2nd Special Russian Infantry Brigade

The Allies intended to transfer the 1st Special Brigade to the Thessaloniki Front , but General M.V. Alekseev , Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, strongly argued against such a plan, arguing that the ranks of the 1st Brigade had already been sent to France, so a sudden change of route could have a negative impact on the fighting spirit of the fighters. General Alekseyev instead proposed to form another, 2nd special brigade especially for Thessaloniki.

The brigade was formed in the Khamovniki barracks in Moscow in the spring and summer of 1916 as part of the 3rd and 4th special infantry regiments and the Marching Battalion . The manning of the brigade was carried out intentionally by personnel officers and non-commissioned officers . At the same time, the formation of the brigade was carried out by isolating entire companies from existing regiments, which gave the units greater cohesion.

The staff in the brigade, there were 224 officers and 9,338 lower ranks . Colonel Tarbeev was appointed commander of the 3rd special infantry regiment, Colonel Alexandrov was the 4th special regiment, and Colonel Demyanov was the marching battalion. The headquarters of the brigade was appointed to lead Colonel Shishkin .

All necessary technical means, small arms , machine guns of the brigade should have been provided by the French upon arrival of the infantry brigade in the Balkans, in the homeland the troops were supplied only with camp kitchens and gigs . The convoy at the brigade was to be formed upon arrival in Thessaloniki.

During the preparation of the soldiers to be sent to the Balkans, the brigade commander General Diterichs fundamentally showed meticulousness and maximum pedantry in the exercises, since the brigade was to become the face of the Russian army in the Balkans. Historian V.Zh. Tsvetkov writes that the commander’s orders have been preserved, showing the general’s attitude toward preparing the brigade .

Unlike the 1st brigade, heading to France through the Far East , it was decided to send the 2nd Special Brigade by sea through the port of Arkhangelsk to Brest . The first echelon in the headquarters and part of the 3rd Regiment, led by General Diterichs, sailed on 3 steamers Venezuela, Martazan and Umtali from Russia on June 21 (July 4), 1916. On July 3, the ships arrived in Brest, where the French arranged a solemn meeting for the Russian soldiers , after which the brigade was transported across France to Marseille by rail, and, after landing there on the military cruiser Gallia on August 5, they were delivered directly to Thessaloniki.

The Russian 2nd Special Brigade could not immediately take part in the advance planned by Sarrail , since according to the schedule it was supposed to arrive on the Thessaloniki Front in three echelons: July 27, August 8 and 10. The newly arrived Russian units still needed to be armed and trained to handle unfamiliar European-style weapons, equipped with a convoy, and so on. Arriving Russian troops were stationed in the large Zeitenschink military camp, on the outskirts of the city, where the main allied military base , warehouses and hospitals were located. There were overlays with the supply of the Russian brigade , for example, completely unmanned mules were sent from Australia to transport the brigade , and there were no drovers to them. Therefore, from the composition of the arrived with the first echelon of the 3rd regiment, 550 fighters had to be allocated as drovers. In the Thessaloniki area, in addition, malaria raged, so there were already up to 180 patients in this regiment. Thus, the de facto lack of staff in the 3rd Russian regiment alone amounted to 850 bayonets .

The 4th regiment of the brigade was late with its arrival in the camp, in particular, due to the fact that on August 15, 1916 near Marseilles , the temporary commander of the 3rd battalion of the 4th Special Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel M. Krause , was killed by his own soldiers , in connection with which the commander Colonel Aleksandrov was forced to stay in Marseilles to investigate, temporarily transferring command of his regiment to Lt. Col. Osikovsky .

General Diterichs, who arrived in the first echelon with the 3rd Regiment, did everything in his power to expedite the training and equipment of the troops subordinate to him.

From the very moment the 2nd Special Brigade arrived in Thessaloniki, a request was immediately received from the Serbian command to the Supreme Allied Command for the inclusion of Russian troops in the Serbian army, to which the Russian commander General Diterichs refused with firm refusal, referring to “the inconvenience of including the troops of a great power in composition of a small state ”, proceeding primarily from considerations of diplomacy and taking care of the interests of its fighters - if he agreed to the Serbian proposal, he would lose his right to vote at senior war meetings hief all allied troops on the Salonika front.

The Russian units, who arrived in Greece in early August, came to the front at the end of the month.

On August 17, the day the agreement was signed with Romania, the Bulgarians themselves went on the offensive on General Sarrail’s army, striking simultaneously on both weak allied flanks in the Doira area and in Western Macedonia. The rapid offensive of the Bulgarians was facilitated by assistance from Greek officers whose troops were demobilized at that time - as far back as February 1916, the Germans and the Greek government concluded an unspoken agreement on the Greek refusing to resist the Bulgarian units led by German officers.

At the time the troops of General Diterichs arrived at the Thessaloniki Front , Romania unsuccessfully entered the war, immediately beginning to lose. The troops of the Thessaloniki Front had to urgently rescue the new “ally,” and the General Commander of the Allied Forces, General Sarrail, abandoned the 2nd Special Brigade , the concentration of which was not yet completed, to liquidate the breakthrough of the Bulgarians who managed to forestall the advance of the entire Thessaloniki Front in support of Romania.

Soon, the nature of the demonstration of the Bulgarian offensive in this direction became apparent, and that the main blow by the Bulgarians was delivered in the direction of the Monastery of Ostrov, against the Serbian army. The 1st Bulgarian army here attacked the left wing of the 3rd Serbian army and drove the Yugoslavs to Kostur from Lerina, and the left flank of the Danube division to Ostrovsky lake. The Serbs had to leave Florin, Banitsa, and on August 23, the Bulgarians captured the line of heights in the Moghlen region. As a result, the Bulgarians managed to cover the group of allied forces on both sides.

This situation bothered Sarrail, who gathered on August 20 all the senior military leaders of the allied contingents. For the first time, the head of the 2nd Special Brigade, Major General MK Diterichs . The meeting discussed the urgent concentration of all forces in the direction of the Bulgarian attacks and repulse their attacks and go on the offensive in the western, Serbian direction.

The Serbian Command transferred the Vardar Division and the 1st Timok Brigade from the 2nd Army to the threatened area. On the left flank, south of Lake Ostrovo, Sarrail wanted to create a strong group of the 2nd French divisions and the Russian 2nd Special Brigade under the general command of the Commander of the French Eastern Army, General Cordonnier. The task of this group was to bypass the right flank of the Bulgarians by attacking along the Baba Naretsk ridge on Florina and the Monastery.

The 2nd Diterichs Special Brigade , together with the weak numerically the 57th and 156th French divisions , was part of the strike group, whose task was to set the outcome of the upcoming battle with their maneuver . From the composition of the Russian brigade at that moment, only the 3rd regiment was ready for urgent performance, weakened by the allocation of drovers to mules, however, in this situation, General Diterichs decided to move with him, without waiting for the completion of the preparation of the 4th regiment of the brigade.

The first battle of the Russian units on the Thessaloniki Front took place on September 10, 1916, when, having at his disposal only one regiment and his own headquarters, General Diterichs went into battle together with the French units. After repulsing the attack of the Bulgarian infantry, the allies began preparations for the occupation of the city of Monastery in southern Serbian Macedonia, the troops of the Eastern sector of the front dealt the main blow, and the Diterichs brigade was on the cutting edge. Despite the difficult mountain conditions in which it was necessary to carry out the offensive, on September 17 the allies took a key position on the approaches to the Monastery - the city of Florin, and one of the goals of the offensive was achieved - the retreat of the Bulgarians to the north began.

The Supreme Allied Command appreciated the successes of the Special Brigade in this offensive, awarding the 3rd Special Infantry Regiment with a Military Cross with a palm ribbon on the order of October 19, 1916. General Diterichs was personally awarded the same award, dozens of Russian soldiers and officers received St. George's crosses and orders .

The next attack was scheduled for October 4, and it was decided to precede with a general 24-hour artillery preparation. On October 2, the Russian commander ordered the troops to go on the attack with two columns immediately on the day of the attack, immediately after the completion of the artillery preparation. The right column, led by Lt. Col. Osikovsky, consisting of 3 battalions of the 4th Special Regiment and a group of 75 mm batteries, was moving towards Kalenik. The left column under the command of Colonel Tarbeev, consisting of 3 battalions of the 3rd Special Regiment with a group of mounted batteries, was ordered to attack Klestina. The 2 bis regiment of zouaves remained in reserve .

The Bulgarians anticipated the Allied attack, and on the night of October 2 to 3 began to retreat north. Diterichs could only begin the pursuit of the retreating Bulgarians. This retreat was associated with the defeat of the Bulgarians in a bloody battle in the Kaimakchalan mountain range. On October 4, Dieterichs of his division was tasked with continuing the pursuit of the enemy, dispersing the enemy’s cover and overtaking the main forces of the retreating enemy. On the evening of October 4, both regiments of the Special Russian Brigade crossed the Rakov River. In the absence of a properly organized reconnaissance, no one in the Russian regiments, who had passed the large village of Negochany, who immediately attacked the Bulgarian counterattack, did not expect to meet the strongly fortified position of the Bulgarians on their way. Two kilometers outside the village, on a smooth field, the Russian regiments were met by heavy Bulgarian machine-gun and rifle fire.

The participant in the battle, the officer of the 4th Special Regiment V. N. Smirnov described this terrible episode:

Having joined the bayonets , the companies rushed forward, and unexpectedly stumbled upon a wide strip of wire barriers.

Without scissors, under terrible fire they tried unsuccessfully to knock down the wire with their butts , but they were forced to lay under it in fatal fire in the cold autumn water.

It was not possible to dig in the swamp. So they lay in the water and only in the morning they retreated to about the middle of the field between the enemy fortifications and the village of Negochany, where they began to dig trenches .

The situation of the Russian units was extremely complicated by the heavy losses in the headquarters of the 4th Regiment, which stopped in one of the houses of the village of Negochany, which was either shot in advance by the Bulgarians, or the headquarters itself unmasked itself. As a result of a hit that hit a wall of a house and a shell exploded in a room of 6 headquarters officers, the 2nd bis regiment of zouaves, Colonel Deschisel ( French Jean Michel Henri de Chizelle ), two translators of the 4th regiment, were killed. The adjutant of the 4th regiment, staff captain Krzhanovsky, was mortally wounded and died without regaining consciousness. The regiment commander, Lieutenant Colonel Osikovsky, was injured. Starting from the next day, October 5, the Russian troops had only to strengthen their own positions; they began to sit in the trenches near the Negochans, just 2 transitions from the goal of the offensive, the Monastery, which lasted until November 18, as long as 1.5 months. Despite the 2 attempted assaults (October 6 and 14), the assaults , despite powerful artillery preparation, ended in nothing: reaching the wire fences, the Russian soldiers did not find any passages in it and were forced to return to their positions, losing in the first case 8 officers and 450 soldiers, in the second - 367 soldiers.

The Franco-Russian division of Dieterichs, which, after joining the 4th Special Regiment and the French 2nd Bis Zuav Regiment and 2 artillery groups, joined the brigade , soon resumed their offensive and soon, on November 6 (19), 1916, the 1st battalion 3 on the shoulders of a retreating enemy burst into the Monastery on the shoulders of the Special Russian Regiment. The taking of this important point meant the breakthrough of the Austro-German-Bulgarian front and the unification of the Eastern and Western sections of the Thessaloniki Front. As noted by V.Zh. Tsvetkov, the allied forces first entered the territory of Serbia - in Bitol, thereby laying the foundation for the liberation of the Serbian people from the invaders . In his orders, General Dieterichs emphasized the importance and significance of this victory as an expression of Slavic unity, “held together not only by the Common Faith and Common History, but also by jointly shed blood in the battles of the Great World War”.

From the illustrated magazine Sparks , November 13, 1916 No. 44:

One cannot but welcome the new success gained by our valiant Allies on November 6 on the Macedonian front. After many days of stubborn battles in the area of ​​the Monastery (Bitol), the Serbs captured a height of 1212 northeast of Cheget. Thanks to the victory won by the Serbs, the position of the enemy, defending the ancient capital of Macedonia, has deteriorated so much that the fate of the Monastery from that moment was predetermined. The Germans claim that with the occupation of the aforementioned height, the Bulgarian-Germans themselves cleared the city and moved to a position north of it. This version does not correspond to the actual situation, which is clearly visible from the fact of the pursuit of the enemy, retreating to Prilepu under the pressure of the Serbs. This proves that the withdrawal of the Bulgarian-Germans did not occur as a result of a previously adopted decision, but under pressure from the Serbian, French and Russian troops. Interestingly, stubborn, fierce battles were fought by the Serbs together with their valiant allies before Bitol on the same historical days of January 2, 3, 4 and 5, as in 1912. Everyone, as a close-knit family, hurried to the church gospel, which was to be heard on November 6 in Bitola, announcing the significant anniversary of his release from the Turks. And ripened. At 8 a.m., a Russian infantry regiment and French and Serbian cavalry entered the city.

Arriving 2 days later in the liberated Monastery, the Serbian Korolevich Alexander Karageorgievich expressed his special gratitude to the Russian troops. The exploits of the Franco-Russian division of Diterichs were noted in France: the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Sarrail, wrote in a special order: “Russians, in the Greek mountains, as well as on the Serbian plain, your legendary courage never betrayed you.”

On January 10, 1917, for the battles at the Monastery, General Diterichs was awarded the highest award in France - the Order of the Legion of Honor . The merits of the commander of the 2nd Special Brigade in the battles near the Monastery were also noted in Russia - Diterichs was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir of the 2nd degree with swords.

After the liberation of Bitol, the Allied offensive stopped and the war, like on other fronts of the Great War , acquired a positional character. Since November 1916, the 2nd Special Brigade under the command of General Dieterichs was included in the Serbian Army and held positions in the Zerne River Valley, and in October new reinforcements arrived from Thessaloniki Front from Russia - the 4th Special Brigade, also part of the Serbian army .

In March 1917, the Russian troops of the Thessaloniki Front received the terrible news that the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II abdicated. Despite the fact that, far from his homeland, General Diterichs could hardly understand the true meaning of the act of renunciation, he had to explain the situation to his subordinates. And the general did this, proceeding from the traditional Russian principle “The army is out of politics”, understanding as a military man that the main goal for the troops is to win the war. In addition, in the eyes of the monarchist, Diterichs, the Provisional Government had the status of power, which the Emperor and the Supreme Commander ordered to obey. The team took the oath of new authority.

A new allied offensive in the Balkans began on May 9, 1917, on the eve of which all the allied forces were united into an attack group under the command of the French general Lebu. In the new battles , the 2nd Special Brigade suffered heavy losses: about 1,300 soldiers and officers were killed, wounded and missing. Shaken by the death of his best fighters, General Diterichs sent a report to Sarrail on May 18 about the need to send his brigade to the rear , since since August 1916, when the Russian units arrived in Thessaloniki , the troops were constantly at the forefront.

On May 24, Sarrail signed an order to withdraw the Russian brigade to the rear. This order coincided with the reorganization of the Russian brigades and their reduction into the 2nd Special Division, which Dieterichs was to take command on June 5, 1917. However, in early July, the general was urgently summoned to Russia.

In the spring of 1917, anti-war actions were held in the French troops in Macedonia, after which the allied command saw a “corrupting effect” on their forces in the Russian troops. Indeed, in Russian brigades there appeared demands for a complete cessation of hostilities, in the autumn of 1917 fraternization with the Bulgarians began.

After the October Revolution and the adoption of the Peace Decree, soldiers demanded an immediate return to Russia. However, the French command of the Thessaloniki Front stated that the Peace Decree does not apply to Russian troops abroad. Special brigades were divided into three categories: military volunteers, labor workers, and persons demanding immediate return to Russia (they were sent to North Africa ) ^[1] . As a result, about 14,500 people were in rear operations in Greece, 4,500 soldiers were transported to North Africa; More than a thousand people went to France as military volunteers, 1,195 people joined the Foreign Legion (in addition, Polish soldiers from special brigades entered Polish formations organized in France ) ^[2] .

By the end of 1918, more than half of the composition of labor battalions died of starvation and disease ^[3] . The bulk of the soldiers returned to Russia in 1920, but the repatriation was completed only in 1923 ^[4] . Most of the special brigade fighters took part in the Civil War upon their return (2/3 on the side of the Red Army ; 1/3 in the ranks of the White movement ) ^[5] .

• V.Zh. Flowers "General Diterichs"
• A. Boltaevsky. RUSSIAN MILITIES ON THE SALONIK FRONT IN 1916 - 1918.