.
*Dr Jake Gasson is a National Army Museum Fellow based at King’s College London, where he is a postdoctoral researcher. He obtained a DPhil from Pembroke College, Oxford, specialising in the Macedonian front of the First World War.
The ‘Artillery & Small Operations’ Tour – Sunday 21 to Tuesday 30 September 2025
Explore the key locations of the British Salonika Force during the 2025 battlefield tour, with a special focus on artillery and the small-scale but intense operations that defined the campaign—raids, ambushes, and offensive patrols.
At Doiran, we’ll examine the crucial role of both British and Bulgarian artillery during the First and Second Battles of Doiran. On the Kosturino battlefield, we’ll revisit the desperate December 1915 fighting of the 10th (Irish) Division. In the Struma Valley, we’ll explore the sites of XVI Corps’ limited offensives between 1916 and 1918, as well as the defensive positions held by British forces.
Exploring sites during the 2024 tour
Our journey continues to Bowls Barrow and Smol (now Micro Dassos) in the Vardar sector, where we’ll see firsthand how operations were often designed to divert Bulgarian attention from Doiran. We’ll also visit sections of the Birdcage Line defences and the village of Mavroplagia (formerly Karamudli) in the Krusha Balkan Hills.
The tour will include visits to several Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, including Doiran (with the Memorial to the Missing), Karasouli, Kirechkoi-Hortakoi, Lembet Road, and Struma.
Running from Sunday 21 to Tuesday 30 September 2025, the tour is timed to coincide with the official commemorations marking the end of the Salonika Campaign, held over the last full weekend of September.
Led by SCS Chair, Alan Wakefield, this is a great opportunity to walk in the footsteps of BSF history.
To register your interest and receive further details, contact Alan Wakefield via email.
Amongst the souvenirs of the campaign collected by Private Herbert Price of the ASC Supply Department is a rather fragile flyer for Salonika’s Palace Cinema for the week beginning Monday 30 October 1916. Two films were on offer, the first a French silent film from the previous year, Strass & Compagnie, described as ‘a grand patriotic and poignant drama … in four long parts’, which doesn’t seem a great choice for men seeking escapism from war. In which case, maybe Herbert’s preference was for the 1912 American short, A Millionaire for A Day. Described by one US paper as ‘a screaming comedy’, this 1912 American silent short – based on a true story – is about a mechanic who goes to New York City and squanders his inheritance in a single day, returning home broke but wiser (Wikipedia). On the coming Friday, the film Pont du Diable (Devil’s Bridge) was promised, although this sounds uncomfortably like a location in the Struma valley!
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.
South Asian Heritage Month seems as good a time as any to consider the, often overlooked, South Asian contribution to the Macedonian campaign. Indeed, had the campaign continued into 1919, this contribution would have been even greater as plans were well underway to “Indianize” the BSF as had already happened in Palestine, but on an even greater scale.
On Burn’s Night (25 January) I introduced William Richmond who, at the age of 20, enlisted in the 10th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Highland Regiment (Black Watch) on 11 September 1914. After finding themselves in various English camps during 1915 and spending two months in France the Battalion, with the rest of 26th Division, started heading off for Salonika – via Marseille – in November 1915.
Today is my grandfather’s birthday. Were he still alive, Fred would be 133 years old! Back in 1982 I was working abroad, but took the opportunity of a short trip home to spend some time with Fred and we talked about his army service and I made notes. I am so glad I did as he died a few months later. Whilst there is so much more that I could have found out, I am pleased that I do have some first-hand accounts and it’s one of these I want to share with you today.
Modern Thessaloniki seems a quintessentially Greek city but, during the First World War, it was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural city which, just a few years before, had been part of the Ottoman empire. It was especially a Jewish city.
Salonika Campaign Society, 1915-1918 