The Bulgarians were in exactly the same position, and trying to accomplish exactly the same thing, as in the Second Balkan War. At that time they were endeavoring to drive a wedge in between the Serbians and the Greeks. Now the situation was the same, except that the French were in the place of the Greeks.
From Katshanik to Krivolak the railroad was in Bulgarian hands. From Krivolak south to Doiran it was in the hands of the Allies, though parts of it were at times under the fire of the Bulgarian artillery. South of Katshanik the Bulgarians had crossed the road and had pushed westward until they were held up at the Babuna Pass. Should the pass be forced the Serbian line was in immediate danger of being flanked and the French, too, would be in a similar danger, for by striking south the Bulgarians could make a move around toward the French rear. Hence the almost superhuman efforts both Serbians and French were making to close this gap.
The stand that the Serbians made in Babuna Pass was one of those feats which will remain inscribed on the pages of history through the ages and will excite the admiration of all people, regardless of how their sympathies may lie toward the main issues of the war. During the first week of November Colonel Vassitch had only 5,000 men with which to dispute the right of way against 20,000 Bulgarians. And not only had the Bulgarians a great advantage in the matter of numbers, but they were well supplied with big guns. Day after day and night after night, the little force of Serbians crouched among the deep shadows of the defile, sometimes without food, always under a heavy fire, now and again making the rock cliffs about them echo with bursts of their plaintive, national folk songs. After November 4, 1915, the Bulgarian attacks became more persistent, and their infantry would hurl itself up into the pass; then the Serbians would spring up from behind rocks and ledges and throw themselves at their hated kinsmen with naked bayonets, shouting such words in their common language as send the flush of rage burning through the cheeks of men and make things red before their eyes. Again and again were these sanguinary hand-to-hand struggles enacted under the towering rock walls of those forbidding mountains, and again and again the Bulgarians were thrown back. Meanwhile, the French, only ten miles away, were within sound of the firing.