UNDER THE DEVILS EYE -NOP/018

The Devil's Eye' was the soldiers' name for the infamous Bulgarian observation post overlooking the British line at Doiran. The troops who fought in the Balkans, and especially the British contingent, became a forgotten army. The British Salonika Force landed in Greece in October 1915, to deter Bulgaria from joining the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, in attacking Serbia. The campaign was, from the British perspective, always destined to be a 'side show'. Britain had no political, commercial or strategic interests in the region beyond prosecuting the First World War to a favorable conclusion, but the demands of coalition warfare made a continued Anglo-French presence necessary. From mid-1917, however, the War Office plundered the British Salonika Force's manpower to support offensives in Palestine and on the Western Front.