View of the Monastir Road Cemetery and Memorial
A part of the Memorial in honour of some of those who fell.
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View of the Monastir Road Cemetery and Memorial |
A part of the Memorial in honour of some of those who fell. |
In a peaceful suburb 3 km from Thessaloniki, named after the sister of Alexander
the Great, lies the Monastir Road Indian cemetery and memorial, well-tended by
the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. My husband and I visited this spot in
early September; some 87 years after the guns fell silent at the end of the
Salonika campaign of 1915-18 by the Allied forces against Bulgarian-German
forces. The cemetery and memorial are a testament to the sacrifice made by some
517 Indian servicemen during the campaign in Macedonia.
Being here in Greece, it was an emotional, proud and privileged moment for us,
as we remembered our brave servicemen who had come so far away from home and
fought for a cause they may not have comprehended, doing their duty. They came
from 38 different units of the Indian Army from areas such as Andhra, UP,
Punjab, Nepal. Some units, such as the Gurkhas, had very distinguished battle
records. The men served mainly with the Royal Artillery, the Transport Corps of
Bharatpur and Indore, the Mule Corps and, after 1918, certain Indian regiments.
The cemetery, constructed during 1916-20, is comprised of two plots - the
southern plot which contains burials, and the northern plot, in which the
remains of over 200 Indian servicemen were cremated in accordance with their
faith. There are now 357 Indian servicemen of World War I buried or commemorated
in the cemetery. The northern plot contains a memorial with panels bearing the
names of those Indians who were cremated. The Monastir Road Indian Memorial
bears the names of over 160 Indian servicemen who died in Macedonia during the
First World War, and whose graves could not be marked or moved.
The Salonika campaign was particularly brutal, in which for every casualty of
battle three died of malaria, influenza or other diseases. In October 1915, a
combined Franco-British force of some two large brigades landed at Salonika at
the request of the Greek Prime Minister. The objective was to help the Serbs in
their fight against Bulgarian aggression. However the expedition arrived too
late, and the Serbs were defeated before they landed. It was decided that the
force would be kept in place for future operations. The Greek Chief of the
General Staff had told them “You will be driven into the sea, and you will not
have time even to cry for mercy”.
From October 1915 to the end of November 1918, the British Salonika Force
suffered some 2,800 deaths in action, 1,400 from wounds, and 4,200 from
sickness. The campaign afforded few successes for the Allies, and none of any
importance until the last two months. The action of the Commonwealth force was
hampered throughout by widespread and unavoidable sickness and by continual
diplomatic and personal differences with neutrals or Allies. On one front there
was a wide malarial river valley and on the other, difficult mountain ranges,
and many of the roads and railways it required had to be specially constructed.
At that time, the Indian army had one of the only two units of Mountain
Artillery in the British Army. Mules were used to transport the guns. In
addition to their tasks on the cannons, the Indian Mountain Gunners had to
handle and care for large numbers of animals, used not just to move the cannons,
but also to move everything they owned and needed in the field. The mountain
gunners had to walk whenever the animals carried their burdens. Sometimes the
terrain was not suitable for animals carrying heavy loads and the Indian
Mountain Gunners had to manhandle their guns up into precarious positions on
hill and cliff tops as well as into and behind the front line trenches, where
their animals couldn't go, to provide their very effective fire.
As we came away, we were struck by the thought that this corner of the Balkans
had seen the tides of history ebb and flow – from Philip of Macedonia and his
son Alexander the Great, to the recent convulsions of the break up of
Yugoslavia. Indian servicemen had indeed played their role in Salonika,
Gallipoli, and in Europe, in both the Great wars.
Shobhana Balakrishnan
Athens
10/22/2009