2-711-011 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The Great Serbian Retreat', (1919). The Serbian army's 1915 retreat through the mountains of Albania during the First World War: 'The crossing of the great plain of Kossovo was perhaps the most tragic incident in the great retreat. Snow lay thick on the ground, rivers were in flood, and the fugitive panic-stricken peasantry fled their country with...the enemy in close pursuit.' Some 240,000 died from cold, starvation, disease, and attacks by Albanian tribesmen. From "The History of the Great European War: its causes and effects", Vol. VI, by W. Stanley Macbean Knight. [Caxton Pulishing Company, Limited, London, 1919]