The role of Italy in saving the Serbian Army and people, 1915-1916

final 5,000 were transported to Sardinia January 1916.
Here now is a description of the Serbian Army from the pen of a
witness, Paolo Giordani:
„There were hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of soldiers and
refugees, prisoners and women, all mixed together in an incredible heap
of torn rags from which were swarming insects and out of which were
peering living skeletons. All were stiff from cramps in their empty stom-
achs, all squeezed together in the jaws of hunger and thirst, victims of
battles – the most terrible [kind] – fought over a hunded days and a hun-
dred nights with clenched teeth, battles with their own emaciated bodies
which had endured every possible torment, battles with mud and rocks,
with cholera and gangrene. They all had the same expression on their
faces, the feverish look of hunger. Their sunken eyes and frozen glassy
stares were the last vestiges of life and at the corners of their mouths were
traces of the dried greenish foam of vomited grass. As soon as their feet
touched the shore and they saw the sea, almost all of them fell on the
sand, motionless, in a frozen spasm as if that vision, that dream during
the long march of terror, had now suddenly hesitated, sealed tightly,
trapped under the shriveled skin on their bones in the last remaining
drops of [their own] blood.
For us human beings there are wounds more horrible than those
opened by a machine gun or a knife, just as the instinct for survival far
exceeds the death of body parts and the ticking away of the rhythm of
life over days and days after which those parts are no more. People who
were without food for weeks, persistent in marching through the thick-
ets and marshes, scrambling through impassable mountain ranges,
crawling through rocks with their swollen and bloodied feet reached us
[looking] like corpses – but they were not dead. Despite [the condition
of] their bodies, a desire overpowered them and prevailed – [the desire]
to reach the sea, their desire for life.
Not one battle has recorded this much suffering, such terrible
agony. Nor is it possible to imagine anything blacker or more terrible
than the look of these people coated with filth, wounded by the long
walk, infected with the most heinous diseases but, at the same time, so
very much alive in their decaying bodies... Of the heroes who Decem-
ber 1914 expelled and destroyed Potiorek’s armada nothing is alive in
their bodies except their souls which scornfully reject the very thought
of a shameful surrender. Magnificent heroism, as though it was con-
densed and compressed into the physical tragedy of each of them. All of
Serbia was dying with each of her sons, but in the agony of every one of
these Serbs glistened the honour of a nation of heroes who, faced with
the foreign yoke, chose death.“ 26
Italian officer Giuseppe Corni visited Drisit, the location where the
Serbian Army had gathered, and here is what he noted in his diary:
„I’m going to Drisit where the Serbian recruits are gathered. I can’t
find the words to describe this scene of such great sadness [and] suffering
which elicits such pain and spasms, horror and compassion and, at
the same time, revulsion; all that is consuming my spirit, breaking and
hardening it before this scene of unspeakable horror. ’Indescribable’ is
a descriptor which loses all meaning in this case, regardless that it is
the only true one, the only one which, confirming the negation, conveys
the erosion of the soul before this human mass forsaken to die, heaped
together like a pile of dirty rags out in the open under the dew which falls
on them in temperatures of 7 to 8 degrees below zero...
There are absolutely no barracks with roofs overhead, [only] the oc-
casional tent. All else is [only] human bodies on the damp and contam-
inated straw rotting in a suffocating stench, in a muddied mass...
Those Serbian recruits are so young! Almost all are still children. And
they are crying. Those children who had already shown that [they pos-
sess] the hearts of heroes, now allowed themselves to cry, exhausted by
the cold, spent by terrible hunger.
There is nothing here. Powerlessness is very painful in the face of such
a tragedy. There is nothing to offer these Cyrenians of the Serbian cross
except a slice of toast and a can of meat from Chicago sent by the English.
Oh, those cans of meat! How we will remember them with revulsion if
one day we manage to return to our homes alive, even if not too healthy...
And they are dying. I am watching how they are burying two hun-
dred per day on the average. They are dying of every kind of illness. It is a
terrible thought that these recruits at their age comprise, and surely are,
the strongest part of the retreating army!
They are burying them however they can, or rather, whenever they
can. But they place them in a grave [and] cover them with a shovelful of
earth so that the dogs and wolves cannot tear and bite their bodies.“ 27
For Catholic Christmas December 25, 1915 the governments of five
countries which had attempted to help the Serbian Army did not suc-
ceed in co-ordinating anything. A large number of Serbs were situated
between Podgorica and Skadar, another large group was somewhere in
the mountains between Podgorica and Peč and the remainder was near
Elbasan. When the assembly near Skadar reached a figure of 50,000
people, Pašić complained about insufficient aid from Italy: the Serbian
government’s plan and hope to rest and recuperate in Albania was im-
possible to realize. Even King Petar had wanted the re-organization of
the army in Albania, but with the unexpected and unrelenting offen-
sive of the Austrians and Bulgarians, they all had to change their plans.
Ambassador Fasciotti advised Minister Sonnino about this in a January
1916 letter: „Pašić reports that he has 150,000 soldiers whom Italy re-
fused to accept and whom General Sarrail does not want to accept for
hygienic reasons, so the intention to land them at Corfu was dropped
due to the protests of the Greeks, and thus they should be sent to Bistra.
Pašić says that the Allies have abandoned Serbia to its fate.“ 28
About 140,000 Serbs with 35,000 horses and 10,000 livestock plus
more than 100,000 prisoners of war and refugees arrived between
Medovo and Drač on December 31. The Austro-Hungarian offensive
did not cease and on January 13 the Austrians occupied Cetinje. On
January 4 King Nikola had asked for a truce which Austria-Hungary
rejected and so he was forced to escape to Brindisi January 20. Monte-
negro had asked to surrender and January 23 the last Italian convoy
sailed from Medovo. After that the Serbian government proposed to
the Joint Commission in Rome that it directly assume command of the
operations offering assistance and transportation. So it was decided
that control of supplying the Serbian Army be taken over by General
Taylor. On January 8 Leniani, commander of the Italian war ship, tele-
graphed from Medovo: „English Admiral (Troubridge) says that board-
ing large numbers of troops at Medovo is irrational and he rejects any
responsibility. He says he received no orders whatsoever pertaining to
that, neither from his [own] government nor the Serbian government.
French General Mondesir, after he had told the English admiral that
France will take care of the transfer of the Serbian Army, gave no other
direction or orders concerning that. No one here – not the French, not
the English, not the Serbian authorities – knows what to do. They are
all passing responsibility to the others. In that situation, only we, the
Italians, are conducting the transport [of the troops].“ 29
Via Ambassador De Bosdari, the Italian government received a note
from the French government on January 14, 1916 which said: „The Greek
government, aware of its obligations to the state co-signatories of the
Pacts of 1863, and concerned about the health conditions of the popu-
lation in [its] kingdom, cannot allow the re-oganization of the Serbian
Army on Corfu.“ 30 Realizing that the situation was at an impasse and
that neither France nor England was taking measures with regard to the
evacuation of the Serbian Army from Valona to Corfu, Italian Minister
Sonnino announced that he cannot make a decision about this on his
own and, in connection with that, he writes: „The English and French
governments must reach a timely agreement to ensure the supply and
transport of the Serbian Army from Valona to Corfu.“ 31 The confusion
was further intensified when even Greece officially rejected requests to
receive the Serbian Army on Corfu „for legal and sanitary reasons.“ 32

7. The Evacuation to Italy
Thus, the whole burden of the evacuation of the Serbian troops, the
people who followed the army and the Serbian prisoners of war fell to
Italy, not only in engaging the ships, personnel and resources, but also
from the perspective of the destination of their transport. In the middle
of winter, and based on the reasons mentioned above, almost the entire
Serbian Army was first transferred from the Albanian coast to the Ital-
ian coast and only then, during the upcoming months, to Corfu. The
water crossings were conducted in convoys accompanied and protected
from all sides by military ships
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26) Mila Mihajlović, Per l'Esercito serbo - una storia dimenticata/ Za Srpsku
vojsku - jedna zaboravljena prica (Roma: Informazioni della Difesa, 2014).
27) Corni, Reflessi, 18. January 1916.
28) Fasciotti a Sonnino, 134/8 of 15.1.1916. (MAE, DDI, Series V 1914-1918,volume V, doc. 321).
29) Montanari, Italiani e Serbi in Balcania.
30) Nota presentata all'ambasciatore italiano in Grecia, Alessandro De Bosdari
il 14.1.1916, (MAE, DDI, Series V 1914-1918,volume V, doc, 313).
31) Sonnino agli ambasciatori, 120 of 14.1.1916, (MAE, DDI, Series V 1914-1918,volume V, doc, 315).
32) De Bosdari a Sonnino, 138/20 of 15.1.1916, (MAE, DDI, Series V 1914-1918,volume V, doc, 323).