Allied Army of the Orient

An example of Allied collaboration : an Italian Captain, a Russian Lieutenant, a Serb Colonel, a French Lieutenant and a Greek Gendarme

The Allied Army of the Orient (AAO) (French: Armées alliées en Orient) was the name of the unified command over the multi-national allied armed forces on the Salonika Front during the First World War.

When German-Austrian-Bulgarian forces overran Serbia in September-October 1915, several allied countries sent troops to the Greek port of Salonika to help Serbia.

By August 1916, some 400,000 allied soldiers from 5 different armies occupied the Salonika Front. An unified command imposed itself and after long discussions, French General Maurice Sarrail was placed in command of all Allied forces at Salonika, although they retained right of appeal to their governments.

Greece itself remained at first neutral. After a coup on 30 August 1916, the Provisional Government of National Defence, led by Eleftherios Venizelos, was created in Salonika. It started assembling an army and soon participated in operations against the Central Powers. In June 1917, after increasing pressure from the allies, King Constantine I of Greece was forced to abdicate from the throne. Venizelos assumed control of the entire country and Greece officially declared war against the Central Powers on 30 June 1917. The Greek forces also operated under command of the AAO.

Commanders of the AAO

• 11 August 1916 : general Maurice Sarrail
• 15 December 1917 : general Adolphe Guillaumat
• 17 June 1918 : general Louis Franchet d'Espèrey^[1]

Composition

France

Serbian General Živojin Mišić and British general George Milne.

• Armée d'Orient (1914) : 8 divisions

Great Britain

• British Salonika Army : 6 divisions

Serbia

• First Army, under command of Živojin Mišić
• Second Army, under command of Stepa Stepanović
• Third Army, under command of Pavle Jurišić Šturm and later Colonel Miloš Vasić.

Russian General Leontiev saluts Sarrail

Russia

• The Russian expeditionary force (2 brigades) under command of Mikhail Diterikhs

Sarrail and Petitti di Roreto on the arrival of the Italian troops in Salonika

Italy

• 35th Infantry division (Corpo di spedizione italiano in Macedonia) under
  • Carlo Petitti di Roreto (July 1916 - April 1917)
  • Giuseppe Pennella (26 April 1917 - 24 May 1917)
  • Ernesto Mombelli (24 May 1917 - end 1918)

^[2]

• XVI Italian Army Corps : This Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Oriente (CSIO), an Italian Army Corps in Albania, remained under direct Italian HQ command and thus wasn't part of the AAO.
  • Emilio Bertotti (20 November 1915 – 8 March 1916)
  • Settimio Piacentini (8 March – 17 June 1916)
  • Oreste Bandini (18 June – 11 December 1916), was killed in the sinking of the Regina Margherita
  • Giacinto Ferrero (11 December 1916),^[3]

Greece

General Gérôme and Venizelos inspect Greek troops in Macedonia

• In September 1916, 10.000 men under command of Colonels Zymvrakakis and Mazarakis
• By January 1918, 10 divisions (204,000 men) under command of Panagiotis Danglis

Others

• Portugal : 1 Brigade
• Albania : 1,000 irregular troops under Essad Pasha Toptani
• Montenegro : irregular troops

Notes

References

• Lazarski, Christopher (2008). The Lost Opportunity: Attempts at Unification of the Anti-Bolsheviks:1917-1919. University Press of America.