Roger Morrell gave a superb PowerPoint presentation at our November meeting entitled – The Salonica Campaign. With the Allied defeats at the Battle of Gallipoli (April 1915 to January 1916) demonstrating the Central Powers' strength, King Ferdinand signed a treaty with Germany and on September 21, 1915 Bulgaria began mobilizing for war. In October 1915 the first British troops landed at the Greek port of Salonika (now Thessaloniki) from Gallipoli and France. The British Salonika Force fought alongside French, Greek, Italian, Russian and Serbian contingents. British and French colonial troops from the Indian subcontinent, Africa, and Indochina also took part. Until April 1917, the front was relatively quiet. The major effort came in September 1918 as part of all-encompassing allied offensives, which led to the end of hostilities with Bulgaria on 30 September 1918. As well as battle casualties, the conditions were extreme, very hot in the summer, very cold in the winter, many suffered severely from malaria.Roger showed us various material from newspaper cuttings, postcards, POW’s letters and field postcards from all sides and the different postmarks of the army base camps and mobile Post Offices.
A wonderful entertaining and educational afternoon.