Chapter 236: How Does One Proceed When Betrayed By their Allies?
With contested seas and naval blockades across Montenegro's borders, landing troops and supplies in the Balkans was a difficult process for the allies. A process which only became more difficult with the introduction of Greece into the war on behalf of the Imperial Powers.
Montenegro and its 50,000 men found themselves quickly encircled by the German forces Bruno split off from his main army that equally were greater than ten times the number of defenders. At most, the Allies managed to land a division worth of their soldiers in the region, and that was combined across its many nations.
This division was currently trying their best to gain ground in Greece, where the Hellenic Army was rather incredibly holding its ground for the most part. Outnumbered, and fighting on two fronts, the Serbians and Greeks were in a similar position.
The difference was, the Imperial Powers advancing from the north of Serbia consisted of the top three largest, most well trained, and most technologically advanced armies in the world. While Greece was combating less than 30,000 men of actual modern capabilities in their north, with the remaining being conscripts thrust in to battle with limited training and obsolete equipment.
Perhaps the Greeks could have been pressured into splitting their forces had Bulgaria entered the war, but currently they were watching and waiting. Frankly speaking, their only reason for joining the war was to gain territory contested with the Greeks.
But they would only have such acquisitions should the Allies win. And as 1914 came to a close, the Allies were the very clear losers from any perspective other than their own. Bulgaria had chosen not to enter the war.
As a result, the Greeks only had one border to defend, and that was their border with Serbia as neutral Albania blocked a Montenegrin disruption in the northwest, and Thrace was currently under Bulgarian possession.
Meaning that other than by sending troops into Montenegro to aid Serbia, the Ottoman Empire, no matter how close they were to their Balkan ally, had no means of directly advancing into Greece without first dragging the Bulgarians into the conflict.
Not to mention that in this life, it was no exaggeration to say that the Ottomans had replaced the Austro-Hungarians as the second worst army in the world, just behind the Italians. After all, most of the issues plaguing the Austro-Hungarian Army in Bruno's past life had been solved to a sufficient enough degree thanks to his input during this new timeline.
Because of this, the British and French officers commanding the brigades that were sent to the Balkans were now forced to have a serious and grim conversation about the current reality they were facing together.
The Allied Expeditionary Force sent to the Balkans were led by a British Brigadier General, the man was not in the best of moods after recent events, and he naturally gave voice to these grievances with an inflection in his tone that hinted he was struggling to keep things together.
"I have to say, the surrender of the Serbian Provisional Army sent to buy us time against the Imperial Powers in the North was not exactly an expected occurrence... And now we sit here in south, with our flanks entirely exposed to an enemy which is quickly advancing upon our position entirely uncontested.